Literature
Duggan's novels are known for being based on meticulous historical research. He also wrote popular histories of Ancient Rome and the Middle Ages. Knight With Armour was his first novel, published during 1946. He visited practically every place and battlefield described in the book because he was also an archeologist, having worked on excavations in Istanbul during the 1930s.
Unlike many historical novelists, he does not idealise his subjects. A few of the characters are noble, some rather nasty, many mixed in their motives. Some of the novels can be considered humorous. A recurring theme is the slow moral corruption of a character who begins with an exalted opinion of himself as noble, wise and brave but who gradually compromises himself morally.
Most of the stories are told from the viewpoint of the ruling class, sometimes the ruler and sometimes a knight or noble. With respect to English history, his novels imply a general approval of the Norman conquest.
Read more about this topic: Alfred Duggan
Famous quotes containing the word literature:
“Poetry, it is often said and loudly so, is life’s true mirror. But a monkey looking into a work of literature looks in vain for Socrates.”
—Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872)
“Literature is not exhaustible, for the sufficient and simple reason that a single book is not. A book is not an isolated entity: it is a narration, an axis of innumerable narrations. One literature differs from another, either before or after it, not so much because of the text as for the manner in which it is read.”
—Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986)
“What makes literature interesting is that it does not survive its translation. The characters in a novel are made out of the sentences. That’s what their substance is.”
—Jonathan Miller (b. 1936)