Mythic Time vs. What Really Happened

[marycatelli]

Malory and all the earlier romancers might cheerfully plop King Arthur in the High Middle Ages, and Howard Pyle might boldly describe the setting of Robin Hood as the land of fancy, but nowadays, just about any retelling of King Arthur or Robin Hood or what have you goes for the nitty-gritty realistic style (surreptiously idealized in certain aspects -- the pagans, for instance, would never recognize the religions).


It is true that with improving historical knowledge you get a lot less leeway.  Once Scott started to write historical novels where changes between past and present were part of the novelist's bag of tricks, it spread outwards.  Nowadays you have to figure out some way to translate it into the land of myth to work with it.  And go all the way into the Land of Myth and Legend.  Perhaps the writers decide to go all the way and chisel off the names as well as the rest of the identifying marks to make a Good King or a Good Outlaw Archer.

The irony with the nitty-gritty style is that one thing they never do research on, or any rate use, is the development of the legend.  You look in vain for versions of King Arthur where Sir Gawain is his best knight, with Kay and Bedivere, and Guinevere is not adulterous, though Lancelot and Galahad, and even Tristan, were latter additions, dragging in courtly love and the Holy Grail with them.  Or Robin Hood accompanied by Little John, Much the Miller's son, and William Scarlet or Stutely or Scathelock or Scarlock or Stukeley. Along with a great mass of undifferentiated merry men, here and there punctuated by names in different ballads (Gilbert Whitehand and David of Doncaster anyone?). Maid Marian is actually an older character, appearing as a shepherdess in plays and later May Games, but didn't appear in the Robin Hood legends until there came a fashion for Robin Hood plays during May Games, whereupon apparently there was a cross-over, and she stuck.  (Not the first character to do so.  Morgan Le Fey originally was part of the Matter of France, not Britain.)  Friar Tuck also seems to have come from the games.  As for Allan-a-Dale -- Victorian.

But any nitty-gritty realistic demythologizing version will be sure to explain the Real History behind all the characters that couldn't have been there.

Comments

[baron-waste.livejournal.com]

Well, that's because no one would get it - the viewers would just think you Did Not Do the Research. What was that one movie recently where anachronism abounded, with the audience at a joust acting like modern football fans all the way down to singing Queen's “We Will Rock You” - filmgoers were not impressed. Some reviewers conceded the purpose of the attempt, but it was simply wrong.

And wrong is always going to fail even when it's merely geared to modern shibboleths. Look at the cover art for “King Arthur” (2004) - the titular character is all but crowded off the page by Keira Knightley wearing a Hollywood pseudo-pagan leather bikini and looking “fierce,” and yet even so the film was hooted off the screen.

People know what they want, and they want what they know.

[marycatelli]

But rock music is not Mythic. Rock music is incorrigibly Modern. An anarchronism stew would at least have to be a consistent medieval one to pull off Mythic King Arthur.

Framing devices would also be wise.

[baron-waste.livejournal.com]

If you have not read T H White's The Once and Future King, you've missed a good one: Despite being written in the late 1930s it's still in print, and with good reason. *

Yet throughout, White uses “controlled anachronism” - he draws his characters from whatever period of British history suits them best, from Sir Ector's huntin' shootin' drinkin' Victorian country squire to Mordred's Fascist thuggery.

Although the legend of King Arthur has numerous contemporary interpreters, White is one of the few to give it modern touches, and he does so to great effect. His story is full of castles, knights, magicians, and serfs, but these characters have desires and speech that are familiar to us. Nowhere is this aspect of the novel better illustrated than in the drunken conversation between Sir Ector and Sir Grummore. While both men are medieval knights, they speak the dialogue of the post-World War I British aristocracy. Fundamentally good-natured, Sir Ector and Sir Grummore are also a pompous pair, and seeing them hem and haw while they drink port makes them more familiar and accessible. By making the two medieval knights sound and act like modern British aristocrats, White makes them more understandable than they would be if they spoke in the language of the time. The characters’ uncomfortable reaction to Merlyn’s use of formal and outdated language when chastising Kay further demonstrates their modern character…

This works, because he takes care that it does: For example, he described Robin Hood and his band as very much akin to the Resistance of Nazi Europe - his Robin is a deeply tanned, small, nervous man whose tactics echo the Boer commandos or Roger's Rangers because they have to.

