Fantasy Freaks & Gaming Geeks

[Morthoron]

Great article, Lush, particularly since I am an avid gamer in search of a decent game (I can't stand most of the current crop -- including Lord of the Rings Online and World of Warcraft -- vapid and unrealistic, really).

Originally Posted by davem

That's a v e r y romantic conception of knighthood - most of them used 'chivalry' as an insurance policy - they treated other nobles with respect, particularly on the battlefield, because they knew it would save their necks if they got captured. The poor bloody infantry & the peasantry tended to be treated like something the knight had trodden in - if the knight was in a good mood - if he wasn't he'd just slaughter them for daring to get within sword reach. Mind you, this whole chivalric ideal is something Tolkien himself tended to indulge in - for all his idealisation of the past & condemnation of the present his heroes display a very 'twentieth century' morality in terms of treatment of the 'lower orders' - particularly on the field. His heroes aren't medieval warriors at all - or perhaps one should say they are what knights should have been, but almost never were - Henry V's treatment of the refugees of Rouen is the reality.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Rouen

Agreed, Davem. Another example is that paragon of chivalry, Edward III, who created the Order of the Garter along the lines of Arthur's Round Table. It seems Edward took the idea of 'courtly love' a bit too far and allegedly raped the Countess of Salisbury. The Earl of Salisbury, a longtime friend of the king, expressed his shame and anger at court, and promptly went into exile rather than spend another minute in Edward's chivalric England. Froissart, that illustrious chronicler of all things chivalric, suppressed the story of Edward's indiscretion, but the tale was taken up by Jean le Bel of Hainault. Whether true or a bit of propaganda by French sympathizers, it is certainly a telling indictment of that society as a whole. Rather like the French seigneur who upon his death bequeathed a dowry for all the virgins he deflowered.

[Lalwendë]

I read just yesterday that somewhere around the sum of just three English Kings in the middle ages were spared having to go into battle at some point, so being a King was certainly no easy ride either.

Fantasy which makes use of the medieval world (and it usually does) isn't really looking at the true medieval world, which was a dirty and brutal place to live but an idealised version of it. Even the pulp of 'swords and sorcery' stories don't go into the truth of what life was like back then.

Though I'd argue that such a simplistic definition of sci-fi and fantasy is all wrong these days anyway. How to account for Steampunk for example? Genres are collapsing like ninepins, and a good thing too!

[davem]

I think its possible to argue that while Science-fiction is a literature that deals in hopes, or fears, of the future, Fantasy is a literature that deals in lies abut the past. Yet that is also a lie, because both genres really deal with/comment on the present. Tolkien's Elvish tendency to idealise the past comes through in his fiction (& to an extent in his letters). Middle-earth is a 20th century man's vision of what the past 'ought' to have been like - & no less worthy as literature for that. We just shouldn't believe that the Middle-ages were like Middle-earth, any more than we should believe that the future that awaits us is going to resemble the universe of Star Trek (or even Blade Runner come to that).

And of course, that is too simplistic as well - the Middle-ages weren't an age of barbarism - its just that there were a lot of 'barbarians' about, (though a lot of the 'barbarism' was deliberate, & was done for practical reasons - if you plundered, raped, mutilated & slaughtered your way through a city that had just fallen to your siege then you could be fairly certain that the next city would be less likely to hold out against you). They too produced their art, literature & philosophy - the great mystic Julian of Norwich wrote her masterpiece Revelations of Divine Love during the Hundred Years War, & died only a year after Agincourt. It just wasn't like the fantasy novels make it out. Fantasy is not about the past, & will tell you very little about it - but that's not its purpose.

[Lalwendë]

Julian or Norwich did have the advantage of living the life of an Anchorite though, holed up in her cell and separated from the hurly burly of the life she'd have otherwise have had, even as a nun.

The fantasy that a modern writer produces is a vision filtered thorugh many things, through past experience, through encounters with art and music, through dreams, etc. None of it is 'true' in any way, but that's the joy of it - Tolkien didn't create a world which was anything like the real world as it had ever been, but one which emerged through his encounters with other Artists' encounters, and those who came before them, and so on and on.

[Lush]

One of my favourite songs is "Julian of Norwich" by a band called... Bombadil.

By the way, just so there's no confusion - I didn't conduct the interview linked. That's one of our wonderful writers, Sarah Jaffe. I'm only the humble editor. I tinker with cool interviews, as opposed to conduct them (well, most of the time).