Grounding fiction in imperial history enhances rather than reduces its art

Evidence

To lose sight of or ignore the national and international context of, say, Dickens’s representations of Victorian businessmen, and to focus only on the internal coherence of their roles in his novels is to miss an essential connection between his fiction and its historical world. And understanding that connection does not reduce or diminish the novels’ value as works of art: on the contrary, because of their worldliness, because of their complex affiliations with their real setting, they are more interesting and more valuable as works of art. — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 561

Categorization

• XREF: Resonates with the common assumption in aesthetic theory that contextual reading diminishes literary value.