Reading History: Simon Schama's "Dead Certain"

[John Lee]

This blog post is part of a collection of postings focused on the painting of Benjamin West. In this post, I look at British historian Simon Schama's treatment of the death of British General James Wolfe, the subject of one of Benjamin West's most famous paintings. Schama suggests that the historical disciplinary obsession with getting the Wolfe story right is out of touch with what we are able to understand about the past.

In The King's Painter: Art, History, and Benjamin West on Learn Digital History, I look at West's painting as representative of the American revolutionary spirit as well as the ironies of his work.

On Teaching Digital History, I write about how teachers can use West's historical paintings to teach about the American colonial history in a post called Teaching the American Revolution with Benjamin West.

On blog Visual Times, I look at some of the online presentations of West's work.

In another post on a blog called Capturing Presidential History, I write about presidential portraiture and West in a post titled Art, Portraits, and Presidents.

Finally, a post on Historical Ephemera, looks at reproductions of West's 1798 painting Death on a Pale Horse.

In his 1991 book, Dead Certainties: Unwarranted Speculations British historian Simon Schama examines various historical memories about British General James Wolfe's death. Wolfe led British troops in the Battle of Quebec during the Seven Years War. The battle cost Wolfe his life, and in death he became a heroic figure who was virtually canonized in the court of King George III. The book actually explores the deaths of Wolfe and George Parkman, a Boston doctor murdered in 1849.

American born painter Benjamin West, who in 1763 moved to London and eventually became the official court painter for King George III, captured Wolfe's death in what would become his most famous work, The Death of General Wolfe. The painting broke new ground as West challenged traditional approaches to such historical work by painting Wolfe in a realistic setting with realistic dress. For more see The King's Painter: Art, History, and Benjamin West

In Schama's book, he explores the processes that have resulted in our historical understanding of General Wolfe's death and raises doubt about our ability to ever get the story right. As Schama sees it, an almost impassable gulf exist between the actual past and our efforts to recapture that past through history. While he does not view historical work as impractical or fatally flawed, Schama does want us to question the certainty of the discipline and uses a unique and somewhat controversial technique to test the boundaries of historical narrative. In retelling the story of General James Wolfe's death, Schama weaves fiction and fact, playing with chronology and our sense of "certainty" to challenge his readers to engage the story in a different way. What Schama expects from us is a new form of literacy- an ability to suspend judgment and make critical and active use of his text. Schama's play with authority and his willingness to bend the disciplinary rules call for a higher sense of historical consciousness than a traditional treatment of Wolfe's story might otherwise demand. Although published in 1991, Schama's work might be thought of as a work of new literacy, at the border between traditional academic work and more interpretive or post-modernist work. Reading Schama at least demands new historical literacies that re-position the relationship between reader and writer.


More

National Review article on the book.