2006, first post

2006 was the year I did a series on openings to Medieval texts (thinking about how they were handy to modern writers), went to Varuna for the first time, edited my first anthology, ran out of money and much more. I'm giving you two posts for 2006, because I couldn't decide between a sample one about openings and one I did on a bad mood day.

17th January, 2006. 10:28 pm. Roll up, roll up

You want to get an audience for an entertainment, you promise them the earth.

You tell them you have a tale to tell. You remind them of other tales like the one they are about to hear. You give them a chance to settle down and pay attention before you tell the story, so they won't miss anything. And that is the formula for many chansons de geste. Jehan de Lanson, for instance, says (in disrespectful Gillian-translation), "Shut up sirs if you want to hear a good story with an awesome subject and some really nice poetry." Not to mention battle and betrayal and other juicy goodies.

Like a car chase at the beginning of an action movie. The scene is set.

For chansons de geste with a bit of love in them, the formula is modified. At its most extreme it becomes something more like the opening to a romance (logical) or a chronicle (also logical - chansons de geste were very much a form of popular history). This again is the author trying to communicate what to expect.

For instance, Berte as grans pies (Bertha Big Foot - all classic love stories should be so named) has no calls to lords to sit down or to listen. No cries of valour and warnings of betrayal. Instead we get a pretty piece about how lovely things are in early April and how a monk has revealed the true story of Bertha and Pippin. The call to nature suggests a love story and the call to written authority suggests a history. All the chansons de geste were history told again, but most of them didn't need to rely on a hidden written tradition. Adenet needed to back his telling to have it accepted - making a call to authority.

This is another way of handling cross-genre, and not an effective one, because the audience has to take the manuscript referred to on trust and know it might be a lie. It is not nearly as powerful as using familiar words and distorting them (see previous post). Readers seldom want to have to think and assess before they get into a romantic story

There is no rule. Each writer of a chanson de geste makes his or her own decision based on their subject matter and their feelings about it and their audience. What is important is the first formula I described is the successful one. You see it over and over and over again. Using a variant of something accepted is not a writing failure: it may just be the way into gaining the audience's attention.

2006, bis

2nd March, 2006. 11:49 am.

Just call me Dr Grump. I am having a bad week. No, you don't want to know the details.

I am going to tell you the family story I *always* tell in bad weeks when asked for family stories. It fits Women's History Month, as it is about Linda Phillips, who was a composer and music critic and judge. If you have heard it before, too bad. (now you have the measure of my grumptitude)

Linda was also my father's first cousin, which is why she was always "Linda" to me. Despite being my father's first cousin and us calling her by her first name, she was sixty years my senior. She trained as a pianist and had the beginnings of an amazing career, then she married, and her husband said "You may play for guests in the parlour, dear."

Linda was a wonderful wife, but her husband had the ill sense to die very young, leaving her with a daughter but no income and with no career as a pianist as a consequence of "you may play in the parlour".

Linda was tiny, but indomitable. She could silence a whole room by looking across it. Most of our family was in awe of her. She used this inner whatever-it-was to get a job on the Herald-Sun. There were not many women who were journos back then. By not many, I mean hardly any. Before World War II. Before Second Wave feminism.

She became the Sun's music critic. She worked hard, but most of her articles didn't make it to print. She asked the editor immediately above her "What's wrong with my pieces. Tell me and I will fix them"

He showed her a drawer filled with her typewritten articles.

"Women can't write," he said. "You got the job because you have a child and your husband died and the editor wanted to give you sympathy-money."

Linda furious was a sight. She was tiny to begin with, but when she was angry, her eyes would look huge and luminous. Everyone around her would feel flea-sized. She never raised her voice. She never needed to raise her voice.

Linda, furious, went to see the senior editor. Before she went, she raided the drawer where her editor kept those rejected manuscripts.

She dumped the sheets of paper on the senior editor's desk, saying "Tell me what's wrong with these. If they are irredeemable, I will find another job. If they can be fixed, then I will fix them. If there is nothing wrong with them, I want to know why they are not being printed."

Nothing was wrong with them.

Linda's work was never hidden in a desk again. That is not the end of the story, however.

The end of the story is the day Linda's editor walked up to her in the corridor and, looming over her, said "Congratulate me, this is my last day. it's D-day. I'm leaving."

"D-day?" Linda asked. "I don't think so." She smiled sweetly up at him and made a sign with her right hand. "You're going, and I'm staying. That makes it V-Day."

Linda was given an OBE, eventually, for her services to music, and died at the age of 104. I wish I had inherited her temper - it would be handy on grump-days.

(no subject)

I am 3/4 through the article I need to finish today. Actually, it was the one I wanted to finish yesterday, but that was undermined by taxes. There was another big thing for today (besides the new course I'm teaching) and it's 3,000 words and I haven't yet finished the reading. This is because it's something that needs lots of thinking, but mostly because I keep getting distracted. I shall pack it in with my teaching notes and go into university a bit early and occupy the classroom and beaver away at it. It's one of those things that should have been easy and somehow isn't.

All of this is terribly crucial, isn't it? Well, it is. For when I've done these two things, plus one more, I shall be caught up on all the big stuff. I shall be free to develop a whole new backlog. And I shall be past the crises caused by the events of the last two months. Just two more articles, one of which is 3/4 done and the other two of which are becalmed.

This is when I haul out my dogged determination.

I have a reward waiting for me, in any case. The insurance has approved of the replacement of my teaching equipment. Lots of new set-up to be done! That means getting all three of these things out of the way, plus the next three, so that I can get back to my pre-thief style of working.

(no subject)

I'm afraid I started my Latin class by writing on the whiteboard a saying my aunt taught me ("Latin is a language, dead as dead can be. It killed the Ancient Romans and now it's killing me.") and punctuated the session by asking "Are you scared yet?" and by offering explanations using English words with Latin origins, which I told the students was how they were going to grow their vocabulary.

Despite my abominable behaviour, the class is good (and very bright - which is always handy) and we got through everything we had to in comfort. They're very nice people, and I think I'm going to cook them something Catonic the week after next, as a 'thank you.' This is the class that had to be rearranged because of my life going so very curious, you see, and whose textbooks didn't arrive.