in other news, oops.

[tempestsarekind]

I wound up wandering into the bookstore the other day. Well, it wasn't precisely wandering, as I wanted to buy a belated birthday present for a friend, and a ticket to an upcoming bookstore event. But somehow I came out with, in addition to those two items, a copy of John Guy's new book on Thomas and Margaret More. Sigh

Comments

[lareinenoire]

So I've been thinking about the many lacunae present in that biography, and how hard it must be (partly because the author draws our attention to these moments) to write a biography about a woman who was so close to the center of events, and yet, because she was a woman, is effaced from the record in a lot of ways.

I may have mentioned at some point that my supervisor wrote My Just Desire, and you just answered a question that's been plaguing me for some time -- why on earth she was interested in my dissertation topic. But that really explains it, seeing as my dissertation is about women's (invisible) narratives.

I have the same problem with historical novels, although I have managed to find a small cache of really good ones. Have you ever read Dorothy Dunnett? Her novels are dense, challenging, and utterly brilliant.

[tempestsarekind]

Yes, you've mentioned that; I was thinking of it as I finished the book, actually. :) That question of invisible narratives is definitely foregrounded in the biography: both as a problem, for the writer of biographies of women, and as a corrective for that invisibility, in terms of how we traditionally look at the "important" figures of history, and how we determine who those are.

I haven't read Dorothy Dunnett yet--mainly because I can't figure out where to start! (This is another weird problem I have; I'm easily overwhelmed by books in a series.)

[lareinenoire]

It's a difficult question to tackle -- so much of history itself is a form of narrative, at least in the way we know and read it.

Well, my suggestion would be to see how you like the first book and decide where to go from there. The first books stand on their own quite well, although the later ones are more intertwined by necessity. The first in the Lymond Chronicles is A Game of Kings, and is set during the Seymour Protectorate under Edward VI. The first in the House of Niccolò series is Niccolò Rising, and it's set mainly in Burgundy, beginning in 1460. The first few chapters are difficult because she doesn't coddle her reader in the least, but I quickly became addicted.

[tempestsarekind]

Yes--and now I'm interested in what the difference is between that overt narrative of a novel and the more concealed sense of narrative in a biography. Because we tend to try to separate them out these days: a biography can be thought too "fanciful" or too "speculative." At the same time, though, it's quite the compliment for a biography to "read like a novel," provided that it's factual enough. And you'd know better than I--are early modern historians worried about this issue?

I think I got confused by the fact that there are two separate Dunnett series, and I was always mixing up the books when I saw them in bookstores! Perhaps I'll add the first book in each series to my (never-ending) book list...

[starhud5]

I can't walk into a bookstore without coming out with something new. Books are impossible to resist!

[tempestsarekind]

Oh, they definitely are. Which wouldn't be so bad if I had a) money; and b) expandable shelves!