Happy St Patrick’s Day! : An Irish Top-Ten

Le fháile Padraig sona duit!

Or something like that. Once upon a time, I studied Irish language for a couple of years.  I even ended up writing my final year dissertation on obscure medieval Gaelic poetry. Quite why, I’m no longer sure – to avoid accusations of plagiarism probably. Most of it has evaporated, leaving a confused tangle of irregular verbs, barbed proverbs and curses and how to order a Guinness. But I still have an enduring  fondness for the literature and language of the emerald Isles. So, to celebrate St Patrick’s day, here’s a quick Top Ten of my personal Irish favorites…

1) The Fenian Cycle

One of the great mythological stories of Ireland, the Fenian cycle follows the exploits of Fíonn Mac Cúmhaill (anglicized Finn Mac Cool) and his band of warrior, the Fíanna. Stories range from the tragic romance of Diarmud and Graínne, to the bloody battle of Gabhra and the magical birth of Fionn’s son Oísin to the deer-woman Sadbh. The soothing lilt of Irish name always reminds me of my childhood, reading legends in the corner of the classroom and trying to spot sídhe (‘elves’) by the banks of the Mersey. The mythical Irish warriors have been claimed by everyone from poets to politicians, rebels and nationalists, but they retain a universal grandeur and occasional quirkiness. Who can object to a man who sucks his thumb to gain prophetic insight?

2) Irish Songs

Ok, technically not a work of literature but Ireland has always been synonymous with music and poetry. Defining ‘authentic’ folk songs is something of an empty battle, as opinions of what counts as ‘authenticity’ differs widely. Victorian collections of ‘Erse’ folk-songs widely popularized them as parlour music. Thomas Moore’s Irish Melodies (1806-) was a bestseller in its days, combining traditional songs such as She Moved thro’ the Fair with contemporary works such as his own Last Rose of Summer, which themselves have become archetypally ‘Irish’. An alternative tradition of ‘protest’ songs developed following the 1789 rebellion, including The Wind that Shakes the Barley and more recently The foggy dew. However, there is a rich collection of Gaelic songs which are less widely known. Mó Ghíle Mhéar, Siúil á rúin and An Cailín Rúa are common love songs, whilst Cad é sin don te sín is an irreverent paean to doing nothing. Others such as Mna Na H-Eirean (‘women of Ireland’) have been popularized by Hollywood adaptations. What’s Youtube for otherwise?

3) The Wild Irish Girl, Lady Morgan 

Subtitled ‘a national tale’, this 1806 epistolary novel has not dated very well. To a modern reader it can seem wince-inducingly patronizing of the Catholic Irish peasantry, revoltingly saccharine and inadvertently  racist in its treatment of the Irish language. However, the book can hold a title to being the first home-grown Irish best-seller. Unlike the more famous Maria Edgeworth who descended from the Anglo-Irish gentry, Sydney Owenson as she was before her marriage, was the daughter of an Irish catholic actor. The novel traces the relationship between the English Horatio and Glorvina, the spirited daughter of the displaced Irish lord of Insinore. The depiction of Glorvina, blonde haired and plucking a harp became a symbol of Irish nationality and sparked a Victorian trend for ‘Celtic’ fashions and music.

4) W.B. Yeats

Eccentric, mercurial and partial to misguided love affairs, W.B. Yeats remains perhaps the best (if not the most famous) poet that Ireland ever produced. Instrumental in establishing the Abbey theater and leading movements to revive Gaelic language and mythology, his work ranges from fervent nationalism to wistful melancholy. His lyric poems remain the best known, such as Cloths of Heaven, Wild Swans at Coole and Down by the Salley Gardens.

5)  The Plough and the Stars, Sean O’ Casey

When this play was first performed in 1926, there were reports of riots at the Abbey Theater. Openly addressing issues of sex, violence and religious hypocrisy that were shocking at the time, Sean O’Casey’s first trilogy of plays set in the Dublin tenant slums were in stark contrast to the wistful romanticism and nostalgia of many of his contemporaries. The Plough and the Stars, set during the 1916 Easter rising, observes the consequences of the warped fervor of the rebels. The men’s blind idolization of past martyred rebels and idealization of ‘dying for Ireland’ inevitably climaxes in brutal, pointless violence. Unbiased in its criticism of all sides of the conflict, O’Casey’s work was one of the first to confront the bloody realities of the struggle for Irish independence beyond outraged patriotism.

6) Angela’s Ashes- Frankie McCourt

‘The happy childhood is hardly worth your bother’ Frankie McCourt remarks laconically in the opening pages of his memoir. Tracing the ‘miserable Irish Catholic childhood’ in the 1930 Limerick slums, McCourt’s prose is an unflinching and unsentimental confrontation of religious hypocrisy, poverty and oppression. However it is also outrageously funny, at times gently beautiful and acutely captures the rhythms and expressions of the Limerick dialect. This is memoir that for me most evocatively captures a sense of place and time. ‘Misery memoirs’ take note.

7) Dubliners- James Joyce

Suffice to say I didn’t manage the first five chapters of Ulyssses.

8) Hounds of the Mórrigan- Pat Ó Sea

A quirky modern fairy-tale based on the Irish Goddess of war, the Mórrigan. Pidge and his little sister Bridget must travel to destroy the Olc-Glass, the mythical serpent of destruction the Goddess is attempting to revive. On their way they negotiate motor-biking witches and a sergeant obsessed with roses and potteen whilst being assisted by inventive new incarnations of figures from Irish mythology, from amnesiac goose-women to the sardonic talking fox Cooroo. But all the time, the hounds are drawing closer… An innocent, exciting and timeless portrait of Ireland and childhood itself.

9) The Snapper- Roddy Doyle

Of all modern writers, Roddy Doyle I would argue comes the closest to capturing the cadences and lexis of ordinary speech. When Sharon comes home to tell her working-class Irish family she might be pregnant, she throws the household into chaos. This is a funny,thoroughly unabashed portrait of everyday life of hang-overs and boring jobs, where dogs mess on the carpet, the unwashed dishes pile up, there’s never anything on the telly and profanities liberally sprinkle everyone’s conversation. At its heart, there is a core of sweetness in the endurance of familial love which refuses to be sensationalized. Part of the Barrytown triology.

10) Black Harvest- Anne Pilling

This eerie, subtle ghost story centers on a family whose rural Irish holiday is slowly corrupted by the scent of rot, visions of decaying, blackened fields and an endless gnawing hunger… Many works have tried to capture the horror of the Irish potato famine but few have managed it as effectively. Visions of skeletal women crawling over burnt earth, their mouths black from the grass they tried to eat or children ‘wizened like monkeys’ who appear suddenly at the roadside as the children to the supermarket are shockingly effective. The hypnotic blurring of modern, picturesque Ireland with its horrific past reminds how close the bitter memories remain on the surface.

