Those pesky anachronisms

Sonsofthepharaohs · Oct 19, 2017

Tocotin said:
I've seen it done. It's like nails on a chalkboard. Seriously, any -ism feels jarring in pre-19th century settings.

Sigh. I suppose any reference to BDSM in ancient Egypt is right out of the question then? :roll:

Tocotin said:
As to the Potato Rage book I'm reading right now, I'll go the RYFW way and send you the title via PM. Here I'll only say that it's set in the middle of the 19th century, in pre-modern Japan, and is filled to the brim with (entirely modern) Western mannerisms and body language. Kissing on the cheek, hugging, patting on the back, the works.

I don't know nuffink about Japan, modern or otherwise (well, except what I learned from watching the karate kid movies - thank you for the education, Mr Miyagi) but I'd assume that someone writing a book about it would, yanno... do some research on Japanese culture or something. Possibly. :Shrug:

autumnleaf said:
That would grate on me a little. Possibly because in Outlander, the 18th-century villain was utterly baffled when the 20th-century time-travelling heroine called him a sadist (and he was a pretty textbook example).

Oh, I love the show (couldn't get through more than a page of the first book though) so I know who this probably refers to. Hehe, nice touch.

So, I need to find a way of calling my ancient Egyptian baddie a sadist without using the word sadist. So far I've talked around it, but it's getting annoying not being able to just label it :gaah

benbenberi · Oct 19, 2017

Sadism as a phenomenon certainly existed prior to the Marquis de Sade, but it was not perhaps identified as a discrete entity before then, merely as a set of behaviors & character traits that were not necessarily understood as parts of a conceptual whole. Can an -ism without a name be said to really exist?

In a similar way there have certainly been people we would today call "homosexual" or "heterosexual" as long as there have been people, but the ideas baked into the terminology -- the whole notion of "sexual orientation" as a key component of personal identity -- arguably did not exist before the words were invented and the categories defined in the 19th century. Can a writer describe a 13th cent character as "gay"? Sure -- but they're using a word and invoking a whole set of social & psychological constructs that 13th cent people might not even recognize, let alone apply to themselves. OTOH, the concepts are so fundamental to our 21c understanding of how people function that it's hard for us to grapple with the possibility & the implications of their not being universal constants. It's the water we fishes swim in.

Lakey · Oct 19, 2017

Kallithrix said:
So, I need to find a way of calling my ancient Egyptian baddie a sadist without using the word sadist. So far I've talked around it, but it's getting annoying not being able to just label it

benbenberi said:
Sadism as a phenomenon certainly existed prior to the Marquis de Sade, but it was not perhaps identified as a discrete entity before then, merely as a set of behaviors & character traits that were not necessarily understood as parts of a conceptual whole.

I think a character written with behavioral traits and preferences that today we call sadism - a character simply displaying those traits as part of his or her story, where the reader gets to put the pieces together and say, wow, this person is a sadist! - would be great fun to read about. Just as in Vanity Fair, where Thackeray paints in Becky Sharpe as vivid a picture of a sociopath as you would find in any modern textbook, without ever invoking such terminology.

Part of the reason I read tons and tons of midcentury American writing (highbrow, lowbrow, and everything in between) is to get a sense of how people talked about social concepts in that time. To build on the rest of benbenberi's post above, in the time period I'm writing about, the notion of sexual identity was evolving rapidly, so there was a wide range of views and self-conceptions and terminologies all coexisting. And this is reflected in the writing of the time; for instance one novel might be full of recognizably modern usage of terms like "lesbian" and "homosexual," while another published the very same year might spend 300 pages on a story about a love affair between two women and never use either word. (This range makes for a fun way add depth and conflict to my lesbian characters, by giving some of them views that are more recognizably modern, and others views that we tend not to see anymore.)

Siri Kirpal · Oct 19, 2017

Sat Nam! (Literally "Truth Name"--a Sikh greeting)

And for the record, the word "gay" originally meant "merry." It was also used as a last name and as a first name for girls. I was born in 1953, and there was a girl in my class with that first name.

