... Postscript is also a manifesto proclaiming the authority of serious historical fiction: the characters in a historical novel may not appear in encyclopedias, he notes, but everything they do could only occur in that time and place. Made-up events and characters tell us things "that history books have ... political controversies and philosophical debates over nominalism. He further perplexes ordinary readers with the linguistic challenges of numerous snatches of classical and medieval Latin, French, and German, not to mention the peculiar polyglot speech of one of the characters. As he rem...

• Word Count: 4697
• Approx Pages: 19
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate