They're beginning to notice medieval things and recycle them!

Gentle readers:

It looks as if the town of Bury St. Edmunds is going to recycle a 13th century guildhall for um, modern purposes. You can see the site here:

http://medievalnews.blogspot.com/2010/04/medieval-guildhall-to-be-redeveloped.html

The exterior certainly looks "medieval" enough. And atmospheric, too!
Anne G

Another fine novelist and blogger

This is the first of March,and I would like to make an announcement.  Which is to say, I’m adding another fine blog to my blog list.  It’s Sharon Kay Penman's blog.  She is a fine novelist who has written such works as The Devil’s Brood, her most recent work.  The other reason I’m adding it is, she writes fiction about medieval England.  Her works are mainly biographical fiction, which is not usually a genre or subgenre I read, but Ms. Penman is a definite exception, and I’ve enjoyed most of the things I’ve read from her.  I have certain disagreements with her about her style and approaches to certain things, but that’s not because I don’t consider her a good writer.  I do.  And besides, I haven’t blogged about any medieval stuff for a long time.  That needs to be rectified.  So thanks, Ms. Penman, for your blog.  I’ll be following it with great interest!

Anne G

A plethora of goodies on various subjects

There is an absolute plethora of bloggable subjects cluttering up various parts of my computer today, and I didn't even realize it!  I've been busy the past few days, mostly with more writing(have completed or revised two more chapters in the second book of my Great Medieval Science Fiction Trilogy With Neandertals), and haven't, lately, had much time to do any serious blogging. 

 

But never fear, there's plenty to blog about.  First, two stories from Julien Riel-Salvatore's fine blog, A Very Remote Period Indeed,  both on the presence of Neandertals in Poland north of the Carpathians, some 80,000 years ago.  Then there's an equally fascinating piece on preserving an 11th century bridge in England, with sugar, on Got Medieval.  And let us not forget My Beloved Wolves!  There are stories and updates on the Wolves of the High Arctic(in this case, Ellesmere Island -- if you don't exactly know where that is, you might want to search through Google Earth or an atlas).  Their travels are interesting.  All wolves' travels are interesting, for a variety of reasons.

 

Last but not least, I have my own thoughts about why only certain people are interested in medieval history and society, and why few readers of historical and other genres deal with "medieval" except as fantasy.  I will also have something to say about how this impacts my own history, and my writing. 

 

In any case, stay tuned.  I'll be blogging about some of this stuff, a little each day or so.  I'm not deserting anybody, though I haven't started 2010 with a huge number of blogs.  But that's another story to tell -- later.  Much later.

Anne G

We might not be in such trouble today if we dealt with financial misdeeds the way Henry I of England did. . . .

Elizabeth Chadwick's Medieval Mondays on her blog Living the History has an uh, interesting entry for this week. . . (sorry, folks, I know it's Tuesday and all that!).  It's about moneyers(or minters, as they were sometimes called).  Some background:  Every town of any size, by law, had a mint where coins -- English silver pennies -- were minted and stamped with a design approved by the king.  These coins circulated for several years(I think it was three), and then, again by order of the reigning king, were withdrawn, and new silver coins, with a new stamp, were issued.  People with the old coins then had to pay a visit to the town mint(in some really large towns there were apparently two or three of them), turn the old coins in, whereupon they would be melted down and new coins made with the new official stamp.  The moneyer/minter charged you a fee for this.  This was how minters made their money, and some of them became quite rich and important. 

 

Unfortunately, the system was subject to abuse, and it was not unknown for moneyers to cheat.  The king, or at least what passed for his bureaucracy, knew, or eventually found out, and laws kept getting passed.  This didn't necessarily stop anybody, so the kings had to periodically rein in the moneyers.

 

So here is what one of the current Medieval Monday posts has to say about this situation.  After I read about this solution, I began to wonder whether someone, somewhere, could channel King Henry I to deal with the financial shenanigans of some modern bankers and Wall Street fat cat types.  Nah, I decided.  That would be too big a job even for Henry I!

AnneG

Have you heard the one about the historian who no longer reads historical novels?

No, I didn't "hear" that one, I saw it, here!  In some ways, I can't blame her.  If you're a historian, I guess you're going to be able to pick out what you think are "anachronisms", "modern" thinking in historical times," etc., etc.  But when it comes to things like words for "mother", "father", "mama", papa", etc., what's going on here?  It's interesting that many languages have "pet" names for mothers and fathers and other close relatives, and a lot of them sound like "mama" and "papa",especially when coming out of young mouths.  But Magistra et Mater isn't a linguist, so presumably she wouldn't be aware of this. 

 

It seems to me that what she really wants, and what I've complained about elsewhere is "total" accuracy for whatever period she's reading about.  Even in periods where there's an abundant amount of material that can be mined as research, this simply cannot be done.  As for as "modern" attitudes go, well, I kind of wonder.  If, for example, my heroes had completely "early medieval" attitudes, they would probably be totally unsympathetic.  That doesn't mean I don't recognize that such attitudes existed, it just means that at least some of the people are exceptional in some ways(besides, it's "romantic science fiction set in medieval England", not a history treatise, nor a "pure" historical novel.  And it has "anthropological" material in it, or I wouldn't otherwise be writing about Dauarga/Neandertals as some of my central characters. 

 

The real problem here is, a kind of academic snobbery, not unlike some "literary critics" who moan about "popular" works like Twilight and  the Harry Potter series.  These people want "beautiful writing" about "character development", whereas many readers just want A Good Story.  This doesn't mean you should write sloppily or have inconsistencies in your story.  It just means that there are some things that are more important to a lot of people than they are to these literary snobs(there's no other word for them, in my opinion).  Historical novelists, however, do offer an opportunity for the reader to learn "more" about whatever period they are writing about, and it is not uncommon for people who read historical novels to later get into history majors, and become professionals, in some way or another.  Similar things have happened to some science fiction readers, who get into science that way. 

 

I think Magistra et Mater has fallen into the common trap of thinking that, since they have become "experts", they must find fault with anything written by a nonexpert.  Some fiction, like some historical films(such as Kingdom of Heaven and Braveheart in the movie realm, and things like The Da Vinci Code in the "literary" realm), richly deserves the opprobrium it is given.  These pieces are laughably inaccurate, as in Braveheart, and/or they have, as in the case of The Da Vinci Code, very obviously "mined" certain dubious source "works", which are themselves full of historical "junk".  However, the author apparently does not recognize that a historical novelist is not a historian, is not expected to be a historian, and shouldn't be held to the same standards as a historian, no matter how "representative" of a time or place any piece of historical fiction is supposed to be.  I've seen whines about this in anthropology journals(mainly about the Jean Auel's Children of Earth series.  There, the problem is, that the academics in question wish they were as famous, or had made as much money as Mrs. Auel, but they're academics, and aren't as famous as Jean Auel or her series.  It is quite possible to make legitimate criticisms of her series -- she has obviously done extensive research, but Ayla, her heroine, is too much of a prehistoric "everywoman" to be completely credible.  Yet, if she hadn't written Ayla this way, would anybody have eve read her books?  I don't have an answer to this, but novelists must make authorial decisions all the time about things like this, whether it's "accurate" or not.  On the other hand, I do think the novelist in question should research as thoroughly as they can, and work the "accurate" bits into the background.  It won't be "history", exactly, but it might inspire someone, some day, to research a period on their own or even(gasp!) to become a historian themselves.

Anne G

Medieval peasants weren't the downtrodden souls they're sometimes made out to be

Or, at least they weren't in England, according to this article!  It seems like the peasants liked to dress as nicely as anyone else when they could, and apparently they were often able to put together the money to buy nice accessories, too.  These accessories may not have been as "fancy" as the dress and accessories of lords and ladies, but they weren't the plain, dull stuff some people picture them in.  Naturally, the "higher orders" thought the peasants should "stay in their place", and churchmen especially, decried "fancy" clothing for the peasant class.  And, equally naturally, the peasants didn't agree, and went on buying "fancy" stuff anyway, whenever they could, and wore such things when the occasion demanded.  Which might have also been more often than you might suppose, since there were lots of feast days, harvests, etc., where people tried to dress in their best.

Anne G

A wonderfully "noirish" medieval noir

Westerson, Jeri
Serpent in the Thorns
Minotaur Books, New York, 2009
276 pp.
ISBN 978-0-312-53498-1

Jeri Westerson has done it again! When I read kVeil of Lies, I was impressed. Ms. Westerson writes very well. But some people didn't think Veil of Lies was"noirish" enough, or at least, being set in the Middle Ages, couldn't possibly be a "noir" type novel.


This, of course, is a matter of opinion. To me, "noir" can be set in any time period as long as the person has been "cast outside" in some way. The hero, Crispin Guest, certainly has, though he also most certainly has people on his side, including his (sort of) servant, a boy named Jack, and John of Gaunt, the Duke of Lancaster. The only trouble is, the king isn't on his side, because Guest supposedly did a Very Bad Thing(you'll have to read the books to find out what the Very Bad Thing was; I'm not giving this away).


Unfortunately, Crispin Guest is also in a Very Bad Position, though he has friends on various sides, and needs them. And, if anything, he needs friends more than ever in Serpent in the Thorns; in this book, it at least looks like everyone is betraying him, even though he knows, or thinks he knows, who kille a French envoy(he turns out to be wrong on this, but that was due to the fact that the person who came to him in the first place. . . . well, never mind. Again, you'll just have to read the book to find out more.


Westerson does several things I wish I could do, but don't quite seem to be able to manage. First, she writes with "economy". Her novels aren't all that long, but they're very satisfying, and because she is writing a series, she can explore Crispin Guest and his times in more depth than I think a lot of "short" books do. The second thing, which I may get better at over time, she conjures up a "flavor" of fourteenth-century London in a way that is rare, even for people absolutely steeped in the history and culture of some past time.


This, I think, is truly a gift, and Ms. Westerson writes so well, it's a pleasure to read her offerings, and for this reason, I am looking forward to her next Crispin Guest novel with anticipation. She hints that it might be "a little different". I don't know. I'll just have to wait and see.


If there is any flaw in this book, I think it is a minor one -- at the beginnning, it was a little hard to get into, for some reason I can't really articulate. I have no idea why. Perhaps I just had too much on my mind at th e time. However, I got past this rather quickly, and after that, Jeri Westerson's wonderful story simply took over.

Anne G

Elizabeth Chadwick's Medieval Mondays

Today, Monday, December 7, 2009,  the author Elizabeth Chadwick has started a weekly feature on her blog, called Medieval Monday  Yes, it will be a weekly feature, if what she says is true.  The first one was absolutely fascinating; about a period when men in England grew their hair long, and the Church didn't like it, and what was done about it.  Or rather, what the men(at least some of them) did about it.  She also has another feature that looks very interesting -- the first and last sentence of whatever material she's been working on.  That might be an interesting read, too.  I certainly enjoyed it. And I"m looking forward to even more fascinating weekly tidbits.

Anne G

I'm adding to my blogroll again

Today, I have the privilege of adding another blog to my blogroll.  This is a medieval blog, specifically earlier medieval England.  It's name is Anglo-Saxon England.  It is written by a person who also runs message board called Englistory, which is also very valuable, full of lively discussions, and there are interesting people on it, but it covers a much wider range of historical times and places than just early medieval England.  There is a great deal of material on the Anglo-Saxon England blog that is relevant to my Great Medieval Science Fiction Masterpiece, either because it covers historical events mentioned in my book(s) or else it gives me background material I can incorporate into it. The blogger also lists the sources used for some of the blogs, and it covers some material that is reasonably accessible  to a non-scholar one way, or another.  So with a flourish, and a bow, and a ta-da, I will leave things at that, and all the Gentle Reader of my blog has to do is click on the link, if they are interested, and they will see what I mean.

Anne G

The "mindset" issue, from a slightly different point of view

I was going to post about that Anglo-Saxon hoard that was found a couple of weeks ago, and wasn't able to get around to it.  I was also going to say a little something -- since I follow paleoanthropology and prehistoric archaeology, though mainly with reference to Neandertals -- about the complete description of the ancestral Ardepithecus ramidus,  now know affectionately as "Ardi".  That kind of escaped me too, and besides, I don't have much to say about it, other than the description of this find, though the fossil's existence has been known for years -- was pretty awesome, in my opinion.

 

However, something happened last week which sent me off on a different angle, although it does relate, tangentially to the Anglo-Saxon hoard.  There is a woman I know, who has very strong opinions about just about everything.  She reads a lot, sometimes rather odd things, at least for her. We were conversing, and she happened to mention the discovery of Nero's revolving palace which he never used, apparently, because he got killed before he ever used it.  And no other Roman emperors used it, either, apparently.  I had seen media reports of it, but didn't react much, one way or another.  Greco-Roman stuff just doesn't appeal to me all that much.  However, I mentioned that I'd also read and heard about this Anglo-Saxon hoard of gold things and enameled-looking things.  I also mentioned that I thought they were quite beautiful and well-crafted. 

 

"Yeah, it's pretty militaristic, isn't it?" she replied.  Here I must mention two things:  First, this lady knows nothing about medieval times, particularly not the Anglo-Saxon period of England.  And the hoard did   contain a lot of sword hilts.  But my first thought was "militaristic?"  Huh?  I wouldn't have described it this way.   To be fair, this woman not only is very vocal in her opinions about things, she has a rather narrow concept of what she considers acceptable -- in modern terms.  And this brings me to the whole problem of mindsets, once again.   For this woman is projecting her own ideas about acceptable norms, in modern times, onto (a) a society she knows absolutely nothing about and (b) onto people who probably had absolutely no concept at all of "militarism".  And it is in modern projections like these, that the "mindset" problem arises.   When you're writing or dealing artistically with some past society, even if what you're writing isn't strict "historical novel" material, you have to accept  that people in this past, whatever it is, often accepted things that people today tend to find unacceptable.  This is true, even when we speak of the recent past.

 

I can give two examples here:  I grew up at a time when it was widely accepted by a great many people, that certain "minorities" didn't, for example, have the right to live in, or even visit, certain areas.  When I was a child, you rarely, if ever, saw people of African descent visiting the local zoo.  In that community, it just wasn't done.  And this was in "liberal" Seattle.  But a lot of people accepted this as  natural or normal.  Many people, both male and female, accepted the idea that women "shouldn't work"; they should just stay home, be housewives, and have a bunch of kids.  There are still people who believe this, but they are, nowadays, a distinct, though sometimes vocal, minority.  And times have changed, at least to some degree, for the better; women work in all kinds of jobs that would have been inconceivable for them in the 1950's and early 1960's.  Most of us, in the Western world, are glad these things have changed for the people who were the objects of such thinking.  But the point is, these two examples suggest a fairly common mindset at the time(though there were others, as well). 

 

Similarly, in Anglo-Saxon times, I am pretty sure that an "anti-militarist" mindset, even among churchmen and women, would have been quite inconceivable.  It was not so much that their militaries wanted to fight; just as today, it was better to avoid wars if you could. Besides, a local king or lord had to have fighting men, partly to protect him, and partly to keep whatever enemies he might have, away from the population.  This was necessary for two reasons:  in most parts of the medieval world, at least until fairly late, government pretty much consisted of whatever the king or local lord could manage to enforce.  If he was weak, people would tend to go their own way.  And strength often demanded armies or fighting men willing to stand behind the king or local lord -- and willing to fight. 

 

Certainly what any local population got out of this might be said to be debatable.  If some war did break out, clashing forces might burn everything in their path, but the path might well be local and narrow.  Some populations might even have felt protected, knowing the king or local lord had a competent fighting force at his command. 

 

Which just goes to show:  yes, various mindsets do differ from era to era, but they change.  And in any given period, there is not just one "mindset", there are a lot of them. Still, this doesn't give me, the writer, a license to project modern views about war and fighting onto people living in Anglo-Saxon(or any other) times.  Fortunately, the woman I began my essay with, doesn't write anything but reports about her specialty, and it's not medieval history or paleoanthropology. And perhaps equally fortunately, I know something about these times, and know that people thought somewhat differently about things, than we do today. But then, I'm writing a Great Medieval Science Fiction Masterpiece, and she's not.  Fortunately.

Anne G

Woo-hoo! Some good library news for a change!

Some  good news has come out of the library rubble of woes lately.  Yesterday, when browsing one of my local branches, I found a copy of Elizabeth Chadwick's The Greatest Knight, her recent biographical fiction about William Marshal.  It's not that new, I guess, but it was recently reissued -- in the US -- in paperback, and our local system obtained a copy.  This, after I won the same paperback version, by writing a reply to a blog about it.  Haven't gotten around to reading it though.  So many books, so little time.  Anyway, it's not all gloom and doom there.

Anne G

A book review, this time. . . .

Szechtman, Joan

a novel about Richard III in This Time

Bassett Books LLc

Milford CT

343 PP.

ISBN 113: 978-0-9824493-0-1

 

At one time, I got very, very interested in fifteenth century England, the Wars of the Roses in general, and Richard III in particular.  I even considered writing something about that misunderstood monarch, but first, Sharon Kay Penman beat me to it, and second, even before she beat me to it, I couldn't figure out how to write about him.  However, knowing something about the period was, in a circuitous way, an influence on my own writing career, such as it has been.  I didn't end up writing about Richard III, but as I've said elsewhere, earlier, I always wanted to write a novel set in medieval England.  Just knowing others had done this, helped propel me toward that goal, though I am writing about an entirely different period, and my work is quite frankly what I call "romantic science fiction."  I can't think of anything else to call it.

 

Having said all this, I would like to introduce Joan Szechtman's This Time to the reading public.  It is, in my opinion, an extraordinary book.  She claims it isn't "really" science fiction, but I know my science fiction/s-f-/sci-fi well enough to know that this novel fits quite comfortably into that genre.  It isn't so common nowadays, to write about someone from a past era, who somehow stumbles into the present, and I've never heard of anybody before Ms. Szechtman who has tackled Richard III in this way.  But she has done  an excellent job, which is one reason I think this is a very promising first novel, which is often not the case. 

 

Her premise is that by means of a sort of time machine that acts very quickly, Richard is brought back from his last battle at Bosworth Field, still alive, and someone else's body is substituted for his.  Thus, 500 years of legend making begins.  He finds himself in, of all places, Portland, Oregon. 

 

The bulk of the story(and this confirms my opinion that the book is a kind of science fiction), concerns his adjustment to "modern times".  Without going into detail(I don't want to give too much away), I found the manner of his adjustments both very human and very touching, and at the same time, very funny, both from his point of view, and from the point of view of those who are trying to help him adjust.  This was one of the strongest parts of the book, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading about how he goes about adjusting. 

 

I also think Ms. Szechtman has extrapolated a lot from what is known of the real Richard, both in terms of his history, and his actual personality, and created a credible story from these extrapolations.  This shines through quite well, though some readers may feel he adjusts to his new environment awfully quickly, for someone who has been brought forward 500 years.  Just one example:  how would Richard III, or anyone else from the fifteenth century, deal with the continual bombardment of information available to people living now, through the media and the Internet?  I don't know.  But Ms. Szechtman has him handling this change  almost effortlessly, within a few weeks or months.  This is not meant as a criticism, though some readers might find this difficult to swallow.

 

That said, Joan Szechtman has written a fascinating book, and she plans two more on Richard's adventures and adjustments, to follow in 2010 and 2011.  I am looking forward to these.  I also think anyone interested in historical figures, science fiction and/or historical fiction, will find this a very good read, regardless of whatever they think about Richard III. 

 

Finally, to further encourage readers, I invite you to read an excerpt from This Time. When I read it, it had me hooked.  And I preordered the novel.  I'm glad I did.

Anne G

Medieval mindsets? Maybe, or maybe not

Browsing around, I saw a rather interesting over at medievalists.net.  The site itself has a lot of interesting material about medieval Europe(and for that matter, medieval elsewhere, too.  In any case, the news was that  one Caroline Dunn has won an award for research she did, showing  that abduction of some medieval wives wasn't necessarily abduction. 

 

Now why might this be important?  Well, like I've kind of complained in other posts and elsewhere, there seems to be an idea that there was "a" medieval mindset which, somehow everybody shared.  Okay, maybe a lot of people did share a "medieval mindset", but such a "mindset" varied from time to time and place to place.  It's true that medieval marriages were supposed to last Till Death Do Us Part.  It's also true that couples, especially the female half,and especially in higher-status circles, didn't have a whole lot of choice about who they ended up with.  It's also true that, in many cases(especially when royalty wasn't involved; they certainly didn't have a whole lot of choice, obviously), weren't usually monsters; like parents today, they tended to want the best that could be managed, for their children, and most of them probably did the best they could, for a variety of reasons, to make sure that any proposed marriage actually worked out, one way or another.  And, often, they did work out, one way and another.  The woman had her interests looked after, in the sense that she was probably at least assured of some financial security, if nothing else, the man had somebody who was trained to run his household, and provide it with the necessary offspring to pass whatever there might have been to pass on.  So, one "mindset" probably was, just to make the best of whatever situation you found yourself in.