The use of "queen" for a gay man was IIRC in usage in the middle ages, but dropped out of use during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, for obvious reasons. Then it came back, but isn't much in use now.

I never heard the term transgender used until this millennium. Ditto "gender identity."

Hope that helps.

Blessings,

Siri Kirpal

Sonsofthepharaohs · Oct 19, 2017

Siri Kirpal said:
I never heard the term transgender used until this millennium. Ditto "gender identity."

l

I think it was coined in the 60s, but came into it's current common usage in the 90s. I'm actually pretty averse to the whole concept of gender labelling. For a start, it's still trying to assign people to boxes, whereas gender identity is as varied as the sexuality spectrum - there are extremes at either pole and every shade in between. I've been called a tomboy all my life, have often been labelled a lesbian (because of said tomboyism, even though this is an inaccurate assumption) and I guess I've never fit into a neat gender pigeon hole, so.... I do do not want to have to start thinking of either real people or characters in terms of cis gendered / transgender / genderqueer etc. It makes my head hurt. Can't I just think of them as people?

maybe this is why I like historical fiction, coz I don't have to worry about all this :greenie

Siri Kirpal · Oct 19, 2017

Sat Nam! (literally "Truth Name"--a Sikh greeting)

I'm with you all the way on that. (And was just talking to Mr. Siri about that very thing.) I wasn't a tomboy, but was treated as if I might be Lesbian because I had a loud voice, a forthright manner and refused to wear makeup (except on stage) and to shave my legs.

So I'm going to add that "queer" originally meant "odd." Then it was a particularly offensive thing to call a men, much like calling him a "fag" (if you're in the US). Both usages were current when I was a kid. The current usage doesn't make a heck of a lot of sense to me. I refuse to think that I was a queer girl! (Is there a mock outrage emoticon?)

Blessings,

Siri Kirpal

autumnleaf · Oct 20, 2017

Lakey said:
Part of the reason I read tons and tons of midcentury American writing (highbrow, lowbrow, and everything in between) is to get a sense of how people talked about social concepts in that time. To build on the rest of benbenberi's post above, in the time period I'm writing about, the notion of sexual identity was evolving rapidly, so there was a wide range of views and self-conceptions and terminologies all coexisting. And this is reflected in the writing of the time; for instance one novel might be full of recognizably modern usage of terms like "lesbian" and "homosexual," while another published the very same year might spend 300 pages on a story about a love affair between two women and never use either word. (This range makes for a fun way add depth and conflict to my lesbian characters, by giving some of them views that are more recognizably modern, and others views that we tend not to see anymore.)

Daphne du Maurier used the term "Venetian tendencies" to refer to her attraction to women (she was bisexual). Mind you, she and her sisters were inclined to make up code words, so that term might not exist outside the du Maurier circle.

Siri Kirpal said:
Sat Nam! (literally "Truth Name"--a Sikh greeting)

So I'm going to add that "queer" originally meant "odd." Then it was a particularly offensive thing to call a men, much like calling him a "fag" (if you're in the US). Both usages were current when I was a kid. The current usage doesn't make a heck of a lot of sense to me.

There's definitely a generation gap in usage of the word "queer". I'm in my 40s, and when I was growing up that was a slur directed at gay men, on par with "fag". I find it disconcerting when younger people use it in a more positive sense, and I wonder what older gay men think when they hear it.

Tocotin · Oct 20, 2017

Kallithrix said:
Sigh. I suppose any reference to BDSM in ancient Egypt is right out of the question then?

Lol, the acronym itself, yes. The concept – not at all! Bring it on!

Kallithrix said:
I don't know nuffink about Japan, modern or otherwise (well, except what I learned from watching the karate kid movies - thank you for the education, Mr Miyagi) but I'd assume that someone writing a book about it would, yanno... do some research on Japanese culture or something. Possibly.

