Historical Fiction and the Middle Ages

I have trouble with a lot of historical fiction set in the Middle Ages.  Too often the characters are just modern people wearing medieval outfits.  And of course it is far too easy to mess up such basic tidbits of medieval social history as when the Black Death came through or when knitting was invented (clue: both were at the end of the Middle Ages).

One book (which shall remain nameless) got me very irritated when the heroine planned a romantic wedding at a nunnery (nunneries were not places to get married, being instead the opposite), when the hero had a friendly chat with the abbess, who sat on the front porch knitting (knitting was not yet invented, and abbesses did not have friendly chats outside the cloister with passing strangers), and the hero went on to disguise himself in the clothes of a dead leper (which he would have recoiled from in terror).

Real medieval people were grim, ruthless, without any religious tolerance, and thought about death a lot—and those were the good guys!  For modern readers, medieval-themed fantasy, where you don't have to worry about historical accuracy, seems to work better than accurate historical fiction.  As a bonus, it doesn't get historians like me upset.  After all, I write fantasy too! (see previous post).

The closest I have come to real historical fiction is Count Scar, which I co-wrote with my husband.  That's the cover to the print edition, done by the late, great Darrell K. Sweet.  The novel is set in a thinly-disguised version of southern France in the early thirteenth century, a time when fear of heresy was rampant.  We mix it up a little by introducing magic, which in the story is practiced by an order of monks.  This actually makes sense, as people interested in the life of the mind mostly went into the church.

In the book, we tried to strike a balance between real medieval society and characters who would appeal to the modern reader.  If you read it, hope you agree that we succeeded!  (Also if you read it, see if you can guess which of us wrote which character.)

Like my Royal Wizard of Yurt series, the book is out of print but is available used, and also as an ebook from iTunes, Kobo, B&N - Nook, and of course Amazon. amazon.com/author/cdalebrittain
For more information about my novels, go to www.Daimbert.com

© C. Dale Brittain 2014

Medieval fantasy and religion

A great deal of fantasy is set in a vaguely medieval setting.  And yet much of this fantasy leaves out a crucial part of real medieval life:  religion.

J.R.R. Tolkien was a good Catholic, and presumably he did not feel he could properly introduce an imaginary version of the church, especially since "Lord of the Rings" supposedly takes place hundreds of years BC.  George R.R. Martin, who is not a good Catholic, has created his own religions for "The Song of Ice and Fire," all polytheistic, but with organized systems of churches and priests and rituals.

Real medieval fantasy, that is fantastic stories written during the Middle Ages, always included religion.  The authors could not imagine a world without organized Christianity.  People might transform into hawks or see a parade of candles carried by invisible hands, but they still went to church—and worried (often quite appropriately) about going to Hell.

My own fantasy (see more here), set in an alternate version of the Middle Ages, includes organized religion.  It wasn't a deliberate decision; rather, when I started writing about a king in a castle, he logically had a chaplain, a castle priest.  The Christianity of my "Yurt" series will remind a person of medieval Christianity, although it is not a truly accurate depiction.  For one thing, the organized church in these stories has no hierarchy above the level of bishop (no archbishops or popes).  But there are plenty of elements I've taken from real medieval religion, like reliquaries and cranky saints and depictions of Hell.

I always dislike it when fantasy stories that do depict some version of organized religion have all the priests either hypocrites or cunning schemers or foolish and deluded (or all three).  When I made religion a real force in the world of my stories, I had to have at least some priests who were genuinely devout and holy.

Since my stories also have organized wizardry (which of course the real Middle Ages did not), there are lots of opportunities for conflicts between these two institutions and for misunderstandings between people belonging to one or the other.

© C. Dale Brittain 2014

Modern Fantasy and Medieval Fantasy

As well as inventing universities, professional lawyers, and the banking industry, the twelfth century invented fantasy.

Now in some ways fantasy is the oldest form of literature, larger-than-life people wandering through the landscape having adventures colored heavily by marvel and the supernatural.  In the twelfth century, however, it took on a more specific form, one of knightly adventures, generally with a strong admixture of romance as well as sword fights.  The authors were not describing their own society, but in presenting a larger-than-life version of that society they were able to comment on and critique it.

King Arthur stories as we know them were a twelfth-century invention, although the "complete" Arthur  corpus was put together only in the fifteenth century, around the time the printing press was invented.

Modern fantasy was essentially invented in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, by people who were very familiar with the literature of the real Middle Ages (such as J.R.R. Tolkien or C.S. Lewis) and thought that modern times had lost something important in leaving medieval ideals and values behind.

I myself write fantasy, imbued with real medieval social history--but because it's fantasy, not historical fiction, I can be as anachronistic as I like.  My Royal Wizard of Yurt series, which begins with A Bad Spell in Yurt, is set in something like what the nineteenth century would have been like if the Middle Ages had continued--with no New World to discover, no Protestant Reformation, no Enlightenment, no French Revolution, no Industrial Revolution, and, of course, magic.

(For more on my thoughts on religion in fantasy, click here.)

All of the Royal Wizard of Yurt series are now back in print as physical books, and they are also coming out as audio books, and all are available as ebooks on all the major e-tailers:  iTunes, Kobo, B&N-Nook, and of course Amazon.  amazon.com/author/cdalebrittain

© C. Dale Brittain 2014 
For more on medieval and modern fantasy, see my ebook Positively Medieval, available on Amazon and other ebook platforms.