 

But sometimes, apparently, good intentions weren't enough.  And here's where Caroline Dunn comes in.  She suggested that a number of supposed abductions of wives were either some sort of prearrangements in which a woman ended up with somebody she really wanted to end up with(though maybe accused of something or other), or perhaps, arrangements made by a woman(and a man, naturally), to run off or elope.  IN the time period she's working with, there weren't anything like divorce courts, lawyers,  people who try to mediate "what's best for the children" etc., and the options for a woman who found herself in an unpleasant marriage, or found herself facing one,  were decidedly limited.  For that matter, so were the options of men, but not so limited as those of women.  So what was a couple to do, if they really wanted to be together, but were bound to other ties?  Run off!  What else could they do.  Of course, to "save" the woman's reputation, even partially, in a case like this, it had to look like the woman had just been unexpectedly dragged off.  But the point is here, at least in medieval England, women didn't necessarily just passively accept whatever fate brought them.  Some of them strove to change it.  The only way, probably that was available to them.  But they took it, when they thought it necessary, at least according to Caroline Dunn. 

 

Which suggests to me that the idea of "a" mindset in a historical period, isn't everything.  It's just one thing.

Anne G

Olde Englyshe Music

I'm in "medieval mode" again, especially in view of the fact that I can't seem to find the story about how the State of Idaho is planning to shoot 220 wolves in the forests there.  Maybe that's why some wolves have trotted themselves into Washington State recently, but that's another story.

 

Nan Hawthorne, one of my favorite go-to sources for all things Old English(e.g. in Anglo-Saxon times), had a piece on a story and an audio program that described a book of eleventh-century English church music.  This book lay for centuries -- literally -- in Winchester Cathedral.  When it was finally rediscovered, it was sent to Cambridge University, where some learned scholars studied it.  Which was rather difficult, because( (a) the notations were in what they described as "squiggles", and (b), at that period of time, there were no such things as staves, and musical notation as we understand it today.  Most music was simply passed down orally.  The thing that is so important about this small book was, it was apparently one of the first to actually copy down melodies for people to learn. 

 

The music, as reconstructed, sounds a lot like Gregorian chants, which is not surprising.  It was church music.  But it is hauntingly beautiful, and apparently inspired by a monk called Wulfstan, who instructed others in the art of singing church music.    There are also apparently notations about when certain pieces were supposed to be sung.  And most important of all, it's a bit of a window into a time that seems unimaginably hazy to most people living nowadays.  According to the presenters of the audio program, it's one of the earliest examples of polyphony, ever. 

 

I should note here that, contrary to "popular" belief, England at this time was a very prosperous, well-ordered place, and one of the richest countries in the Europe of the time, perhaps the richest, outside of Byzantium or at the very least, the "German empire", as it was then called.  They even had the germ of what today would be called a bureaucracy.  So it is not surprising that the rich supported churchmen, the way certain philanthropic foundations today support the fine arts. 

 

In any case, this is a wonderful, not to mention rare, find, and IMO worth a writer of a Great Medieval Science Fiction Masterpiece set in more or less the period, to blog about.  Now if they can just find a manuscript of "popular" songs some monk had the foresight to write down. . . . I had to make up a lot of stuff here!

Anne G

I guess the blogosphere is noticing me, for whatever that's worth

I guess I'm getting famous.  Or something.  I guest blog from time to time on one of Nan Hawthorne's blogs, Early Medieval Britain .  Nan Hawthorne is a writer, and before I go any further, I would like to put in a shameless plug for her book  An Involuntary King, which I reviewed several months ago.  I thoroughly enjoyed it, and want to simply say that I'd like to share my enjoyment with others "out there".  If you go to her blog, and are interested in reading it yourselves, Gentle Readers, there will be information on how to order it.    I've been meaning to do this for a long time.

 

In any case, Nan Hawthorne writes on a variety of medieval-themed subjects, and she is particularly interested, as the title of this particular blog suggests, in early medieval England.  Basically, that is the time of the Anglo-Saxons, and since my Great Medieval Science Fiction Masterpiece is set in roughly the same period, I consult her blog rather regularly. 

 

Not too long ago, I found an interesting little piece on one of the science news feeds I also regularly consult(mostly for human-evolution related things, but you never know what you'll find on a science-related news feed).  It wasn't very long, but it described how some scientists in California had discovered some 45 million year old yeast, which apparently was still good, and some Northern California brewery brewed some ale with it.  I uploaded a short piece several weeks back about this  experiment on her blog, suspecting that it might  be of interest to the readers of her blog.  I didn't expect any response, though the methods used might have been fairly close to those used in Anglo-Saxon times.  But lo and behold, Nan posted a very nice piece  on how ale was actually brewed then. By the way, and just a quick note, the difference between beer and ale is, ale isn't brewed with hops, and beer is.  In medieval times, before the widespread adoption of hops as flavoring, brewers, many of whom were women -- a perfectly respectable trade for the female half of the population at that time -- generally flavored their brew with a variety of flavorings.  Bog myrtle as been mentioned.  Also honey, or just about any flower or plant that wasn't poisonous.  The quality tended to vary, of course, but the flavors so produced must have been quite interesting. 

 

In any case, on top of having one of my "lupine" posts being mentioned by a Real Anthropologist, I'm thrilled!  I'm getting famous, more or less.  And I'm very happy about it!

Anne G

The medieval year, one version, or maybe many

The blog Got Medieval -- which often has very interesting tidbits about one medieval subject or another, posted a very interesting blog yesterday.  It's called Welcome to July.  The blog informs us that in July, peasants usually had to bind the ripened grain they grew into sheaves.  In July.  Now I don't doubt that medieval peasants did a lot of "scything and sheaving" in July.  The grain had to be laid out to dry so it could be stacked and then made into sheaves.  Usually, the weather was warm enough and dry enough so that this could be done relatively easily, barring the odd rainy day or so.  If that happened, the grain might rot and people might end up hallucinating all sorts of things, due to ergot poisoning(yes, this happened). The other thing that is important to understand about medieval agricultural economy is that June and July were months of relative "scarcity", though in the earlier medieval period, especially from about 900-1300 AD/CE -- In the so-called "Medieval Warm Period", this wasn't too severe a problem anywhere.  Medieval people had other problems at the time, but I won't go into those at the moment.  IN any case, or at least in some cases, the way the months were named in various places, tended to reflect either the kind of activity that was going on at the time, or the weather and climatic conditions.  In some places, the months were not named January, February, March, etc., but something else.

