Anachronisms in Fantasy

Tragically I don't even get that far. I read about Bilbo having written in what is clearly the English alphabet, and then close the book as my sense of realism is shattered. The author clearly didn't do enough research.

 

Nah, it's: Would you like to shaaare that? Hmm?

 

I was attempting to demo 'prejudice toward the rising inflection' tendencies.

 

That was my second guess.

 

Hobbiton always struck me as being roughly Victorian.

 

It always reminded me of PEI (Avonlea, I guess) as depicted in the Anne of Green Gables books.

 

That little rural old-fashioned village vibe—lots going on but in relative isolation? Yeah, I never thought of comparing the two, but you're right. Maybe that's maybe why I loved Anne of Green Gables AND LOTR. (The Hobbit.)

 

All the nosy, bossy, unpleasant people who are nevertheless reasonably good-hearted, deep down... the sense of personal history blurring into family history blurring into community history...

And, if you read the later Anne books, the devastation caused to small communities by war, even if the war is quite distant.

Sigh.

 

They are some really good books that I actually didn't read until recently because they back in the day they were girl books. I was however aware of the stories because of Road to Avonlea, and the CBC adaptations. Didn't really translate the writing very well, though.

 

I read lots of LM Montgomery as a child. I was particularly fond of the Story Girl books as well as the Anne books. Avonlea was a comforting, parochial sort of setting that was good to settle into and enjoy. What's especially fun is LM Montgomery was writing of her own time, more or less, so it wasn't nostalgia—which is how it appears now. She had kind of a miserable life, though. Sad to read about her 'real' existence.

 

Thank you. I always appreciate these insights on the meaning of words in English. They shed light on subtleties I may not have caught before.

Slightly off topic: We also have this meaning of sharing in Portuguese, sharing a secret. Recently I've been hearing the new usage more and more (people tend to copy idioms from English) and I don't like it. Reminds me too much of therapy. We say "exchange thoughts on something", not "share", but we may "share an ideal".

 

Exactly. 'Share' didn't use to mean verbal announcements so much as dividing something between people, or splitting a task, or agreeing on something. Whether it's a chocolate bar, chores, or ideals. I suppose you could share a bad experience, but you'd both (or all) have to have experienced it directly. If only one person has experienced the bad experience and is telling the others about it, that would not have been 'sharing'—in the older sense of the word. (However, that seems to have evolved into one of the current meanings, so whatever....)

My point about including it in this thread is not that it's wrong to use it this way, but that it's an anachronism if your story is set quite a while ago. Like when I was young. In the 50s, 60s and 70s, etc. I don't know when I first started to notice this usage creeping in, but I do remember thinking it sounded silly. I've got used to it now.

 

You raise an interesting question. Young readers. But how young are we talking about? If we're talking about Fantasy for children or pre-teens, I'm totally on board with the King and Queen having a picnic. And playing a game of cricket, whatever. It's not meant to be realistic.
As for older readers, I'm very much against dumbing down. Not in writing, not in school, not anywhere. There are enough "dumbed down" products out there as it is. I'm always grateful when a book makes me take a trip to the dictionary or the wikipedia.
I actually prefer a "difficult" book with lots of trips to the dictionary. But this is merely personal preference. Too many obsolete words may alienate most readers and I'm very aware of that. So this one comes down to who is your audience.

 

Very well put and I agree 100%.

 

My personal opinion on obsolete words, as someone with a pretty intense vocabulary, is that being a word-of-the-day author is bad. Having a word-of-the-day character is flavor. An author using big words, exclusively to use big words, is as bad as anything else we rag on in this forum. But if your character (or even characters) use those words and it feels natural for the character, I'm all about having to look up words occasionally.

Although personally, I tend not to realize I've read the occasional word I don't know--my brain simply skips it, assumes the meaning from the rest of the sentence, and moves on with its day. When I read Wish You Well in high school, the second or third sentence had the word 'assuaged' in it. The next day, the teacher was like, "Why haven't you written anything on your vocab page?" "Because I didn't see any words I didn't know." She points to 'assuaged' and asked what it meant. I told her with complete honesty, I hadn't noticed that word in the text, but it hadn't affected my understanding of the passage at all.

 

In Sol Stein's book, Stein on Writing, he talks about the need authors have to invent their way to the intended meanings of today's figures of speech through a lens that suggests the time period.

i.e. If you're writing a book about knights in medieval times, the knight can't say "Step on it!" as it refers to a car pedal, but you can get to the meaning through reverse engineering with something like "Spur your flanks!" or "Kick your mount!"

Stein elaborates on it more eloquently in his book.

 

I just ran across the word "teamsters" in a medieval fantasy series and was taken aback by it. How do you folks feel about it?

Sentence for context:

I would guess there were a thousand of them, half soldiers from the Lady's personal Guard in brilliant uniforms, the rest apparently teamsters.

 

I don't think teamster really fits in this context. I know there's the union connection, but I've only really heard teamster used to reference someone who drives teams of animals, like a wagoneer.

 

Lots of wagons did arrive with provisions for the army. So there's that. I guess I'm only familiar with "teamster" referring to modern labor unions and truck drivers.

 

Sure, but horses - and I imagine oxen - were still used in the early 20th century, which isn't exactly medieval.

 

Do anachronisms include the author's choice in words? It was my belief that an anachronism would be putting a Jag in 1100's France, or characters mistakenly stating a real war happened in a different time period. I feel "anachronism" including language might be a bit much, as, to be perfectly frank, if we wanted to be absolutely precise then we would be best off writing in the archaic version of whatever appropriate language, perhaps even in their old scripts. But then no one would understand the work, so why bother?

Well,I suppose the effort of cleaning up the language must be one geared toward an effect? You want to be immersed and modern language breaks the spell, somehow? I don't really get it since a lot of useful words, analogies, and metaphors exist now that didn't in the past. Yes, thanks to technology, but the usage of language is intended to convey a comprehendable story anyway, right? And we relate very well to our modern world.

Then again, if we're talking dialogue my opinion might differ.

 

I just read a short story in the Fantasy section that contained some musical concepts that seemed to me to be anachronistic.

I didn't think these things would bother me, but it was really jarring, in what was supposed to be a pseudo-medieval setting. I think it's a case of familiarity. You expect certain things from a fantasy setting and when something unexpected inserts itself into the story, it's off-putting.

I can buy characters using modern swear words, if used well. If you have kings and princes swearing like teamsters, that's a red line.

If anyone remembers the HBO/BBC series Rome, the entire Roman army are apparently acting like modern British squaddies. But it works, the way it's done. I'm sure we can think of other cases where it doesn't work.

 

I don't think "okay" would bother me in a medieval novel. At that point, you're just being a miserable person to be bothered by that.

 

Forsooth, yea and verily, gramercy.