And the writing is glorious. The musical Camelot was derived directly from this book - but it's nothing compared to the descriptive passages that abound in the book.

* “Hark to Beaumont!”

[marycatelli]

It's also comic. You can get away with a lot more in comic.

Also, the complete work is not as good as The Sword In the Stone by itself -- not even his boyhood, since he reworked Sword in the process of slurping it in.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

That 2004 King Arthur was really rather bad, quite apart from its historical and costuming issues though.

I think they might have got away with it if they had told a good story with conviction, even if it wasn't the story people were expecting, but as the plot was confused, the dialogue was poor, and the acting was wooden, they were never going to get away with it.

[marycatelli]

Ah, how true. Any setting can be ruined by the lack of other elements.

[raisha.livejournal.com]

The movie you describe is A Knight's Tale, which was loosely inspired by Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. (Chaucer even appears as a character in the film.) I don't think it's really related to the myth vs. what really happened, because the anachronism was so blatant and intended to be humorous. (I personally recognized a send-up of the whole Ren Faire/SCA scene. My local Ren Faire would be more fun if we could sing Queen.)

I think that this phenomenon happens more frequently than just with Arthurian/Robin Hood tales. I've noticed a disturbing trend in stories about mythological creatures (like vampires) to tell us how the old stories Got It Wrong (bashing Bram Stoker, etc.) and their version is What Really Happened/the Real Vampires. It's not enough just to put your own twist on the old myths anymore, you also have to discount every old version in the process.

Add this to the trend to tell the "real story" behind fairy tales, which often glorify the villain. (Gregory Maguire, anyone?) These also layer on the grit and cynicism of the "truth". They're not drawing on any kind of historical accuracy, obviously (although some try to relate them to real parts of history), but the attitude is similar.

Maybe there is an attitude in our culture that we feel the truth is often hidden and we want to uncover it. We look to the news for shocking exposes (or look for alternative sources of news when we feel that the mainstream is lying to us), and we look to our entertainment to tell us a different kind of truth. We love books and movies that rewrite the actual documented history of real people, too. Viewers may know that the story is "wrong", but they still pay for it. Not all of these movies are flops, so Hollywood will keep trying to make them.

[marycatelli]

The desire to smear mud is indeed part of it.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

Rosemary Sutcliff's historical Arthurian romance, Sword at Sunset has Cei and Bedwyr as his two 'best knights' - though they are not really knights in the medieval sense - and Gwalchmai/Gawain as one of his main supporters (though he is a surgeon, not a knight). She retains the friend-and-lover plotline, but gives the role to Bedwyr/Bedivere, and loses the Grail. I'm still hoping one day there will be a TV dramatisation...

At least with Arthuriana there is a period you can look to as 'origin' for a historical Arthur : I'm notsure that is really the case with Robin Hood?

[marycatelli]

Why, the earliest ballads report a King Edward. One of whom actually did have a Robin Hood in his service, who left it because he could no longer work. Although later research turned up that he had been in service prior to that king's visit to the Sherwood/Barnsdale area. (The earliest ballads are much more detailed and accurate about Barnsdale than Sherwood.)

[bunn.livejournal.com]

I quite like John Maddicott's theory that Robin Hood is a generic name, like John Doe or Tommy Atkins, for a medieval outlaw thief, who then grows a personality through the operation of story.

[marycatelli]

Conceivable. . . especially since we may have the original Friar Tuck, who took it as just that sort of alias, and from the comments in the record, it was a New Thing, so he may have been the first.

[persephone-kore.livejournal.com]

Gerald Morris's approach to this was sort of interesting, I thought. (Er, and not particularly on the demythologizing track.) He likes Gawain but eventually branched off his initial focal characters.... Among other things, he actually has Lancelot come in later in the story, initially as a bizarrely popular French johnny-come-lately who comes in for some mockery but gets his own story in a later book.

[marycatelli]

An in-joke about the myth-formation in the process of telling the story. . . .

[persephone-kore.livejournal.com]

He's pretty fun.

[marycatelli]

Usually a virtue.