 

Here is a list of "modernized" Old English months.  From the descriptions, the reader can see what people in England, at least, did at any given time of the year

 

January  -- Wolf Month(guess why?)  I've seen paintings of Romanian villages surrounded by wolves in winter,  so it's not just the medieval English that worried about such things

February -- Kale Month  Kale is a very hardy dark green vegetable.  A lot of "foodies" eat kale today, in January and February, when few other green vegetables will grow, even in a relatively "mild" climate like the Pacific Northwest.  It's supposed to be rich in all kinds of things that are "good for you".

March --  Lent Month, and that's where English-speakers get the liturgical season of Lent, since the days are beginning to lengthen.

April  -- Easter Month(and I'll leave to your imagination what liturgical season that has morphed into in the English-speaking world).  There's more to it than that, but again, I won't go into it at this moment.

May  -- Mead Month, probably because flowers really started blooming and bees started producing honey, an important ingredient in the alcoholic drink, mead,which was probably an important source of income for at least some people

June -- Hay Month.  This is when the "scything" or "haying" of grain began, and the weather was probably (mostly) good enough to lay it out for later stacking into sheaves.

July -- Summer Month.  Well, that's pretty obvious.  July is a summer month.  And that's when the "sheaving of grain is in full swing, according to Got Medieval.

August --  "Ern" Month.  I'm not sure what this means, but it was a busy month for medieval peasants, because the grain harvest was probably going on in full swing.

September -- Harvest Month.  Again, this is pretty obvious. This is when agricultural produce was harvested in earnest, and the agricultural season could be assessed as to its relative success.  Other produce was probably also harvested, and preparations made for the coming winter and leaner spring season.  This was also the season of "harvest festivals".  In modern times,it tends to also be the season of things like county and regional fairs.

October  -- Wine Month.  If the modern reader thinks this Old English name for the month is peculiar, think again of the Medieval Warm Period.  In England, wine grapes were grown as far north as the property of Ely Abbey.  Once it cooled off(the Little Ice Age), neither Ely Abbey, nor any other place in England, could grow wine grapes.  Now, I'm told, people are growing wine grapes in parts of England today.  Thank you, global warming(I guess)!

November -- Wind Month.  That's pretty obvious, too.  At least from a "Pacific Northwest" point of view.  It can get pretty blastingly windy in November and December, and we've had some rather awful storms in that month, coming out of the Bering Sea.  Of course blastingly windy winter weather didn't come from the Bering Straits to England, then or now, but  winter winds did, and awful wind and rain storms were noted in certain years, by monastic chroniclers.

December -- Midwinter Month.  Again, pretty obvious.  December is the month winter begins, according to various calendars. Again, interestingly,in modern times,  meteorologists calculate a "meteorological winter" from December 1st. Which makes sense for much of the US, and probably much of Europe, as well.  Although I did read, some years back, in a book called -- get this -- Weather for Dummies -- that the Pacific Northwest has neither winter,nor summer, according to meteorological calculations.  There's no "winter", in most of Texas, either.  But summer starts on or about April 15.  I know this is true, because I lived it.   That, at least, was one problem people in medieval England didn't have to cope with!

Anne G

Dysfunction and mayhem -- medieval style(Book reviews)

Franklin, Ariana,

Grave Goods

G.P.Putnam's Sons, New York, 2009, 337 pp.

ISBN 978-0-399-15544-4

 

Penman, Sharon Kay

Devil's Brood

G.P.Putnam's Sons, New York, 2008, 736 pp.

ISBN 978--0-399-15526-0

 

Dysfunctional families often make interesting, and sometimes horridly fascinating, subjects for writers.  If they are spectacularly dysfunctional, and the writer knows what he or she is doing, these families can make for spectacularly interesting stories.  And few families were(or are) more spectacularly dysfunctional than the family of Henry II of England, who reigned from1154 until 1189. He married Eleanor of Aquitaine, something of a personality herself, and another subject that has caused novels of varying quality to be written.  And they had a lot of children, including four sons:  Henry, Geoffrey, Richard, and John.  All of them had "issues" with him, in part because, at least according to Sharon Kay Penman, he wouldn't give them the kind of responsibility they needed and deserved.  The youngest of the entire brood, John(who was later King John and was considered very bad, but probably wasn't quite as bad as some chroniclers painted him), got almost nothing, at least not until adulthood.  Richard was "the Lionhearted", and spent more of his time crusading than ruling England.  But Penman's story doesn't begin with Richard's crusading adventures,and neither does Franklin's.

 

If you like to read books -- any books -- about medieval times, both of these are very good, and very well written.  But they are quite different.  Grave Goods is a mystery, set around Glastonbury Abbey,where the supposed remains of King Arthur were discovered by monks there, in this period.  And the book is written around this discovery.  I should note to anyone interested, that it was at this time, when King Arthur's supposed remains were discovered by the monks of Glastonbury Abbey, that the "Arthurian cycle" really took off,and was apparently popular and well-known among all classes of people.  Needless to say, the "Arthurian cycle" has wielded tremendous influence among many in the English speaking world, from that day to this.  Ms. Franklin has taken these known facts, and woven a very satisfying mystery around it,involving an abbot and his mysterious and troubled past, a crazy woman innkeeper, a  possibly drunken monk, and a rather nasty woman who is trying to hang onto a manor she owns, rather than allow it to descend to the widow of her son, and their child. It is also part of an ongoing -- and in my opinion, very interesting series about an outsider -- Adelia, who isn't English, and has, furthermore, had a very odd, at least by medieval standards, upbringing.  She also has a very "nonstandard" relationship with a bishop, and they are frequently separated. The backstory is, that Henry II supposedly has her "on loan" from the king of Sicily,and she is always being sent out to try to find the truth of some event.  She is supposed to be good at this, because she is basically a forensic detective, in medieval terms, a "mistress of the art of death"(needless to say, an extremely odd occupation for a medieval English woman). Her interactions with Henry II don't dominate the book; they form a sort of background that drives the action.

 

Finally, Ms. Franklin -- refreshingly, I think -- has her characters speak in what I call "modern standard" English.  In the afterward, where she explains some of the historical background to her ongoing series, she has this to say:

 

I am occasionally criticized for letting my characters speak in modern language, but in twelfth-century England, the common spoke a form of English even less comprehensible than Chaucer's in the fourteenth; the nobility spoke Norman French, and the clergy spoke Latin.  Since people then sounded contemporary to one another, and since I hate the use of what I call "gadzooks" in historical novels to denote a past age,I insist on making those people sound modern to the reader.

