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I am doing some research in to a possible literary project. It will feature one important historical figure, whom will be a man. Before anyone tries to second guess the motives or possible themes/plots, this is a re-working of a piece given to me by another student (I just think I can take it in a more interesting direction).
The person selected is not actually central to the theme and in a way is superfluous to the plot; he is just a tool to facilitate the true themes of betrayal, love and revenge. I want the person to be selected by more than one individual, as its important that the audience can relate to him and he is appealing. The people on the list are selected not only for their contributions to human history, but by their possible comic value and naivety when placed in a very unfamiliar setting. The piece is intended to be very dark in its humour and hopefully will be entered in to a competition. As soon as the result of that is known, I will let anyone who is interested know and you can have a copy. Thanks for the help

boz wrote ..

"The people on the list are selected not only for their contributions to human history, but by their possible comic value and naivety when placed in a very unfamiliar setting".

ive put henry the 8th down as i think he would be most out of place in a current civilised society. he was quite famous for wanting to have his own way the whole time and losing it when he did,nt get it!
as for dark humour i wonder how you go about telling your daughter that you just had her mums head chopped off?

good luck with the piece

lumpyv wrote:boz wrote ..

"The people on the list are selected not only for their contributions to human history, but by their possible comic value and naivety when placed in a very unfamiliar setting".

ive put henry the 8th down as i think he would be most out of place in a current civilised society. he was quite famous for wanting to have his own way the whole time and losing it when he did,nt get it!
as for dark humour i wonder how you go about telling your daughter that you just had her mums head chopped off?

good luck with the piece

Yep I can totally see the comic value in him being subject to someone elses whims. There is another part of the planned plot which would be hilarious if it were to feature this monarch, but I'm not yet sure if I'm going to go with it. Bottom line is though that I have a template in which all of these people would fit nicely, not so much for their own personalities but for what the readers would not expect to see. After all, we actually know very little of some of the candidates and virtually nothing of the rest. This is what I value the most as basically it leaves the most scope for my own warped imagination to fill in the blanks.

Confucius for me as it would be funny in any argument scene to find him always being right, road rage for example....

Surely Mosses shouldn't be on that list as he is a fictional character..? Quickly ducks incoming thrown bible's.....

Darwin get's my vote. Let him see how evolution is getting on!

Achilles

I know Senna wouldn't fit in with your theme but I would love to see him back and racing to see how he would compare to today's drivers...

Da Vinci, just so he could say "told you it would work"

The only person I'd like to see brought back in his prime - is ME

Would be interesting to see what Kev was like before he got so old

AMCQ46 wrote:Would be interesting to see what Kev was like before he got so old

I was born old mate, or at least it feels like it some days!!!

Kev L wrote:

AMCQ46 wrote:Would be interesting to see what Kev was like before he got so old

I was born old mate, or at least it feels like it some days!!!

Too True, thank god the fading memory protects you from realising how much things have changed

I will have to have a think about this one and get back to you. TBH I am not that knowledgeable with all the characters.

(:-})

cybercarl wrote:I will have to have a think about this one and get back to you. TBH I am not that knowledgeable with all the characters.

(:-})

Just go with your gut reaction Carl, its often the best way...mind you, thanks for taking it seriously as I will be using the winning candidate from the combination of this survey and one I carried out last week in the Uni canteen

My gut reaction is Henry the eighth but he has been done to death. Maybe this is a good thing as we all, well the majority of us know the history behind him. There's plenty of scope for dark humour, love and hatred. I suppose the naivety could come into it with his wife's and wanting a boy to pass on the reign. I don't think he is very appealing though.

Why isn't Oliver Cromwell on the list? There's something pulling me to Karl Marx as he has a good name and after reading a bit on google about him cause I know nothing about him, some of his views could be related to today's society in a backwards kinda way. I'm not sure where the love would come into it though unless it was the passions for his work.

Moses isn't even a real person so why that is on the list I don't know. I though Moses was a fairytale.

I shall pick Henry, but it is the easy option.

(:-})

cybercarl wrote:My gut reaction is Henry the eighth but he has been done to death. Maybe this is a good thing as we all, well the majority of us know the history behind him. There's plenty of scope for dark humour, love and hatred. I suppose the naivety could come into it with his wife's and wanting a boy to pass on the reign. I don't think he is very appealing though.

Why isn't Oliver Cromwell on the list? There's something pulling me to Karl Marx as he has a good name and after reading a bit on google about him cause I know nothing about him, some of his views could be related to today's society in a backwards kinda way. I'm not sure where the love would come into it though unless it was the passions for his work.

Moses isn't even a real person so why that is on the list I don't know. I though Moses was a fairytale.

I shall pick Henry, but it is the easy option.

(:-})

Cromwell nearly made it. As for Moses, yes he might have not been real but probably not. A lot of philosophical/sociological methodologies concerning mankind's place in the universe were kicked off by biblical studies. Pr-reformation, objective thought was heavily influenced by the church and it was really the events of the French Revolution which kicked off empiricism. I felt that I had to have a pseudo-mythical figure in there purely for the alleged events surrounding him giving me the opportunity to manipulate them. Imagine if Moses were real and telling him that what he did was a load of bollox? It does not really matter what can be proved, but what we choose to believe.
I will say that this piece does not solely concern the comic value of this person in the modern day. This plot line is purely to facilitate the exploration of a relationship between the historical figure and the protagonist of the piece (possibly a homosexual relationship). Don't look too deeply in to what say Moses would do in the modern ages, his reactions to us. Its more about the reaction to him by someone who wants to exploit him and will go to any lengths to do so. Most of all, is the historical person real or is he a representation of something else? Is it a hoax of some sort? I can't really copy and paste my plan for the narrative (its over 3000 words), but think outside the box.
I wanted the challenge of having to involve a central character who I did not select and tried to make the choices as wide ranging as possible. They all had to have a basis in philosophical thought for this to work, so the narrative could be less rigid and the story is therefore more about suggestion than absolute certainties.
Thanks for the input though and as it goes, I believe Henry is the least rigid of the lot in terms of character representation so he would be a great subject. I could bring him back at any age and that is a very big clue to how I am going to deal with the challenge of getting these characters to work for me. To get the reader to accept him!