Creative Non-Fiction and Herodotus


I was perusing the comic strips of Kate Beaton when I came across the strip to the left concerning Herodotus.

It triggered many questions about the nature of Creative Non-Fiction, and its distinction from plain ol' vanilla Non-Fiction, Journalism, and History.

Now, more than ever, authorial intent becomes important in distinguishing between the different types of writing.

Then again, the nature of the writing and the interpretation of the text could lead to other classifications. As in the case of the comic strip, the inclusion of "giant ants" makes us suspect the text's nature. Was it journalism (Herodotus claimed that he only wrote down what people told him) given that it was relatively recent to his time period, or more of creative non-fiction (since we don't really know if he found at least two independent sources for these ants), or just history (coz it's too far in the past, man).