 

Which brings me to Sharon Kay Penman's Devil's Brood.  But more on the "language issue", later. To begin with, there are large differences between the two books, though there appears to be plenty of "crossover".  People who like historical novels often like historical mysteries as well, particularly if they are set in roughly the same time period.  Second, Devil's Brood  at 736 pages, is somewhat over twice as long.  But then, Ms. Penman has a lot of ground to cover.  Basically, she is telling the story -- a continuation of the story of Henry II and his family started in earlier volumes -- of the "dysfunctional" aspect of his, and Eleanor's fractious brood. The oldest son, also Henry, sometimes called The Young King, since he was crowned king in his father's lifetime, is written as something of a lightweight. The elder Henry apparently gave him a title, but little in the way of real responsibility.  The second son, Geoffrey, marries the daughter of the Count of Brittany, and more or less inherits that title.  He does have responsibilities -- at least in Brittany, but is unsatisfied with those, so he leans toward the king of France and away from his father.  Then he rebels. As does younger brother Richard, eventually, partly because he thinks he should be ruler of Aquitaine(Mama Eleanor is all for that idea), and partly because his father ignores him, too.  The only one Papa Henry doesn't ignore is John, who starts out as a ten year old.  Unfortunately, when Henry does give John some responsibility -- to lead a campaign against the Irish, he makes a hash of it.  Meanwhile, Eleanor takes the side of the older sons, and is essentially put under house arrest for nineteen years, at various of Henry's castles, because she understands her sons' needs better than Henry does.  She is portrayed very sympathetically, which is another difference between Ms. Penman's and Ms. Franklin's books:  in all of the 'Adelia" series, she is a somewhat less sympathetic figure, but the author does suggest reasons for this. 

On the other hand, it's quite obvious Ms. Penman has "done her homework.  She is writing what is essentially fictional biography, and like many who write in this subgenre, she is careful of her facts to an almost "anal retentive" degree.  In many ways, this is good, because the reader can rely on a reasonable amount of veracity in what she writes.  I certainly got a very clear picture of what was going on,and yes, I ended up feeling kind of sorry for everybody involved.  The family was spectacularly dysfunctional, in a "larger than life" way.  And she writes very well; Penman's books are always easy, and to me, relatively enjoyable to read.

 

I say "relatively" enjoyable, because I do have some issues with the way Penman goes about constructing her books.  Before I go any further, let me state for the record, that I know she has legions of loyal fans, who like her style and like the fact that she is so careful in her research. I, too appreciate the fact that Penman has researched carefully and written her research into her books in an engaging way.  However, like many writers of biographical fiction, she seems excessively cautious about ''deviating", even for minor characters, from anything she sees as"historical".  Thus, she says in her Afterward, that she tries to use actual characters that she comes across, even if they are minor, or "walk-ons".  To me, it doesn't make much difference if you stick in an invented character in a novel like this, if it's a minor one, but then, she has(at least in her previous books) a relatively major "made up" character named Ranulf.  I have a feeling she didn't really know what to do with him after the first book in which she appeared, which was When Christ and His Saints Slept, a novel about the so-called Anarchy which immediately preceded the reign of Henry II.  A second problem is that, while Eleanor is portrayed with relative sympathy, there are other times when it appears Ms. Penman has distanced herself from everyone else. On some level, she seems to dislike both the oldest son, Henry, and Richard,the future "Lionhearted".  She does show some empathy, if that's the right word, with Geoffrey, the middle son.  Unfortunately, in history, the two older sons died, Henry of an apparent wound, and, it's claimed, Geoffrey died as a result of an injury incurred in a tournament(and tournaments were technically illegal at the time, because of the high rate of injury), so she has a "sort of" alternative explanation for what he was doing at the time.  This rather annoyed me at times, but I didn't stop reading; Penman is a strong enough writer to hold a reader's interest.

 

The other issue goes back to what Ariana Franklin calls "gadzooks" language.  Some people refer to this as "writing forsoothly".  I call it "fake poetic".  It's a kind of artificial "archaic" that is supposed to suggest an "olde-tymey" type of speech.  Ms. Penman spreads this on quite thick, and seems to be quite in love with usages like "upon"(rather than just plain "on"), "ere", "nay", "mayhap", and some others.  Unfortunately, this is exactly the kind of language that a lot of writers of historical romance use when they think they are conveying "olde-tymey" speech patters.  There are several problems with this kind of writing, especially in the context of truly medieval England.  First of all, the style is actually closer to that of the time of Shakespeare, than it is to the kind of English spoken at the time.  Second, it's also a type of usage that was picked up by some historical fiction writers in Victorian times, when this kind of language was thought to be a realistic reflection of whatever period the Victorian novelist was writing about.  And this "tradition" has never, unfortunately in my opinion, entirely died out. On the other hand,I've spoken with readers of historical fiction who really like this kind of fake "archaism", thinking, I suppose, that it lends an air of authenticity to the book.  I suppose this is the attitude of most of Penman's loyal fans.  All I can say is, there's no accounting for tastes.

 

A somewhat more minor issue is Penman's use of "Britishisms".  Which I think is odd, considering she's actually an American writer, living in New Jersey.  By "Britishism", I mean spellings of certain words, like "whilst" or "amongst", rather than "while" or "among", as is more usual with people on this side of the Pond.  For the record, I have no objection to these "Britishisms" as long as the writers actually are living in the United Kingdom.  On that side of the Pond, such usages(plus some other differences in spelling over which British and Americans will probably never agree). When American writers do this, I always wonder, why?  Interestingly, an increasing number of British historical writers, of whom Ariana Franklin is one, seem to be writing in a style that a few years ago would have been considered more "American", while still using "whilst", "amongst", and so on. 

 

But these quibbles will probably not be noticed by most of Penman's readership, and perhaps, even for me, they are more matters of taste than anything else. Both books are very fine reads, and for anyone who, like me, enjoys reading(and for me,writing), about some of the "larger than life" personalities of the Middle Ages, are two books well worth looking for, even if, as I had to do with the Penman book, you have to get it out of your local library.

Anne G

Flabbergasted

There's been a recent discussion going on at the Historical Novel Society e-mail list,which I frequent.  For anyone interested,it's at the Historical Novel Society e-mail list  The discussion started out with an observation that the famous archbishop Thomas Becket was found to be wearing a hair shirt and crawling with lice when he was murdered.  There was a general reaction of "eeeewwww", at least until someone knowledgeable about the period explained that some ecclesiastics of that period found it perfectly acceptable to engage in "self-mortification" ,the better, it was thought, to sanctify themselves.  Not everyone did this.  Quite the opposite, in fact.  Most people, contrary to one of the most persistent myths about the Middle Ages, at least attempted to keep themselves somewhat clean, even if this consisted mostly of washing their hands and faces with some regularity.  Alexander of Neckham noted, at about the same period, that there were a lot of bath houses in London, which should tell the astute investigator something about how people felt about these things. 

 

However, the following day, I came across another discussion, on the site of a romance reader's, and author's site that I have frequented from time to time. It was part of a  blog post called Where Have All the Medievals Gone?  The! blog itself was unexceptional; apparently a lot of publishers just didn't think "medieval romances" sold very well-- at least in the US. What flabbergasted me was the responses to the post. A lot of the responders -- romance readers every one -- apparently couldn't get past the idea that people in the Middle Ages "never or rarely bathed"!  They all admitted that they had "cleanliness" issues, but romances, after all, are basically a kind of fantasy, and the readers regularly suspend disbelief as they read them.  So why can't they suspend disbelief here? 