Honourable Mentions:

* Star of the Sea- Joseph O’Connor 

Tracing the voyage of an immigrant ship to America, with its passengers still harboring the grudges and griefs of the land they left behind.

*The New Policeman- Kate Thomson

Deserved winner of the 2005 Whitbread and Guardian children’s book award, it follows a boy’s journey into a very modern Tir-ni-nog.

*The Gathering- Anne Enright

Winner of the 2006 Booker prize, the funereal of the narrator’s brother revives painful childhood memories of loss and abuse.

*Breakfast on Pluto- Patrick McCabe

Far more irreverent and caustic than its film adaption, it follows the unapologetic adventures of ‘Pussy’ in a refreshingly sympathetic depiction of transsexuals.

Bodices and Bookers part Three: Historical Romance and Feminism

And finally… the bodice ripper, possibly the most lucrative and prevalent subgenre of all. From regency heiresses raising the masts of well-endowed Napoleonic naval officers, to Tudors tupping behind the tapestries, it is the thinking woman’s smut. As with historical crime fiction, there are definite periods of preference. Plenty of corsets cracking in Victorian pantries and abducted brides swooning over the corsairs of the Caribbean: rather less Anglo-Saxons employing their most useful donation to the English language. I’ve still yet to find the smouldering romance of Aztec Tenochtitlan (it breaks your heart – literally, then offers it to the sun).

Phillipa Gregory is merely the best known purveyor of girdle erotica. Whilst The Queen’s Fool is neither her most recent or most famous work (which must surely be The Other Boleyn Girl), for me it neatly encapsulates the strengths and weaknesses of the genre. Tracing the adventures of Hannah, a Jewish girl who becomes a fool in Mary I’s court, it observes the rebellions and romantic entanglements of the day.

Of the three genres, romance is the most frequently weakly written. It would be unfair to single Gregory out for especial criticism, although in her defence she has a knack for unexpected detail that can bring a scene to life. For example, the description of a scrying session in The Queen’s Fool  is an ‘anatomy of flame’.[1]Unfortunately, she also has a predilection for over-writing. An elegant observation on Hannah’s reluctance to burn her father’s books despite the threat of Mary’s inquisition (‘I could no more have destroyed it than I could have killed a new-born child: precious in itself and full of unknowable promise…’[2]) nicely highlights the revolutionary potential brough by the advent of printing. Unfortunately, it is promptly smothered under FOUR more needlessly elaborating paragraphs (‘I was a young woman living at the very heart of the world that was starting to ask questions…’ etc, etc, etc). However, it is mostly the historical accuracy of her works that have been most frequently attacked, most infamously the allegation that Thomas and Anne Boleyn were having an incestuous affair (unlikely even by the Tudor’s flexible standards).Whilst I can be a historical purist, writing historical fiction necessitates the licence of imagination  Gregory cannot be pilloried for injecting some imaginative supposition in the mix.

She-Wolves: The real Queens of England

What irks me more, in common sadly with much romantic fiction, is that it infantilises the women it portrays. A book I recently read which impressed me was Helen Castor’s She-Wolves, tracing the careers of English queens up to Elizabeth I.[3] As well as admirably fulfilling her promise in the opening preface, she embeds her analysis of these queens within the patriarchal frameworks of power at the time. It is ‘power’ not ‘love’ that she examines but it’s evident that the mercenary reality of aristocratic marriages blurred the two. Eleanor of Aquitaine and Isabella of France were no starry-eyed romantics, for all their scandalous relationships.

 That is not to say there was no conception of romantic love in early modernity. Romeo and Juliet delighted in their ‘fiery delights’, cross-dressed princes seduced in Arcadia and the sonnet became the quintessential Renaissance form in the hands of Petrarch, Wyatt and Shakespeare.[4]  But Castor’s tracing of the struggles of her queen’s lives – imprisoned, exiled, abandoned- reflects the grim fate waiting for women who dared seek independent rule. Women’s only access to power was allied with husbands, sons and lovers, which simultaneously stripped them of their autonomy in a destructive paradox. Castor thus presents Mary and Elizabeth’s relationships for what they were: level-headed evaluations of how best to preserve their own position. It’s unsurprising that when we have written records from Mary and Elizabeth they focus on the political, rather than emotional, implications of their relationships. Mary was destroyed by her emotional investment in a politically disastrous marriage: Elizabeth perhaps came off the best by eschewing men altogether and draping herself in the iconography of a ‘virgin queen’.

Would all the feminists in the room put their hands up?

So, plenty of raw material to explore the hidden interior lives of these complex women. Gregory presents fluttering female indecision, no different to Katherine Heigl or Zoey Deschanel in every rom-com you’ve ever seen. From the opening when the fourteen year old Elizabeth is willing seduced by Thomas Seymour ‘little more than a whore’ (really? At fourteen?), the most educated and powerful women in England are reduced to fretful pining or brazen flirtation. No matter how much Hannah laboriously stresses Elizabeth’s accomplishments and allure, the future queen never transcends being a bratty tease. Worse, it is made clear that being a ‘woman’ ultimately means submission to a repressive perception of ‘love’. Mary at one point voices aloud her fears marriage in surrendering her authority and well-being to a man’s caprices (p.137-8). However, by the next page she is giggling feverishly over a portrait of King Phillip. Mary’s powerful oratory fades to infatuated simpers or will-sappingingly long soliloquies of despair.  Bluntly, Mary often comes across as simply stupid: Castor’s analysis of the extensive reasoning behind Mary’s choice is boiled down by Gregory essentially to her thinking with her vagina. Elizabeth at least seems occasionally to employ her brain in tandem.

Then again, Mary’s decision is no so surprising considering how ‘love’ is portrayed. Hannah worries she ‘had no idea to be a woman’ (p.g.106), upon seeing Elizabeth, Gregory’s paragon of bitchy, husband-stealing femininity. Quite why Hannah wants to be a conventional woman when she is surrounded by plenty of miserable examples remains inscrutable. Especially when men- because being a ‘woman’ is ultimately defined by marriage- are either pedantically possessive, like Hannah’s betrothed Daniel, or handsomely amiable cads like Robert Dudley. Superficially, Hannah is a liberated Renaissance lass, swaggering in breeches round courts and print-houses echoing the spirited cross-dressing heroines of Shakespearean comedies. Beneath her vocal scorning of her arranged marriage however, is a pining for male control:

Despite myself, my body took in the sense of him: the strength of his arms, the power of his thighs which pressed against me, the scent of him and for some odd reason, the sense of absolute safety he gave me… I realized that I wanted to mould myself around him, put my head on his shoulder, let him hold me against him and know that I was safe- it only I would let him love me, if only I would let myself love him. (p.g.157)

Love is synonymous with submission, for queens or commoners alike. A good idea to, as one sniff of male sexuality and these ‘liberated’ women instantly dissolve into a giddy stew of desire. Wouldn’t trust them with a teapot, let alone a throne. It is telling also that Hannah’s focuses on ‘safety’. Mary’s sense of insecurity without a husband is made wholly personal, without reference to the difficulties of accommodating a lone female ruler into the Tudor political system.[5] All the women, bar Elizabeth, seek security from men who promptly cheat/abandon/reject them. Elizabeth choosing to remain single sounds more like common sense than a ‘breaking of her soul’ (p.g.488).