Yeah... most Western authors who write about Japan don't know the language, or they know it, but not well enough to do any serious research. They think that historical events are the most important thing about historical fiction, I dunno... so there's a lot of shallow talk about politics and philosophy and religion, but somehow divorced from everyday life of the characters. For example, it's acknowledged that there are multiple gods in Japanese religions, but they are treated like Greek or Roman gods: "gods have been cruel to me", "if gods allow"... it doesn't work that way at all! Not all polytheistic religions are the same!

Kallithrix said:
Oh, I love the show (couldn't get through more than a page of the first book though) so I know who this probably refers to. Hehe, nice touch.

So, I need to find a way of calling my ancient Egyptian baddie a sadist without using the word sadist. So far I've talked around it, but it's getting annoying not being able to just label it

I also like the show – the books, not so much. I started reading the first one and then read the ending and didn't go back...

Lakey · Oct 20, 2017

autumnleaf said:
Daphne du Maurier used the term "Venetian tendencies" to refer to her attraction to women (she was bisexual). Mind you, she and her sisters were inclined to make up code words, so that term might not exist outside the du Maurier circle.

I love this to TINY LITTLE PIECES. I was just having a debate with someone who seemed personally offended at the idea that Mrs. Danvers's devotion to Rebecca might have included a component of sexual attraction. She was all "Rebecca was NOT bisexual" (as though she knew Rebecca personally) and I was all "I never said she was, I was talking about Mrs. Danvers's feelings." And then she was all "Mrs. Danvers was just a loving devoted servant, nothing more" and I was all "she lovingly preserved Rebecca's underwear so she could take it out and caress it" and so on. I didn't know anything about du Maurier's personal life to bring to bear but now I rather wish I had!

Sonsofthepharaohs · Oct 20, 2017

autumnleaf said:
Daphne du Maurier used the term "Venetian tendencies" to refer to her attraction to women (she was bisexual). Mind you, she and her sisters were inclined to make up code words, so that term might not exist outside the du Maurier circle.

Oooh, like the way that they said the Duke of Orleans (Louis XIV's brother) suffered from the 'Italian vice' because of his passion for the chevalier? (Yes, totally addicted to BBC's Versailles, even though the lack of plot leaves me frustrated). I never knew the Italians had such a reputation for being rampant homosexuals - I thought that was the Greeks!

Speaking of which... in a historical novel you could call lesbian love 'sapphic', I guess - I dunno if this is older than the term 'lesbian', although they're derived from the same origin. Still no use for ancient Egypt though - my period is over 500 years before Sappho was born!

There's definitely a generation gap in usage of the word "queer". I'm in my 40s, and when I was growing up that was a slur directed at gay men, on par with "fag". I find it disconcerting when younger people use it in a more positive sense, and I wonder what older gay men think when they hear it.

Yeah, I don't like it either, because of those negative connotations. I'm all for reclaiming words that have been tarnished by use and become pejoratives, but it's still hard to shake off the initial gut reaction...

Tocotin · Oct 23, 2017

Lakey said:
I love this to TINY LITTLE PIECES. I was just having a debate with someone who seemed personally offended at the idea that Mrs. Danvers's devotion to Rebecca might have included a component of sexual attraction. She was all "Rebecca was NOT bisexual" (as though she knew Rebecca personally) and I was all "I never said she was, I was talking about Mrs. Danvers's feelings." And then she was all "Mrs. Danvers was just a loving devoted servant, nothing more" and I was all "she lovingly preserved Rebecca's underwear so she could take it out and caress it" and so on. I didn't know anything about du Maurier's personal life to bring to bear but now I rather wish I had!

I don't know about Rebecca's sexuality, I think she might have been just an opportunist adept at manipulating people, but Mrs. Danvers was definitely in love with her.

It's funny how incensed people can suddenly become when they're told that the book they've known could be read totally differently. I once had a conversation with a friend's friend and his wife about some problematic things in a book which they loved and I loathed. They got so offended that they didn't talk to me for the next two hours (we were on an outing with our kids).

autumnleaf · Oct 25, 2017

Margaret Forster wrote an excellent biography of Daphne du Maurier, if anyone's interested in learning more about her life.