 

Well, for one thing, this "cleanliness fetish" seems to be a peculiarly American attitude, e.g., "cleanliness is next to Godliness", and probably goes back to (some of our) Puritan ancestors.  Now there's nothing wrong with keeping oneself reasonably well-groomed and cleaned up.  This is one reason why, I suspect, that Alexander Neckham, who was more or less contemporary with Thomas Becket, wrote that there were a lot of bath houses in the London of his day.  It's also obvious that the readers who have "eeewwww" reactions to "medieval romances", simply don't know this. And, to be absolutely fair,I should note two things:  first, many of the responders also said that they liked medieval-themed romances, and many of them listed books, like Anya Seton's classic Katherine which, while not strictly romances, are certainly medieval-themed. Second,to be fair, I don't bother with "medieval themed" romances any more, either.  Why?  Because the authors of these romances(as well as many authors of historical romances set in other periods),simply do not pay any attention to the actual way people of whatever time period they're writing about, actually acted and thought.  One dead giveaway, in my opinion, is the use of "out of period" names, usually the kind that would be found in some contemporary "baby name" book or the like, especially for the female characters.  Thus, too many of these fictional "medieval" heroines have names like "Tamora" or "Candace",which don't fit the period.  And while the men have "masculine sounding" names, they're not medieval by any stretch of the imagination.  Just this past Monday, I picked up a paperback whose title and author I can't remember,whose hero character had the given name "Wulfson".  This was supposed to be taking place in Anglo-Saxon times, and you'd better believe that no English male of that time and place would have had the given name Wulfson! He might be referred  to as something like Edmund Wulfson, if his father happened to be named Wulf(except that's not how men in those times were named), but a given name??  Ugh.  As far as I'm concerned, if the names are "out of period" just about everything else will be wrong, too. And I won't waste my money on anything like that.  But that's another story.

 

To get back to the subject, it seems to me that this peculiarly American attitude is partly predicated on the idea that things that aren't somehow "American-related" just aren't very important, interesting, or worthy of notice. It's not just that the readers who won't read "medieval-themed" romances are projecting their own quite modern -- and culture-specific attitudes onto a period they probably know about only through the medium of Hollywood -- but it extends much farther:  few of these "medieval" romances get published, because they are too far out of the "range" of many readers'  ability to conceive.  Romance readers, on the whole, tend to like the familiar and the predictable,and while people from the Middle Ages are recognizable in their quirks, their "context" often is not.  And romance readers(as a whole), don't like "alien".  There does seem to be an exception made for "paranormal" romances in which vampires, werewolves, witches,etc. appear in modern contexts, but the reader knows this is fantasy, yet the setting and the "mores" are probably reasonably familiar(you don't have to try to understand "alien" mindsets, among other things).  A lot of this distaste for medieval-themed romance also seems to stem from what I call a "Hollywoodized" version of medieval times that a lot of people seem to have in their heads. While I, personally, enjoy the "larger than life" quality inherent in certain historical personages of the time,  I don't have any illusions that they would have exactly thought, or had the same attitudes toward, a whole range of things.  Including the "cleanliness" idea. It seems, again via the knowledgeable author, that many people in that era made an effort to bathe and wash, because doing so was a sign of "good breeding".  And given the difficulty of getting together enough hot water to bathe with, it is easy to see why this kind of thinking existed, though there is evidence that even peasants tried to keep themselves as clean as they could, given their circumstances. But as some other posters in the Historical Novel Society list pointed out, part of these "insular" attitudes may be a function of faulty educational systems as well. Combined with the apparently "conventional" socialization,and "conventional" attitudes that many of these romance readers seem to have -- but again, I must emphasize, not all of them -- there seems to be little interest in exploring a world that is somewhat, but not completely "alien". 

 

Of course, I'm "prejudiced" here.  I was not brought up "conventionally", and for a female of my time, I had somewhat "unusual" tastes.  Practically from the "get-go" I liked science fiction, though I liked historical stuff, too.  Thanks to Anya Seton's Katherine, which I devoured as a teenager, I wanted, then and there, to write something set in medieval England.  And, also apparently unlike most romance readers, I haven't led a "conventional" life.  But that's another story.  The point is, I think, that to read anything "different", or perhaps anything at all,one must be "open"  to new vistas. And if some romance reader can't get past the fact that they didn't have hot and cold running water, and scented soaps, and toothpaste and dental floss, in the year 1150, then, in my opinion, they are not doing themselves any favor, in the romance, or any other genre.

Anne G

On writing"forsoothly"

I am in the rather interesting position of just having finished, and being in the middle of, two books that take place in the same medieval time period -- the reign of Henry II of England, to be exact. It was an interesting period, to say the least, and the two writers, Ariana Franklin and Sharon Kay Penman, couldn't be more different. Ariana Franklin -- the pen name of the writer Diana Norman -- writes mysteries set in this period.  And I think they are quite good, though some readers are upset by what they think is her "historical inaccuracy"  Sharon Kay Penman writes "straight" historical fiction, and is generally very good at what she does. I will be reviewing both books shortly,so I don't want to get into the books themselves, at this point. 

 

Their writing styles couldn't be more different, either. Though her mysteries are all set in medieval England, her characters all speak in plain standard contemporary English.  No, I don't mean slang.  I mean standard contemporary written English.  Sharon Kay Penman, on the other hand, seems to like writing in a style that is "modern English in sentences construction, but there are places where I end up grinding my teeth at her prose and the way she makes her characters speak. This is a style that Ariana Franklin, in her notes at the end of her latest mystery, calls "gadzooks" writing.  I've heard others call it other things, including "writing forsoothly"  I myself call it "fake poetic".

 

This style, beloved, among others by most romance writers(at least those who write "historical" romances) and some historical novelists, has people talking in "mayhap", "'tis", "'twas", "nay", "aye" and Ms.Penman's favorite, "for certes", among others. This style also tends to include convoluted sentence structures like "On the morrow, Uncle, I shall go hunting," when she could just as easily have written "Tomorrow I will go hunting."  She also has a tendency to use "Britishisms" like "whilst", which is fine if you happen to be British, which Ms. Penman isn't.  And her "fake poetic" or "forsoothly" writing isn't consistent;  she tends to drop into more modern constructions.

 

I have to say I really like Penman, and so do a lot of other people.  I also know that I will probably enraged many of her devoted fans by saying this, but my criticism of this style of writing isn't directed just at Sharon Kay Penman, but at all authors who write this way, presumably to evoke an "atmosphere".  The trouble is,these sorts of language constructions owe more to Shakespeare than the medieval period; they go back basically to about the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries; by the middle of the seventeenth century, they were starting to die out in English. I suspect a lot of writers who write historical fiction, set in any time previous to about the middle of the nineteenth century, just don't realize this.

