In the Garden of Iden; random thoughts on S&S
I finished reading In the Garden of Iden by Kage Baker last night, and I'm jealous. Conceptually I thought it was really interesting and clever, and it had little bits about time travel and language, which I'm a sucker for, but what I am *really* jealous of is the Tudor dialogue. I have long wanted to write historical fiction, but I can never get
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This is why I'm practising on Shakespeare Histories fanfic to see if I can do it at all, before even attempting to write that Wars of the Roses novel that's been brewing in my head since about ninth grade. ;)
But, oh, my goodness, it is so easy to get it wrong. I'm presenting a short paper on YA retellings of Shakespeare tomorrow, and one of the novels was written in this Godawful faux-Elizabethan prose...
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I'm trying to decide whether faux-Elizabethan is worse than jarringly modern; I suppose I'd have to know the book in question to decide... I read a book about fairies once in the Elizabethan period (Strange Devices of the Sun and Moon by Lisa Goldstein) and the language was so lacking in any period flavor--characters as well as narration--that it drove me up a wall.
Oh, and good luck with the paper!
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Well, I think my main problem was that it didn't feel organic at all, if that makes any sense. It felt as though the author had written the entire thing in modern prose and then thrown 'hath', 'doth', 'thou', etc, in to give it period flavour. Plus, the characters were all far too modern -- although I guess it's what one would expect from a novel entitled Dating Hamlet.
I don't have all that much opportunity to practice, truth be told--which may be part of the problem.
You know you want to. Really. Signups close today!
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I like the Shakespeare Stealer series by Gary Blackwood for taking the tone seriously in a YA series without being too overwhelming (though I do sometimes wonder if there are younger readers of the series thinking things like, "Why does he keep using the word 'an' like that?"). The books are first-person, too, so he's got to do narration as well as dialogue in that voice.
As for the ficathon, I *definitely* don't know the histories well enough! Also, I'm not sure I have the right impulses for fanfic; I seem to gravitate automatically to writing long meta. :) I look forward to seeing what gets written, though.
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As my YA Shakespeare paper repeatedly states, what is the retelling of Shakespeare but an illustration of meta? ;) Well, an illustration of particular interpretations, i.e. was Ophelia pregnant? Did Jessica repent leaving Shylock? And so forth. I've already got one Histories fic in the works for this year's femgenficathon that centres on the much-neglected Duchess of York. As far as style goes, I'm more or less going to write it as it sounds right, and not try to force anything. My style tends to sound vaguely archaic to begin with, plus I've been nose-deep in chronicles this term, so I expect some of that has stuck to me. Which is frightening.
I've only ever seen the title of that book, on spines and such; I always just assumed it was a modern retelling.
I'd assumed so too, but I was quite wrong. The story itself wasn't bad, as such, but it was incredibly unbelievable. To the point when I was wondering if it was meant to be taken ( ... )
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I actually believe this, and I sometimes wonder if there's a way we could get some of that imaginative energy into criticism (I nearly wrote a long entry about this, and The History Boys, and whether it's possible to have "subjunctive criticism" along the lines of Dakin's "subjunctive history," but then...I didn't. Clearly). But I find the "what if this happened?" part, which would move from meta into fiction, a hard jump to make, for some reason. Maybe it's just that I'm intimidated by playing around with already established characters.
I keep the Shakespeare Stealer books handy for comfort reading. And I'll have to keep an eye out for Matt Haig!
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I like the idea of history as being strung together by literary patterns! I'm always surprised when some columnist describes non-fiction history books as somehow being "better" or more "practical" than literature because it's "factual," as though history weren't a narrative...
It just seems that some of the observations in fanfic and published fiction are so astute that it seems a shame not to be able to use them the way we would any other piece of criticism. Once I quoted Neil Gaiman's phrase "a tale of graceful ends" in a college paper about The Tempest, but that's as daring as I've gotten. :)
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And it's even odder since, at least in the period I'm looking at, there is so much of what we'd now call fanfic running about that it's not even funny. What is every poem ever written about Jane Shore based on The Mirror for Magistrates if not fanfic? ;)
I like the idea of history as being strung together by literary patterns!
I've noticed it for ages, but I was only recently able to put it into words. Now I'm trying to apply it to a massive pile of fifteenth-century documents, which is giving me some trouble.
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Exactly! Maybe future generations will study fanfic like we study those poems...
Now I'm trying to apply it to a massive pile of fifteenth-century documents, which is giving me some trouble.
Everything is so much easier when it's a theory. :) Good luck!
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