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Notes -
While not exactly the same thing, a tremendous amount of the popularly imagined history in the English speaking world is actually the fantasies of the 19th century. A minor but obvious example is knights in shining armor. Most armor was dark and unpolished, if not outright colored black. The armor is still around and there are tons of paintings.
Oh very much so. This goes back much further than the 19th century. The weapons, clothing, social structures, and language of the Homeric epics or the Mahabharata probably reflected more closely on the time of their writing than on the time period they proposed to portray.
And then you think of all the statues to fictional characters that are built! And for that matter, even for events that are within living contact for me, I worked with Vietnam Vets growing up and they told me the best way to understand it was to watch Full Metal Jacket and Platoon. Fiction over time can become part of our understanding of history. A few hundred years hence, these distinctions can get lost. Especially once you get into Epistolary or Diaristic novels.
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I guess that’s a corollary to people thinking the peak of Renaissance artisanal armor was perfectly normal for the year 900.
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