Anyone who's writing a book set before 1500 needs to start by checking out the Wikipedia page on the Colombian Exchange: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbian_Exchange. There is no excuse for having tomatoes in Medieval Europe or horses in Pre-Colombian America!

Also, before you include a specific breed of dog, make sure it actually existed in the time frame you're writing about. Many current popular breeds, like the Labrador Retriever, date only to the 19th or 20th century. Some older breeds, like the bulldog, have changed enormously in the past hundred years (bulldogs used to be a lot healthier before they were bred for shows

)

benbenberi · Oct 25, 2017

autumnleaf said:
Also, before you include a specific breed of dog, make sure it actually existed in the time frame you're writing about. Many current popular breeds, like the Labrador Retriever, date only to the 19th or 20th century. Some older breeds, like the bulldog, have changed enormously in the past hundred years (bulldogs used to be a lot healthier before they were bred for shows )

Right - most modern breeds are very modern indeed. Before the mid-19c the whole apparatus of dog societies, shows, breed standards, etc. didn't exist at all. Breeds were developed for specific functions (and being cute & decorative counts as a function) -- there were a lot of older breeds that no longer exist, either because their function became obsolete (like the little turnspit dogs, or the independent-minded smuggler dogs who used to sneak goods across the borders of France & taught the trade to their own pups) or because their descendants developed into newer different breeds & the ancestral version disappeared.)

snafu1056 · Oct 25, 2017

It's always neat when you get a glimpse of old dog breeds in ancient art. For example, here's a Chinese pug of the middle ages. Still recognizably "puggy", yet pretty different from modern pugs in a few noticeable ways (like the long shaggy tail).

Lakey · Oct 26, 2017

Tocotin said:
I don't know about Rebecca's sexuality, I think she might have been just an opportunist adept at manipulating people, but Mrs. Danvers was definitely in love with her.

It's funny how incensed people can suddenly become when they're told that the book they've known could be read totally differently.

Right? My first reading was that Rebecca was a classic sociopath, willing and able to flirt or otherwise engage people's emotions as needed, for whatever her immediate end might be. The interesting thing about my conversation with this person was an alternate reading she (indirectly) suggested with her impassioned defense of "the wonderful Rebecca" - that Rebecca actually was as wonderful as everyone thought she was, and Maxim is an unreliable narrator of her faults. Even in that reading, however, all the evidence suggests that Mrs Danvers is very much in love with her.

I love talking about alternative readings, even when I don't agree with them. I love a book that's rich enough to support alternative readings.

autumnleaf said:
Margaret Forster wrote an excellent biography of Daphne du Maurier, if anyone's interested in learning more about her life.

Noted, thank you!

--

I'm sorry for dragging the thread off-topic. To atone, here's something on topic: In writing my novel, I have been thinking a lot about a certain Borges story, Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote. And since I have a writer character in my novel, I briefly pondered giving her some things to say about the story. Then I looked up the story, and learned that while it was first published in Spanish (in Argentina) in 1939, and did not appear in English until 1962. It's really implausible that my character would have encountered this story by 1951. I might still be able to introduce the themes of the story, but I'll have to do it in a more indirect way.

There are some ways in which 1951 does not feel like a very long time ago, and other ways in which it seems to be a tremendously long time ago.

Sonsofthepharaohs · Oct 26, 2017

Lakey said:
There are some ways in which 1951 does not feel like a very long time ago, and other ways in which it seems to be a tremendously long time ago.

My dad was 6 in 1951, and he's now 72. Yeah, it was a hella long time ago when you consider it in the context of someone's lifetime

Lakey · Oct 27, 2017

Kallithrix said:
My dad was 6 in 1951, and he's now 72. Yeah, it was a hella long time ago when you consider it in the context of someone's lifetime

For me it's the other way around. When I consider there are people I know who can give me direct testimony about the time, it doesn't seem very long ago at all. Or, that the events I'm writing about sit just 20 years before I was born - in light of how recent the 90s feel to me, now. I mean, my 25th college reunion is next year. People who were my current age the year I was born entered college during WWII. Thoughts like that sometimes make me feel as if the time is very recent. (Alternatively, they make me feel very old.)

