In the mid-1980s, just as the new historicists, with their invocation of "the historicity of texts and the textuality of history," were transforming the way readers understood the English Renaissance, Umberto Eco's novel The Name of the Rose became both a critical success and a bestseller. (1983) Widely celebrated as a postmodern historical novel, this dazzling mixture of thick historical research and popular detective fiction invited its readers to view historical fiction as an academically respectable genre and a vehicle for recovering and reimagining the past in unconventional ways...

• Word Count: 4697
• Approx Pages: 19
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

In selections from Leo Africanus's The History and Description of Africa, a work written around the same time as Othello, Africanus describes blacks as "shepherds that liue a miserable, toilsome, wretched and beggarly life: they are a rude people, borne of brutish manners " (Africanus, 2). ...

• Word Count: 1083
• Approx Pages: 4
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

The Romans have had almost every type of government there is. They've had a kingdom, a republic, a dictatorship, and an empire. Their democracy would be the basis for most modern democracies. The people have always been involved with and loved their government, no matter what kind it was. They loved being involved in the government, and making decisions concerning everyone. ...

• Word Count: 4232
• Approx Pages: 17
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School