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The Middle Ages in Fiction
Nov. 9th, 2006 09:04 amI'm tired after yesterday. I was on the go from 8 am until 1 am, which was not very sensible of me but was entirely unavoidable.
I'm thinking again about the Middle Ages in fiction. I've heard several people say recently (including last night in relation to my own work) "This can't be right" about something Medieval in a novel. In all cases the thing they were referring to was entirely possible, plausible or correct.
What I'm beginning to realise is that - for many people - their view of the past has been internalised from their fiction and non-fiction reading, their film-watching, their wargames, their lives in general. I knew this. I spent my doctorate looking at precisely this thing for the Middle Ages. This means my intellect knew that people get a very sophisticated view of history and the past from popular literature and from entertainment and that this view of history and the past is mostly an entirely different construction to the views of history and the past that historians have (mostly).
What I hadn't sorted out was how this affects modern writers or my part on this merry-go-round. Until this year I separated my historian-self so clearly from my fictionwriter-self that I could sit back comfortably and simply argue that we need greater levels of historical accuracy in works of historical fiction and fantasy. Which we do. I still think that, very strongly. In fact, I think it even more strongly than before. I just don't sit back at all comfortably when I think it.
The fact is that I'm under pressure by some readers to replace my understanding of history with their understanding and that they don't even begin to understand how hard that would be. "You don't have to write bad history," one person explained. "Just change it so that I can read it without wondering if it's right." The same reader can accept dragons or strange science in other novels, but the past has to fit his feel for it, not my construction. The expectations have to match an internal barometer for history sand it's quite a different barometer to the set of measures that make generic world-building SF feel well done.
This is the other end of my PhD, in a way. I'm not looking at the patterns of how history is shown in popular works. I'm experiencing the patterns of how readers help form those patterns.
For those of you who need to know, I'm not going to change my history. It's good worldbuilding and it works within the novel and that's that. It's not a pure Middle Ages, but the things that the readers acted surprised at are standards in pre-twentieth century society ("Staff? How can she have staff in her shop and servants in her house?") and it would be silly to change them unless they interfered with the plot. In fact, they make the plot possible.
What's important is that I will have to think further (and I do welcome advice and thoughts) on this gap between the way specialists see a period they think they know pretty well and how the general public sees a period it thinks it knows pretty well.
I'd also love to know more about how being caught in between those two sets of needs affects other writers. If any of you have had readers who look askance at something you've written and give reasons that don't really hold up, I'm interested. If you're a reader who has been pulled out of a story by something which you later discovered to be entirely justified, I would love to hear your experiences and thoughts.
In fact, I'm interested in anything you have to say on this subject. It seems to me that I need to think a lot about this and your views would help.
I'm thinking again about the Middle Ages in fiction. I've heard several people say recently (including last night in relation to my own work) "This can't be right" about something Medieval in a novel. In all cases the thing they were referring to was entirely possible, plausible or correct.
What I'm beginning to realise is that - for many people - their view of the past has been internalised from their fiction and non-fiction reading, their film-watching, their wargames, their lives in general. I knew this. I spent my doctorate looking at precisely this thing for the Middle Ages. This means my intellect knew that people get a very sophisticated view of history and the past from popular literature and from entertainment and that this view of history and the past is mostly an entirely different construction to the views of history and the past that historians have (mostly).
What I hadn't sorted out was how this affects modern writers or my part on this merry-go-round. Until this year I separated my historian-self so clearly from my fictionwriter-self that I could sit back comfortably and simply argue that we need greater levels of historical accuracy in works of historical fiction and fantasy. Which we do. I still think that, very strongly. In fact, I think it even more strongly than before. I just don't sit back at all comfortably when I think it.
The fact is that I'm under pressure by some readers to replace my understanding of history with their understanding and that they don't even begin to understand how hard that would be. "You don't have to write bad history," one person explained. "Just change it so that I can read it without wondering if it's right." The same reader can accept dragons or strange science in other novels, but the past has to fit his feel for it, not my construction. The expectations have to match an internal barometer for history sand it's quite a different barometer to the set of measures that make generic world-building SF feel well done.
This is the other end of my PhD, in a way. I'm not looking at the patterns of how history is shown in popular works. I'm experiencing the patterns of how readers help form those patterns.
For those of you who need to know, I'm not going to change my history. It's good worldbuilding and it works within the novel and that's that. It's not a pure Middle Ages, but the things that the readers acted surprised at are standards in pre-twentieth century society ("Staff? How can she have staff in her shop and servants in her house?") and it would be silly to change them unless they interfered with the plot. In fact, they make the plot possible.
What's important is that I will have to think further (and I do welcome advice and thoughts) on this gap between the way specialists see a period they think they know pretty well and how the general public sees a period it thinks it knows pretty well.
I'd also love to know more about how being caught in between those two sets of needs affects other writers. If any of you have had readers who look askance at something you've written and give reasons that don't really hold up, I'm interested. If you're a reader who has been pulled out of a story by something which you later discovered to be entirely justified, I would love to hear your experiences and thoughts.
In fact, I'm interested in anything you have to say on this subject. It seems to me that I need to think a lot about this and your views would help.