History? What history?

My other bone of contention is how history itself is presented in Gregory’s fiction. In The Queen’s Fool, Hannah is granted the ability of second sight, allowing her to conveniently build dramatic tension by foreseeing the triumphs and disasters of Mary I’s reign. Consequently there is a coy self-awareness throughout the novel, a permeating irony that erodes any sense of genuine historical distance. Part of the attraction of the Tudor period as a romantic setting is admittedly that its sexual politics allow for far more drama than own permissive and saturated perception of sexuality, whilst Gregory imposes an anachronistic romantic glow over the whole proceedings. Compare to Mantel’s depiction of Anne Boleyn as a shrewd political player, who manages to maintain her allure without descending to a romantic archetype.  Historical romances inevitably emphasizes the universality of love- or maybe the animal necessity of rutting. Titillation is an easy short-cut for the barriers of historical distance. Never mind that the character’s actions are unlikely in the extreme- would Elizabeth really let Dudley ‘stroke her as if she was a whore’ before the entire court (p.g.449)? Gregory’s characters are not embodiment of the past- they are erotic fantasies draped in trappings of history.

Our version of events

Yet there are admirable elements too. Overwhelmingly, this genre focuses of female characters. It is Anne Boleyn, Jane Dormer, Bess of Hardwick, Mary Carey, Amy Dudley and Elizabeth herself who step forward as protagonists. The sources of the day frequently dismissed them as conniving sluts or passively virtuous good-wives  the arm-candy of king’s or usurping viagros which has been carried on by historical criticism ever since. Elizabeth was a frigid icon or a secret minx. In the literature of the time, women were turned into passive idols stripped of autonomous desires, dismembered in blazons or condemned as receptacles of sin (most infamously in Monstrous Regiment).[6] But now, both in fiction and history, women take center stage. Admittedly they are still mostly defined by their relationships to men but are at least allowed credit as interesting and varied characters shamefully far more than in much contemporary fiction.

Virgina Woolfe complained in Room of Ones Own that female friendship is almost ignored in literature in comparison to depictions of male friendship. In The Queen’s Fool, the stormy relationship between the two Tudor sisters for me was far more compelling than any of their love affairs. Similarly, Kat Ashley, Jane Dormer and Hannah herself stress repeatedly the importance of female confidants in an often ugly misogynistic world. Jane Dormer’s devotion to her royal mistress even as power and sanity ebbs from her is a touching portrayal of selfless female friendship. The majority of books bought in the UK are by women surveys suggest. Undoubtedly the market in romantic fiction is overwhelmingly female. If all historical fiction is to an extent a re-writing of the past, then in the bodice-rippers the women who had been relegated to side-players in the stories of great men can, to quote Emile Sandé, give their version of events. It is unsurprising therefore that it is the Tudors which have attracted so much attention. Whilst Matilda, Eleanor of Aquitaine and Isabella have left few records of their personal opinions, as Castor acknowledges, the Renaissance has far more examples of autobiographies and women’s personal writing. Ok, maybe these works could be criticised as revisionist liberal nonsense in bringing the marginalised to the forefront of history. But Hannah- Jewish, female, exiled- reflects that the inverse opinions of the outsider have become the mainstream.

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[1] Phillipa Gregory The Queen’s Fool, , (London, 2003)

[2] Pg.293

[3] Helen Castor, She-Wolves: The women who ruled England before Elizabeth,(London, 2010)

[4] See Romeo and Juliet (1507?), Phillip Sidney’s Arcadia (1570). Petrarch was writing much earlier in the 1300’s but was widely read when Wyatt was writing during Henry VIII’s reign and Shakespeare during Elizabeth’s.

[5] See She-Wolves, Chapter six

[6] A 1558 tract by theologian John Knox attacking women’s suitability to rule.

The hilarity of the Meaninglessness of Existence: The Sirens of Titan

The Sirens of Titan can hold a claim to have the greatest opening line, nay greatest opening paragraph, in the history of literature. Everyone has their personal favourites: ‘It’s a truth universally acknowledged…’; ‘Call me Ishmael’…; ‘It was the best of times’… I myself have always nurtured a nostalgic fondness for, ‘Dawn crept across the golf-course, where she had left her car keys the night before’.[1] But in terms of sheer literary brassiness, Kurt Vonnegut clinches it:

Everyone now knows how to find the meaning of life within himself. [2]

What makes this opening line so brilliant, like all the best lines, is that it pithily distils the essence of all which is to follow. Whilst Slaughter-House Five is more infamous, Sirens is perhaps the more astringent riposte to the 1950’s All-American enthusiasm for technological advancement and indolent assurance of the triumph of the human spirit. Vonnegut’s subversive wit exposes the lurking fear in the vapid heart of modernity: perhaps the wonders of the universe, the pinnacles of human achievement, are just one horrendous cosmic joke. Or, in Vonnegut’s words, a ‘nightmare of meaningless without end…empty heroics, low comedy and pointless death’. Obviously it is rib-crackingly funny.

Siren’s is a truly atheistic novel, exploring human’s destructive fallacies of belief, whether it is in ‘gimcrack religion’, capitalist materialism or plain ol’ luck. Set in in the dark days of the 21^st century, when man ‘could not name even one of the fifty-three portals of the soul’, the novel follows the noveau riche playboy Malachi Constant’s disastrous attempts to avoid what fate (or rather, the lack of it) has in store for him. In steps Winston Niles Roomford, an old-money space explorer who was granted omniscience after an encounter with a ‘chrono-synclastic indundibulum’.[3] His prophecy triggers the events of the novel which eventually leads to a confrontation with the architects of the universe themselves…

Even if you’re not an atheist, it is hard not to enjoy Vonnegut gleefully taking a sledgehammer to providence. He is particularly scathing on the sterile promises of technology and the hollow platitudes of self-improvement which reinforce man’s delusions of grandeur. The universe is a vacuum of indifference into which religious belief, luck or human striving echo hollowly. Just because a man aims for the stars doesn’t stop him being an insignificant meat-bag in the enormity of existence. Malachi Constant’s confident maxim ‘someone up there likes me’ becomes laconically ironic. At the end when the mechanics of the universe are finally revealed, they are distinctly anticlimactic. I won’t spoil the ending but let’s just say it ain’t the almighty that puts in an appearance.