It's when I think of all the intervening events, or things that have become undeniably woven into general cultural knowledge that my characters would never even have heard of, that's when it starts to feel like a long time ago. For instance, I wrote a scene where my character was talking to a Dutch man who had fled the Nazis. I wanted to know whether my character would have Anne Frank as a reference point for Dutch Jews hiding from Nazis. Today, what person in her demographic would not be familiar with Anne Frank? But I had to look it up! And it turns out the diary was published in Duth in 1947, and in French and German in 1949, but not in English until 1952. Before that, then, an educated, culturally-aware New Yorker might very well have heard of it, but would not likely have read it herself.

Stuff like that makes me feel like it was a very long time ago. I wonder if that makes any sense?

Siri Kirpal · Oct 27, 2017

Sat Nam! (Literally "Truth Name"--a Sikh greeting)

Makes a lot of sense. I was born in 1953, so I wasn't even thought of at the time you're writing. But sometimes I say my memories go back to 1890s, because I spent a lot of time learning what my grandmother's life was like in rural in-electrified Missourah. In one context, 1951 is a looong time ago; in the other, it's yesterday.

Blessings,

Siri Kirpal

Sonsofthepharaohs · Oct 28, 2017

Lakey said:
It's when I think of all the intervening events, or things that have become undeniably woven into general cultural knowledge that my characters would never even have heard of, that's when it starts to feel like a long time ago.

I think the reason that the first half of the 20th century seems such a long time ago is the pace of change - since the Industrial revolution, technology has rapidly accelerated the speed at which culture evolves. The further back in time you go, I think the more slowly things change, so that in ancient Egypt centuries would pass with very little difference in the way people lived their lives. Wars and famine and other social or environmental factors brought developments in technology, but a peasant farmer from the reign of Hatshepsut would notice very little difference if he dropped through a wormhole and landed in the reign of Ramesses the great, 200 years later. But if you or I stepped back to 1817, we'd find things somewhat different...

RoseDG · Nov 6, 2017

Lakey said:
I love talking about alternative readings, even when I don't agree with them. I love a book that's rich enough to support alternative readings.

Same. Two of my beta readers for my contemporary YA were with me on Friday and they started talking about the antagonist. They both had very different "takes" on him, and it was exciting to see two readers debating about my book. I was thrilled, in fact, and took it as a very "good sign."

Lakey said:
There are some ways in which 1951 does not feel like a very long time ago, and other ways in which it seems to be a tremendously long time ago.

I know what you mean -- in many ways, life was very similar to the way it is now. In other ways it was very different, of course.

I've had critique partners who are very surprised at how little some things have changed -- one was shocked to see phones in upper class British homes in the 1930's and told me to fact check that(!). She was even more shocked to hear that Empress Alexandra of Russia had phones installed in the Alexander Palace in the mid-1890s.

Those pesky anachronisms

Sonsofthepharaohs

Still writing the ancient Egyptian tetralogy

benbenberi

practical experience, FTW

Lakey

professional dilettante

Siri Kirpal

Swan in Process

Sonsofthepharaohs

Still writing the ancient Egyptian tetralogy

Siri Kirpal

Swan in Process

autumnleaf

practical experience, FTW

Tocotin

deceives

Lakey

professional dilettante

Sonsofthepharaohs

Still writing the ancient Egyptian tetralogy

Tocotin

deceives

autumnleaf

practical experience, FTW

benbenberi

practical experience, FTW

snafu1056

Lakey

professional dilettante

Sonsofthepharaohs

Still writing the ancient Egyptian tetralogy

Lakey

professional dilettante

Siri Kirpal

Swan in Process

Sonsofthepharaohs

Still writing the ancient Egyptian tetralogy

RoseDG