Fwd: Re: clarification

[Burgess, John]

John Burgess
Information Officer/Press Attache
US Embassy, London

44-171-499-5261 (fon)
44-171-491-2485 (fax)

jburgess at usia.govI don't think GR is even close to the origins of this 
device... maybe a couple thousand years too late, in fact.

While I don't have my library at hand, I think you'll find Greek and 
Roman discourses (hey, the novel wasn't invented yet, right?) that are 
largely fictional, but include "real," historical characters.  I think 
this is a sort of injection of "brand names" into texts to add to the 
versimilitude of the story.

By the time you get to 17th Cent. fiction (e.g. "Voyage de la terre a la 
lune" by Cyrano de Bergerac, you have the meshing pretty well in hand.  
This device seems to beg a question -- at least to me -- about "romans a 
clefs," in which a real character is thinly veiled behind a fictional 
one... all who are in on the joke get the added frisson of recognition, 
thus adding to the reality of the tale.