Sirens is a very American work, with a very American concern with success, the divine and the perils of hubristic development. Roomford, the embodiment of East-Coast wealth, health, handsomeness and pioneer spirit, has become literally a man-made god. American’s natural conclusion about themselves, some limeys might uncharitably mutter. But Roomford’s Teflon perfection, his patronising amusement of human foibles and cold-blooded manipulations are ultimately repulsive: ‘He was genially willing to shed the blood of others’. (p.g.124). If modernity ultimately makes God’s in our own image, Vonnegut suggests man’s achievements cannot fill the void left by God either.

Sirens cheerfully veers between the profound and the ridiculous. Roomford materialises from his transcendental travels through space and time with his dog Kazak, ‘the hound of space’ bouncing on the end of a lead. In chapter ten, The Church of God the Utterly Indifferent creates a model egalitarian society through modifying ‘handicaps’. Beautiful women wear revolting clothes, the strong laden themselves with weights and sex-bombs marry prudes in a weird, purgatorial procession. Sirens could be seen as an absurdist novel: Malachi Constant certainly becomes a Sisyphus-like figure at the mercy of inscrutable forces throwing him into increasingly bizarre situations. But whilst Cadmus saw this is a bleak, quasi-existential revelation, Vonnegut sees it as hilarious.[4] Maybe the novel is better seen as Bertrand’s chocolate teapot made flesh: a work which has to become absurd itself to discuss ideas which are fundamentally ridiculous.[5]

The eponymous, alluring Sirens of Titans become symbolic of the emptiness of humanity’s insatiable desire to unearth ‘meaning’ in life. The ideals of material success, which Roomford embodies and Malachi aspires to, are equally negligible as philosophical abstractions. But don’t despair: kick back, relax and laugh at the absurdity of it all. After all, nobodies watching…

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[1] For more lovers of terrible, terrible opening lines, see The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction contest.

[2] The Sirens of Titan, Kurt Vonnegut, (Orion, 2005- 1959), p.1

[3]Try spelling that when you’re dyslexic – LadyGreyEyes.

[4] Albert Cadmus – A 20^th century French writer and essayist who developed a philosophy of ‘Absurdism’. He argues in a world where God is absent and human reasoning fundamentally flawed, man must continually struggle to find meaning in a world which has none.

[5] Bertrand Russell- An English 20^th century mathematician and philosopher. An atheist, he used the metaphor of a chocolate teapot orbiting a distant planet to illustrate what he believed was the ridiculous logic of religious belief. You cannot prove/disprove the existence of the chocolate teapot any more than the existence of God.

Post Structures

As a rough guide, here are three simple essay structures I like to call the Evaluative, the Summative and the Spaghetti:

–          Evaluative: If you’re writing a review, the most basic structure is a comparison of good/bad elements. At the simplest, a brief over-view of the book (two or three sentences), a section on what you liked, a section on what you disliked and an overall conclusion. Sounds obvious, but many reviews meander between points randomly with no sense balance or final judgement

         Example: You found Fifty Shades of Grey boring and badly written but nevertheless thought that it was encouraging that women’s desires were being openly discussed.

–          Spaghetti: If you’re more interested in discussing general features of a book than judging it, consider breaking your observations into sections then working out which sections best link together. It’s simpler to think of these ideas thematically, rather than breaking them down into character/language/plot, which can seem over-simplistic. I call it ‘spaghetti’ as it allows you to refer back to points you’ve made more easily than in the evaluative model. You can even use subheadings in longer works to make your points clearer.

Example: ‘Why magic in Harry Potter makes no sense’:

*Spells: All spoken spells are in Latin. What happens if you speak Swahili? Couldn’t you just magically seal evil wizards lips together as a precautionary measure?…

*Wands: If you need a gun licence to own a shotgun, why is any random wizard allowed to purchase a wand without a wizarding CRB check?…              

*Magic Creatures: Interesting re-interpretation of folklore in a modern setting e.g. goblins are bankers, house-elves the oppressed proletariat  were-wolves are the latest epidemic crisis…

And etc, etc…

 *Conclusion: Magic is most interesting when it becomes a social issue, such as prejudice or how a magical world might conceal itself. Unfortunately, magic inevitably becomes a deux ex machine with few consistent rules.

In this example, ‘magic’ is discussed as a plot device and as a social issue. Rather than dividing into two sections, it progresses through different magical elements discussing each one as it goes.

– Summation: Maybe you want to discuss something more generally, such as science fiction. Try picking several works which seem representative of particular genres and themes and linking them through shared themes. Alternatively, proceeding chronologically is an easy way to give a shape to your argument. Don’t try to fit everything you’ve ever read in!

Example: Science fiction tropes

1)Evil space invaders (War of the Worlds, Invaders of the Body-Snatchers) 

2) Unexplained big-thingy-me-bobs hanging in the sky (Rendevouz with Rama)

3) Bleak dystopias (Brave New World,  Fahrenheit 451)

4) Sexy alien/cyborg women (Ghosts in the Shell)

5)Techno-babble (too numerous to list) etc, etc.

In this example, Rendevouz with Rama would be a good follow up to War of the Worlds as both of them have big-thingy-me-bobs in them. If you can link the different sections by a shared point, the article will ‘flow’ better.

For more advice or just to discuss ideas, drop an email to LadyGreyEyes.

Writing a post: Hints and Tips

Recently I’ve had a lot of messages from people who would like to contribute to a literary blog but aren’t sure how to get started. Writing a blog post can be intimidating if you’ve never done it before, but do not despair! Follow these five simple tips and you’ll be scribbling in no time! (Note- some of this advice may seem obvious/overly simplistic/duh. Some sections are intended for those who have never written before, others are more general points for all writers to bear in mind).

1. Decide WHAT to write on

Many people trip up when writing a post by either: A) Summarizing the book, B) Attacking/ventriloquizing someone else’s opinion on it or C) Scribbling too many unconnected ideas.

Before you write, ask yourself:

–          What do I actually want to say? Is it a criticism? If so, why exactly did you like/dislike it? Was it beautifully poetic language or realistic dialogue? Was it a fun, exciting read or reflective and melancholy? Try and expand on a few of these ideas rather than dismantling it into all its constituent parts.

–          Maybe there’s an idea rather than the book itself you want to discuss: for example how desire is explored in the newest best-seller or how so-and-so really captures the mind-set of a teenage boy.

