Many of our ideas about history are drawn from historical fiction.
Who, for example, is Thomas More? Is he the tragic hero of the play and movie, "A Man For All Seasons"?
The title for that work is drawn from what a contemporary wrote:
More is a man of an angel's wit and singular learning. I know not his fellow, for where is the man of that gentleness, lowliness, and affability, and as time requireth, a man of marvelous mirth and pastimes and sometimes, of a sad gravity, a man for all seasons.
Or is More the cruel, relentless and power-craving persecutor of Protestants we see on the pages of Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall and its various adaptations? Or... is he both?
GUESTS:
- Jay Parini - Poet, novelist and professor at Middlebury College. His many books include The Last Station: A Novel of Tolstoy’s Final Year, and most recently, The Empire of Self: A Life of Gore Vidal
- Jane Smiley - Pulitzer-Prize winning novelist of A Thousand Acres. Her many books include most recently, her first trilogy, Last Hundred Years: A Family Saga
- Joanne Freeman - Professor of History and American Studies at Yale. She's the author of Affairs of Honor: National Politics in the New Republic and the editor of Alexander Hamilton: Writings.
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Betsy Kaplan and Chion Wolf produced this show.