 

I also realize that many readers of historical fiction find a strictly "mod.  ern" style just too jarring.  They actually like this kind of "forsoothly" writing, I suppose because they think it supplies the relevant "atmosphere", particularly if it is set in some period relatively remote from our own.  But you have to remember, as Ariana Franklin pointed out at the end of her latest book, English speaking people of Henry II's time spoke an English that was much closer to the language of Beowulf than to anything spoken today. So even if we had time machines at our disposal, we would just barely be able to understand what they were saying.  So the first thing a reader of any of these books has to do is suspend disbelief.  After all, that is partly what happens in almost any "genre" novel. And historical fiction is a genre.

 

There are better ways, in my opinion,of creating the requisite atmosphere, trying, and generally not succeeding, in writing "forsoothly". One could mention the name of types of cloth, for example. Or items of clothing which are no longer worn. Or modes of transportation. One could go on and on. This does not mean you have to bog the reader down with endless descriptions of someone's dwelling, or the construction of a castle,or the preparation of a feast,etc. This can be done quite easily by having a sentence like "Hardwin put on his woolen cloak, lined with marten fur and pinned it together with his silver cloak pin" or the like(Hardwin is the hero of my Great Medieval Science Fiction Masterpiece). This gives detail:  he wears a fur-lined cloak and pins it together.  It tells the reader they didn't have buttons in "them days".  A book set in a given period can be sprinkled throughout with details like this, giving the reader a picture of a different time and place, while allowing the characters to speak in "modern standard". The advantage of this is that it's easier to write consistently with "modern standard" than it is to go  back and forth with "forsoothly" or "fake poetic" writing.  But obviously, some writers don't see this.

 

Of course, this is just my personal opinion, but also personally, I don't think "style" should get in the way of "story".  And if you have characters "speaking forsoothly"  or the writer tries to write "forsoothly", I think that is exactly what such writing does.  So while I find Penman's tales to be very good reading, I wish she,and other writers who write like this, into serious consideration.

Anne G

Hard-line writing "purity"

The most recent manifestation of the debate between "accuracy purists" and those who cry "story first" has wound down a bit, with people on both sides of this issue in various forums, tending to take rather "hardline" positions on both sides. I might not have much more to add to this debate, except that one writer said she spotted anachronisms at the age of 10, in the writing of an author that was well-known when I was about 10!  While I knew of some of these anachronistic things at that age(I don't recall reading anything by that particular author at the age of 10, though), it would never have occurred to me to write the guy and complain about it. Times were different then, I suppose.  But this issue raises some interesting questions in my mind.

 

The most important thing is, it may all boil down to the author's own experiences informing his or her work in certain ways. For example, I've been reading all of Bernard Cornwell's "Uhtred" series, to date, and quite enjoy them.  And he is known for " fact-checking" the periods he writes about. The "Uhtred" series takes place at the time of King Alfred, and concerns, in part, the Danish invasions of England, and their consequences. He gets the "politics" and the social milieu of the time right, I think, at least within reason.  In this sense, no one can fault him for his accuracy.  He doesn't get anything obvious, wrong.  Yet I've learned some things about Cornwell that suggest he has views of certain things are colored by his own experiences.  For example,his portrait of King Alfred can only be described as "unpleasant". He describes that monarch as being pinched and  "killjoy pious". He also describes King Alfred as rather "sickly", hardly the brave leader that repelled the Danes!  And he is very hostile to "organized religion":  his hero, Uhtred, is unrepentantly "pagan", and he describes all Christians as tending to be unpleasant of temperament in various ways, and themselves extremely hostile to "pagans". 

 

But before we get into Cornwell's possible perceptions., let's look at King Alfred for a moment.  Historically, Alfred did manage to hold the England of that time together under one rule, no easy feat at a time when there were strong regional forces that could have divided it, and frequently threatened to do so. He also did hold the "Danes"(mostly Danish, but "other" Scandinavians as well) off of the England of his time, by winning battles. We also know that he was originally destined for the Church,and he retained this faith when he became king. On the other hand, he also encouraged literacy at a time when very few people, including those in the highest classes of society, could read or write.  And all of this strikes me as being quite sensible, not "killjoy pious".  We also know that he suffered from some unnamed malady that put him "out of commission" at times, but when he was well, he apparently was a smart politician and strategist. Not at all like the almost "wimpy" Cornwell portrait. So, in a broad sense, Cornwell's portrait is accurate.  It doesn't do any violence to the facts.  It doesn't get dates out of order. It doesn't put historical  personages in the wrong place, or give  them attitudes they wouldn't have had at the time.  And again, I must emphasize that I've enjoyed reading his books(including this series so far).  And yet. . . .

 

Bernard's birth family name was not Cornwell, but Oughtred, which could derive as descent from the historical Uhtred around whom he weaves this story.  He obviously likes to think so, though in my opinion, at the distance from that time to this, it's probably a bit of a stretch. But he was adopted at a very young age by a family which belonged to a very unpleasant-sounding Christian sect called The Peculiar People,which he apparently came to loathe as he grew older. Given their "peculiar" theology, it's not hard to understand why he might think "Christianity sucks" as they say, though there is more than one possible response to that kind of situation,one of which might be, for example, to find a more tolerant religious "home".  Many people have done this.  And, for the record, my perspective on this comes from having been exposed to far more flexible brands of Christianity than these "Peculiar People"  This is why Uhtred  is "happy pagan" constantly in conflict with "nasty Christianity".  Is this an accurate portrayal?  Well, maybe. Or maybe not.  We also know that the Christian missionaries who went all over Europe trying to convert "the people" sometimes met with a lot of hostility, but this was frequently for "political" reasons:  rulers didn't want to give up their own paganism, or feared losing their power.  In general, Christian missionaries in the early Middle Ages(later times were quite different), tended to think that they could "educate" people into accepting the Church and Christianity, and pagans weren't particularly hostile to Christians, unless there were other factors involved. 

 

That clearly isn't Cornwell's view.  And I've run across any number of people who would agree, more or less, with Cornwell, citing "incidents" of one kind or another.  These "incidents" are true, but this kind of behavior isn't confined to Christianity, or indeed any other religious tradition.  It isn't even confined to "religion".  You see it,even today, in "ideologies".  One doesn't have to go back very far -- only 50 or 60 years, to see what nonreligious "ideologies", rigidly followed, have done to people in various places. It's not pretty.  In other words, people in power may use "religion" or "ideology" to push their own agendas,and have done so throughout history.

 

None of this really resolves the "accuracy" v. "story" issue.  It won't, because in historical fiction, both are important, and as I said in a previous post,both are important when you're writing this kind of fiction. Depending on what you're writing, one may get slightly more emphasized over the other, but both must  be there if the story is to be credible and readable.  I can't, therefore, say that Bernard Cornwell's perceptions of King Alfred are any more or less "accurate" than any other writer's, but in his "perception context" they are credible, and it's a tribute to his skill as a writer that people like me, who have other perspectives, can find them credible in a way, even if they reject some of them. And, in closing,it's also wise to remember that not every reader(very few, in the case of Anglo-Saxon England) is going to be very concerned with the history anyway.  They will just want a "good read".  Which, I think, is all any writer can do.

Anne G