–          Or maybe the book has provoked a more general thought. Maybe about which books are marketed to women or your favourite childhood read. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a weighty reflection on the Marxist ethics of the dissemination of knowledge through online publications. Just try to find something original that you’ve noticed or you know a lot about. If you grew up in Manchester in the 1990’s for example, you would be in a good position to say whether a book’s depiction of this place and time was accurate!

                       2. Sketch out a structure

There’s no right or wrong way to write a post. However, if you’re really stuck or have never written a longer article before, try these following these simple structures (they work for longer essays too!).

3. Writing Rules:

–          DO set a word limit. Try and write between 200-1,000 words as a basic guide. Too short and people will skip over it; too long and people will get bored. Remember, this isn’t an academic article, nor a twitter feed. Try and say as much as possible in the fewest words.

–          DO check grammar and spelling. Using colloquial language is fine but you may lose readers if sentences are difficult to read. Have someone proof-read it first if possible.

–          DO avoid repetition. Many blog posts just state the same point over and over again. Read through carefully and, as much as it pains, cull any extraneous sentences.

–          DO avoid clichés. Otherwise you could use them til’ the cows come home.

–          DO give detail. Don’t just say ‘it was exciting’. Let the reader infer what you mean: ‘the surprising plot twists concerning the stolen carriage clock and the Tick-Tock murderer ratcheted the tension up unbearably’.

–          DO give a brief summary of works you reference. Not everyone will know the books you do. But…

–          DON’T get bogged down in describing lists of books. ‘A murder-mystery set in the 18^th century’ will probably do in passing.

–          DON’T give in to unnecessary slander. There are plenty of posts saying ‘Twilight is rubbish’, ‘Shakespeare is boring’, ‘He/She is totally ugly/gay/fascist’. It may get you sued for defamation but worse than that, it’s plain boring. Criticism is best when it’s informative or better yet, funny. See Charlie Brooker.

–          DON’T just repeat what everyone else is saying. Books trend and hype comes and goes. Either try to find something original about the new best-seller (everyone’s mentioned the scandalous sex scenes but has anyone mentioned its class politics?) or a work no-one’s talking about. You might spark a new trend!

–          DON’T use needlessly complicated language when simple will do. ‘Tenebrous tone’ is bemusing; ‘threatening atmosphere’ is illuminating. That said, don’t be afraid of using technical language if it really captures what you’re trying to say: ‘X has a pointillist skill in gradually building everyday mundanities, such as putting the rubbish out, into a complex portrait of familial strife’. We have online thesauruses now; expanding the nation’s vocabulary is a noble pursuit.

–          DO pick something you’re generally interested in, not what you think the blogsphere is gossiping about.

4. Copyright:

–          IMAGES: Using images is a good idea but be careful where you source them. As a general rule, images in the public domain (i.e. found through Google) are fine if you cite the original site. Taking an image from someone’s Tumblr or personal website would be in breach of copyright. If you really want to use it, contact them first but it would probably be simpler to use a different image.

–          TEXT: Copyright for books usually means it’s acceptable to quote a sentence or two but not to reproduce large sections of the work. If possible, cite the edition you read at the bottom to make it clear. A standard referencing format would be:

*Stevenson, Robert Louis, The Strange case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, (Penguin Popular Classics, 1994)

This information is usually on one of the first inside pages.

–          INTELLECTUAL: The internet unfortunately has made it a lot easier to plagiarize ideas deliberately or accidentally. First, and most obviously, DON’T just copy and paste huge sections of text off another blog or review. Stealing ‘ideas’ is harder to define, but re-writing someone else’s article in your own words, whether you meant to or not, can get you into trouble with the author if they discover it. If in doubt, put a link back to the original or reference them directly.

But don’t worry too much – as this site is mediated externally (i.e. EyesOfAthena read all works beforehand), it’s unlikely there will be any court cases pending. But being respectful of author’s rights will make the process a lot easier.

5.Lastly…

Enjoy writing it. If you’re agonising over every sentence, you’ll be unlikely to finish it and if you do, it will probably sound strained. Don’t worry about what others are thinking too much – this is a space to comment and share, not sit a literature exam!

Bodices and Bookers Part Three: The Who-Dunnit

From Brother Cadfael to Amelia Peabody and its travesty in the conspiracy fiction of Dan Brown, historical mysteries alchemise two of the most popular literary genres. Occasionally, it produces gold . Unfortunately, there is a lot of iron pyrite to sift through first.

C J Sansom’s Henrician mysteries following the adventures of the crippled lawyer Matthew Shardlake never quite manages the elusive chemical wedding. The awkward, rather melodramatic denunciation at the bell-tower conclusion of his Dissoloution, (Mission Impossible: The Cistercian affair), particularly had me raising my eyebrows. Constructing an ‘authentic’ vision of the past is a delicate process. Whilst it can absorb the occasional anachronism, or even blatant fabrication, the clumsy intrusion of the 21^st century disintegrates the careful web of illusion. L.P. Hartley suggested ‘the past is another country’. Wrong: the past is another world, simultaneously alien and familiar, as distant as Middle-Earth or the United Republics of Mars. The past should be earthy and irrefutable as a midden-cart, not facts and personages laid out like curios in a collector’s cabinet: beautiful maybe, but ultimately dead and dried. That doesn’t mean characters should spout bastard Shakespearean prose but neither should they abruptly start slanging like Dirty Harry.

In common with many examples of this genre, Samson falls into the fallacy of transposing contemporary liberal sensibilities wholesale into his characters. Whilst Mantel skilfully invokes the consciousness of a world where sympathetic piety can nestle comfortably with inquisitorial violence, Shardlake’s characters are modern humanists in a dog-eat Renaissance world. Shardlake is repulsed by Cromwell’s Machiavellian machinations, which surely would not have been shocking, or even unexpected, in the ruthless religious politics of the day. Shardlake is a cipher for the audience, wondering at the strange brutalities and curiosities of this Strange Old World, rather than truly being a part of it.

Part of the problem is the irreconcilable difference between the mindset of detective fiction and Tudor England. The empirical and objective interest of the quintessential Holmesian detective was alien in the Renaissance. True, there was the shadowy world of Walsingham’s spy-rings (as possibly both Kyd and Marlowe found to their cost) or the gossipy intrigues of court but nothing akin to a detective agency or forensics lab. Iain Pears Mystery of the Fingerpost (1997) successfully exploits this dis-junction in a Restoration-era murder where old religious philosophies and superstitions are gradually being eroded by an emerging scientific philosophy. But in Sanson’s novels this generic hybridizing forces an ahistorical transposition of values. Inevitably, the tone edges closer to the sardonic cynicism of Chandler, an amoral man in a dirty world, skulking down the back-alleys of Southwark. It’s a dirty job but some monks’ gotta do it.

And yet, and yet… this in itself is not necessarily a failing of the genre. At worst it can be bemusing. At best it can be invigorating, especially if there is a genuine historical mystery to unravel. Umbero Eco’s Name of the Rose (1980), which I mentioned last week, whilst digressing occasionally into semiotic quagmires is fundamentally a Who-Dunnit. William of Baskerville and his assistant Adso investigate several gleefully gruesome murders at an Italian monastery which may be linked to Aristotle’s lost treatise on comedy. Set in a period where Classical works circulating from Andalusia and heretical revolts in Europe were destabilizing conventional beliefs systems, the historical conundrum illuminates a seething back drop of paranoia and zealous dogmatism. An undercurrent of unease runs through Name of the Rose, as if afraid of what one might find if they dare look. The process of detection itself seems reflected in the symbolic labyrinth at the heart of the monastery, a deceptive façade of geometric order concealing chaos, red herrings and unexpected monstrosities. The generic framework of a detective novel structures philosophical musings which might otherwise seem intimidatingly esoteric.

Dissoloution’s tone is more unapologetically mainstream, its hero more akin to Poirot than William of Occam. Shardlake’s position as a lawyer however, interestingly highlights a wider debate of where legality elides with morality as the Reformation rives spirituality with politics. Shardlake’s dawning realization of the torrid machinations beneath his idealized model of enlightened religious reform may be revealed rather clumsily at times but his bleak reflection at the conclusion of Dissolution has a powerful force. All is disillusionment, revelation collapsing any faith in divine or human justice. Forget it Matty, its Scamsea.

It also suggests why early modernity particularly holds such appeal for mysteries and murders, a time when the authorities of old systems were crumbling and new ideologies were birthed violently. It is notable that the other popular periods for historical crime fiction – the Victorians, the collapse of Rome, the hundred years war – are all times of seismic cultural shift. It would be a simplification to see Renaissance as a sudden dispelling of dark-age superstition to reveal a gleaming new modern sensibility (whatever C S Lewis might say). But the subtleties of Tudor plots and schemes are far more fertile ground for mysteries than the blatant butchery of the Wars of the Roses for example. It obligingly provides a roll call of villains and anti-heroes, plentiful lashings of familial in-fighting, foreign wars and succession crises. Shardlake’s amoral world, populated by princes and whores, heretics, clerics, assassins, sodomites, artisans, plotters and peasants, is more film noir than Agatha Christie. When it gets into its rhythm, it can bring a murky past to life.

Top Ten: Arthurian Legends Old and New

The Boy Who Lived is a cultural icon: the Once and Future King is a legend.  From the BBC’s Merlin to the RSC’s hugely successful production of Morte D’Arthure to innumerable fan-fictions, Arthur proves he can still single-handedly support the Cornish heritage industry. Over the centuries he has evolved from a quasi-mythical Celtic prince to an icon of Welsh nationalism; a glittering epitome of chivalry; a model of Christian virtue; and in recent years monopolized by New Agers and fantasy role-players. So here, in chronological order, are my Top Ten Arthurian tales…

The Mabignion

1. The Mabingion – Various ( 11^th century onward)

Collected from several Welsh medieval manuscripts, these stories are possibly the oldest versions of the Arthurian legends we have. Culhwch ac Olwen (Culhwch and Olwen) follows the pursuit of a young knight for the woman he is cursed to love. Unfortunately, Olwen is the daughter of the grotesque giant Ysbadadden who must keep his sagging eye-lids propped open with sticks. And he isn’t too thrilled at the prospect of a son-in-law  prophesied to kill him. In folkloric pattern, Culhwch must undergo a succession of trials to win his beloved, aided by his cousin King Arthur and his knights. This is no polished world of chivalry and romantic intrigue, but a strange land of wild magic and monsters. Arthur’s court is populated by shape-shifting Menw, Bedwyr (Bedivere) and a noble Kai, who has not yet morphed into Malory’s obnoxious oaf.

12th century manuscript of Lancelot and Guinivere.

2.  Chrétien De Troyes (12^th Century)

This French troubadour created many of the iconic elements of the Arthurian canon, including the love triangle of Arthur, Lancelot and  Guinevere. These stories epitomize the ethic of medieval tortured desire where knights suffer, bleed, weep and go mad for their unimpressed mistresses. ‘Romance’ for the first time comes to the forefront of Arthurian mythology. In Erec and Enide, marriage struggles to be reconciled with knightly duty; in Yvain, a disgraced knight seeks redemption from his lady aided by a leonine companion; and in The Knight and the Cart Lancelot goes above and beyond the call of duty to rescue Guinevere. These romances delight in the sweet agonies of love and opulent descriptions of richly embroidered clothes, exquisite jewels and female beauty. Conversely, his unfinished  Percival changes tone in a transcendental quest for the Holy Grail.

Manuscript illustration of the beheading contest.

3. Gawain and the Green Knight – The Pearl poet (13^th century)

Snow is falling. The hall is decked, the feast is laid; the King jokingly demands a tale of ‘some marvel’. Abruptly the doors are thrown open – in rides the enigmatic figure of man green from head to foot, brandishing a holly bough and an axe. And he wants to play a game… Perhaps the most beautifully constructed of all medieval romances, it moves smoothly between the elegant world of the court and the bleak wilds of the Wirral to create a brooding air of foreboding. Gawain emerges a complex figure, a paragon of knightly courtesy who nevertheless struggles against the fear of death and the temptations of love. At the climax at the green chapel, the     ideals of chivalry are tested by dangerous, mysterious, outside forces. The Gawain poet’s lilting, alliterative Middle English has been translated by Tolkein, and Armitage but is still fairly accessible in the original.

15th century illustration of a deer hunt

4. The Awentyrs off Arthur – Unknown (14^th century)

An obscure addition to the Arthurian canon, this little-known romance is something of an oddity. It begins when Gawain and Guinevere are confronted by the ghost of Guinevere’s mother whilst on a hunting trip (no, it doesn’t make much sense, even six hundred years later). This brilliantly horrible apparition, fresh from purgatory with burning eye-sockets and rotting flesh crawling with maggots and toads, has come to foretell doom if the court doesn’t repent of its worldly sins. However, its strangeness is part of the attraction, featuring gorgeous description of courtly apparel, as well as one of the most bloody combat scenes of all medieval romances. There is palpable sense of foreboding for the first time that this glamorous world will inevitably collapse in on itself. As the ghost reflects on the infant Mordred innocently playing in Camelot: ‘In riche Arthures halle,/The barne playes at the balle,/That outray [destroy]shall you alle/Delfully that day’.

Elaine of Astolat- original artwork Anna Marie Ferguson

5. Morte D’Arthure – Malory (15^th century)

A heroic attempt to integrate all the divergent strands of Arthurian legends in a single grand narrative, Malory’s magnum opus (possibly written whilst he was imprisoned for rape) remains most influential version. Malory imposes a providential framework where the sins and internal conflicts festering in Camelot finally tear it asunder. Written in the style of a medieval chronicle, it lacks the descriptive wealth and psychological depth of other romances but gains in breadth and detail. From the tragedy of Balin and the Fisher King, to the flirtations of Tristan and Isolde and the religious wonder of the Grail Quest, the work encompasses the full spectrum of Arthurian mythology. Take particular note of the book of Sir Gareth:  probably the only original addition of Malory’s, there is an understated humour in Gareth’s stony-faced response to the sharp-tongued Dame Lyonesse’s haranguing.

1888 painting, John William Waterhouse

6. The Lady of Shalott– Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1833)

 On an island of aspens, willows and lilies, in distant tower, a lady sits at her spinning wheel.  Through an enchanted mirror shadows of Camelot shift and blur. In this retelling of the story of Lancelot and Elaine of Astolat, Tennyson presents a lyrical, melancholy portrait of suffering Victorian femininity. Whilst very much a product of its time, the ballad has an exquisite, jewel-like beauty and a wistful sense of doomed love that has influenced artists and singers since the Pre-Raphaelites.

 

The Sword in the Stone

7. The Sword in the Stone – T.H. White (1938)

Previous works neglected Arthur’s childhood, skipping straight from conception to coronation. But in The Sword in the Stone, Logres becomes the idyllic ever-land of childhood (to prove it, it was turned into a Disney film). Wart (Arthur) bickers with his brother Kay, gallivants with Robin Hood and has lessons with a comically befuddled Merlin and his sardonic owl Archimedes. White’s vision is a brilliantly ahistorical parody: the Knights are blustering Etonians, quests are an afternoon excursion before supper and Latin grammar can always be skipped in favor of being transformed into a kestrel. But there is a darker undertone in this sunlit world. Wart gradually learns that there are always those who believe ‘Might is Right’. Written as the spectre of fascism and war loomed, this light-hearted children’s novel becomes a reflection on the nature of power. T H White was also unfortunately an adamant misogynist. Morgause in The Witch in the Wood is a case in point: a coldly beautiful sadist, abusing her children and plotting to seduce her brother. This humorous, quirky world is ultimately paradise lost, revealing an author aware that nostalgic chivalry was about to be subsumed by the brutal ideologies of the 20^th century.

The Mists of Avalon

8. Mists Of Avalon – Marion Zimmer Bradley (1983)

MOA earns a place on this list for being the most successful attempt at a feminist retelling of Arthurian mythology. The novel depicts a Celtic society in which a matriarchal pagan cult is struggling against a growing Christian patriarchy that threatens to fragment their society. Although this quasi New Age ethic might irk some readers, it is refreshing to see a more complex portrait of Malory’s elusive women:  Morgain, Vivian, Nimue, Igraine and Gwenhwyfar. In contrast to White’s scheming siren, Morgause/Morganna Le Fay is sympathetically re-imagined as a priestess of Avalon battling to prevent the kingdom collapsing . The association with mother goddess cults and the Virgin Mary will either seem a clever twist or cumbersome neo-paganism depending on the reader, but it’s the work which still most decisively breaks with the tradition of Camelot as an all-boys club.

Corbenic

9. Corbenic – Catherine Fisher (2002)

Probably the most obscure book on this list, Corbenic is an inventive twist on the Grail Quest. Cal is a conflicted, angry boy, running from the delusions of his alcoholic mother and disdainful of her illusions that he will be a ‘saviour’. After a supernatural encounter with a man claiming to be the Fisher King, he falls in with a troop of historical re-enactors who mirror the Knights of the Round Table. Catherine Fisher’s novel is (refreshingly) free of sentimentality. Cal is both Galahad and Balin, destructively raging against his inheritance but unable to free himself from it. It is never made clear whether the re-enactors are victims of grand delusions themselves. In exploring the nature of despair, redemption and what a ‘quest’ means in a modern world, it is perhaps the most successful transposition of Arthurian legends to the present day.

The Seeing Stone

10 . The Seeing Stone – Kevin Crossley-Holland

It is 1199 and Arthur of Caldicot is dreaming of being a knight. When the liver-spotted, cantankerous Merlin gives him a ‘seeing stone’, strange things begin to occur… In a hundred succinct chapters, a medieval world on the cusp of change is brought vividly to life. It is an earthy, unromantic world where frost scratches, muck splatters, brothers jeer, babies die and maggots writhe in cheese. But is also a world of riddles and festivities, soaked in Christian ritual and the myths of the Welsh Marches. Crossley-Holland is a medieval scholar and he acutely understands the relation between medieval society and the stories they told. Just as the gawky, bullied Arthur observes his legendary parallel in the seeing stone, so medieval society is framed against the idealized legends we have created. Framed in a world teetering between centuries, The Seeing Stone presents a world where myth bleeds into reality.

Bodices and Bookers Part Two: Wolf Hall

Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall is an acquired taste. Some readers might grow impatient with the meandering, elliptical language or quickly swamped by a deluge of names, places and dates. As a self-confessed history geek, the kind of girl more familiar with the Elizabethan cabinet than the current government, I personally relished its immersive depth. Mantel’s Cromwell trilogy could be seen as a successor of Umberto Echo’s The name of the Rose (1980) in terms of ambition and detail. However, Mantel’s work is not as hermetically scholarly as Eco. Mantel dispenses with Eco’s pretence of pseudo-veracity. This is not a lost manuscript or Cromwell’s teenage diary: this is history unfolding directly before us. Indeed, it is testament to Mantel’s skill that there is no self-concious varnish of ‘historicism’. The illusion of immediacy is maintained through her (much criticised) use of a present, omniscienet narrator without resorting to any pained ye-ing and thee-ing.

The challenge of historical fiction is to create a world which is both ‘real’ and yet not a continuation of our own: to make the past live and breathe whilst not slipping into the fallacy of dressing our own ideals up in petticoats and cod-pieces. Some critics complain that Mantel’s work is empty of meaning beyond desiring to create a believable sense of the past. These are the kind of people who want the MEANING AND SIGNIFICANCE OF THE TEXT nailed to a post like a strangled ferret. At the worst, this self-consciousness can become like Ian McEwan at his most self-absorbed; the kind of book that unconsciously makes you think of an English A-Level sylabbus. Did you remember to fit the intertextual references in? And pathetic fallacy? Oh good. Wolf Hall refreshingly remains free of overt literary pretensions, whilst still demanding intellectual engagement from its readers. Undoubtedly the Putney brat would have smirked at the suggestion his life might yield a moral.

Cromwell himself is the centrifugal force at the heart of the novel. Mantel adeptly fleshes out the human complexity of Holbein’s grim-faced magistrate: a beaten child, a soldier, a grieving father, a loyal servant, an astute politican, someone you wouldn’t cross in a back alley. However, those shrewd dark pupils do not spill all their secrets, even as the reader peers through them. It is a clever authorial sleight-of-hand, exploring the minute intimacies of his life but still leaving the man inscrutable.

Some might complain Mantel went too far in empathising with a man many perceive as a fanatic or a monster, although personally I agree with her iconoclastic portrayal of the ‘saintly’ Moore as an uncompromising zealot. Significantly, Cromwell the statesman is inextricable from Cromwell the husband and father. Many historical novels neglect the everyday mundanities, which underpinned the great events of the past. The great and good still chatted to their spouses over breakfast, wondered abour redecorating the house, moaned about weather. Austin Friars, Cromwell’s home, is accorded as much importance as court. The disenfracised of history- his wife Liz Wykys, his doomed daughters, his father and sisters, friends, nephews and cooks- take centre stage along with the powerful and famous.This Cromwell is exasperated equally by the vacillations of French ambassadors and his nieces painting Easter eggs.

I inherited vaguely socialist principles but there is certain smug pleasure observing a blacksmith’s son rising to the height of political power in Tudor England. There is a subtle awareness that the gradual evolution of a capitalist system is subverting the feudal illusions the nobles still harbour. Power now lies with banker and trader, the economic demands of the populace rather than their lord’s whims. Her emphasis gives a shade of tragedy to Cromwell’s story; a man who rose to power on the cusp of change by exploiting the old order but inevitably doomed to be a victim of it. The Putney interloper is tolerated only when he is indispensable –  and that depends on the caprices of a jovial but terrifyingly mercurial monarch.

Mantel has a talent for the thumbnail portrait, the brief humanising flash animating infamous and obscure alike. Norfolk jingling with relics and rage, Stephen Gadiner bitter as lemon peel, Mary Boleyn running up a corridor in green silk stockings. Anne Boleyn particularly emerges a far more complex woman that the usual characterisations of a manipulative bitch or a tragic icon. This Anne is a coolly calculating, cunning and languid as a cat with a streak of feline malice. However, she is also at turns sentimental and vulnerable, neither victim nor villain. She and Cromwell treat each other with wary respect, recognising they are the most astute players in the game – for now.

The greatest difficulty of any history writer is, to quote Anne Fine, ‘to create a world so real that you can run your fingers over its walls, feel its morning frost at your throat and remember the people who lived their for a lifetime’. The novel’s conversations, littered with snippets of gossip, classical quotations, hidden threats, scraps of poetry and the price of Flemish wool convey a living world more vividly than any other historical novel I have read. The Tudors lived in a material world and the gaudy environment of the court particularly loaded jewels and clothing with symbolic significance. Mantel’s evocative language similarly enriches each object with meaning. The walls writhe with embroidered goddesses and saints; legends crawl from the wood-work, books hold the intangible promise of salvation. She is particularly good at describing tapestries of light and dark, the flickering candle-lit pattern of shadows of this murky Tudor world.

The novel returns again and again to the circular process of history, endlessly recreated anew. History in this world elides with myth, tangled and full of snares. The Battle of Bosworth seagues into legends of Brut, layers of silted history from now obscure medieval chronicles (the research Mantel must have undertaken is phenomenal). History is held sacred but casually rewritten to suit one’s purposes, as Cromwell is sardonically aware. Queens can be erased, marriages wiped from the record and hero made traitor by a stroke of a pen or slip of the tongue. The enquiry into Catherine of Aragon’s disputed virginity reaches its farcical epitome: a moment beyond memory is russurected for ideology, a boy’s joking boast a matter of international debate. The stories familiar to the Tudors already passed out of national consciousness, reminding us that we as readers have created our own archetypes from the Tudors. Cromwell rewrites the past even as we read it. History has already slipped out of our hands.

Mantel’s novels all have an enduring obsession with memory and death. Mantel’s richly metaphorical language blurs and blends past and present together. Cromwell’s dead daughter Grace lingers dressed in angel’s wings make of peacock feathers, it’s eyes a ‘smoky topaz’ in the firelight. The dead haunt the living: Cromwell’s dead wife lingers in the corner of his eye, his violent father roars and clatters through his memory. The King’s long gone brother Arthur materialises in his dreams, the long-gone ghosts rattling their bones indignantly. But the living also haunt the dead, digging them up to force new words into their mouths, claim them for our own causes. Mantel’s work is not just a recreation of the past but an interrogation of what history itself is.

From this day to the ending of the world, in it shall be remembered…

… well, ok, perhaps not quite that momentous.

Still… EyesOfAthena has officially launched! Rejoice!

So, what can we look forward to?

Well… Today I’ve posted the first of a three part series on Tudor fiction, starting with (who else) Hilary Mantel.

Coming up in the next few days:

*Reviews of The Sirens of Titan and The Paladin of Souls

* The Top Ten Legends of King Arthur

* A Hatchet Job in Ian McEwan’s On Chesil Beach

*A new poll: ‘Which book should you really not have but have on the back of the shelf anyway’?

And much, much more!

Submissions are already coming in so expect a wealth of literary gossip coming your way!

Bodices and Bookers: The rise and rise of Tudor fiction (Introduction)

Hilary Mantel’s recent double Booker success with Wolf Hall (2009) and Bring up the Bodies (2012) might be unparalleled but in retrospect not unsurprising. The popularity of her novels reflects the enduring legacy of the Tudors in British cultural fabric. TV shows such as The Tudors swilled in soapy suds of murder, adultery and plunging necklines that would make Albert Square pale, whilst playing Good Queen Bess has become the requisite for every British actress worth her salt. Biographies of Thomas Moore, Catherine of Aragon and John Dee continue to do steady business. Restoration England by comparison, an equally turbulent and innovative period in British history, has mostly remained within the confines of academia (how many people know who John Lilburne or Aphra Behn is outside of a University syllabus?). Why do the bloody schisms of the Reformation continue to spill as much editorial ink as the Arab spring? Why does the venerable gossip of whether Elizabeth I, ‘the chaste Diana,’ was rather a saucy Venus still inspire as much gleeful speculation as the latest Heat! expose? Why haven’t we hit saturation point with assorted Verneys, Dudleys, Norfolks and Wyatts?

Leaving non-fiction aside for another day, I have picked three books which I feel are representative of the dominant subgenres of Tudor fiction: Mantel’s indomitable Cromwell series, C J Samson’s Shardlake series (Dissolution (2003) through to Heartstone (2010)) and finally Phillipa Gregory’s The Queen’s Fool (2003).  Or: The Heavy, The Horny, and The Who-Dunnit. Through this trinity I will explore not only how writers have reworked the Tudor dynasty but also how they reflect our perception of ‘history’ itself.