reasons for primary source reading
Jan. 11th, 2013 08:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
marycatelliHaving told you how you should do it, I will now tell you why I recommend that all aspiring writers read a lot of primary sources, from as many eras and places as they can pull off. 0:)
It's not for research purposes. It may prove useful for that in the long run, but the recommendation includes eras and places that you have no interest in writing in. Indeed there's enough primary source floating about that it would be a trick and half to sample a lot of it and manage to use it all as research. That's not its primary benefit.
Its primary benefit is to knock your block off.
The past is another country; they do things differently there. By reading widely in all sorts of pasts, you start to get a grasp of not just what this society is like, or that one, but what societies are like. That things you take for granted are not something you can rely on in other societies. That, in fact, things you take utterly for granted are weird and abnormal as far as cultures go.
Primary source is this because while it doesn't let you inside their heads, it gets you a lot closer than secondary source does, because secondary source also has all the reading between the lines elements that primary source does, with the added issue that your secondary source's issues are not information about the primary source. If the list of crimes that a person is charged with is completely over-the-top, it does indicate that hurling mud at your opponent in hopes some would stick was practiced.
To be sure, secondary source is primary source about the era it was written in. Reading about the assemblies of the ancient Germans in Victorian works -- especially if the writer is pushing the Teutonic origins theory of parliaments, to give democracy a venerable history -- or the rights of the stout Anglo-Saxon ancestors that were lost in the Norman Conquest may tell you rather less about the ancient Germans but quite a bit about the Victorians.
And good secondary sources -- the technical kind, aimed for historians or at least knowledgeable amateurs -- can cite primary sources you might not want to wade through yourself. True, they're selective, but you'll have to be selective, too; there is not time enough to read all. A writer who abstracts from early Christian sermons the advice they gave about how to become like a little child, and presents it as evidence of what positive traits little children were deemed to have, saves the time of reading all the sermons.
But while that helps, it's no substitute for reading primary source.
It may even be useful for having done your research in advance later. It certainly helps alert you to the possibility that you should do some.
Though the point at which I thought I might have gotten a pretty good feeling for how a society fits together was when I got back a critique that indignately asked what sort of world chaperoned a princess and let a prince ride free -- and my first thought, popping instantly to mind, was "A normal one."
It's not for research purposes. It may prove useful for that in the long run, but the recommendation includes eras and places that you have no interest in writing in. Indeed there's enough primary source floating about that it would be a trick and half to sample a lot of it and manage to use it all as research. That's not its primary benefit.
Its primary benefit is to knock your block off.
The past is another country; they do things differently there. By reading widely in all sorts of pasts, you start to get a grasp of not just what this society is like, or that one, but what societies are like. That things you take for granted are not something you can rely on in other societies. That, in fact, things you take utterly for granted are weird and abnormal as far as cultures go.
Primary source is this because while it doesn't let you inside their heads, it gets you a lot closer than secondary source does, because secondary source also has all the reading between the lines elements that primary source does, with the added issue that your secondary source's issues are not information about the primary source. If the list of crimes that a person is charged with is completely over-the-top, it does indicate that hurling mud at your opponent in hopes some would stick was practiced.
To be sure, secondary source is primary source about the era it was written in. Reading about the assemblies of the ancient Germans in Victorian works -- especially if the writer is pushing the Teutonic origins theory of parliaments, to give democracy a venerable history -- or the rights of the stout Anglo-Saxon ancestors that were lost in the Norman Conquest may tell you rather less about the ancient Germans but quite a bit about the Victorians.
And good secondary sources -- the technical kind, aimed for historians or at least knowledgeable amateurs -- can cite primary sources you might not want to wade through yourself. True, they're selective, but you'll have to be selective, too; there is not time enough to read all. A writer who abstracts from early Christian sermons the advice they gave about how to become like a little child, and presents it as evidence of what positive traits little children were deemed to have, saves the time of reading all the sermons.
But while that helps, it's no substitute for reading primary source.
It may even be useful for having done your research in advance later. It certainly helps alert you to the possibility that you should do some.
Though the point at which I thought I might have gotten a pretty good feeling for how a society fits together was when I got back a critique that indignately asked what sort of world chaperoned a princess and let a prince ride free -- and my first thought, popping instantly to mind, was "A normal one."
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no subject
Date: 2013-01-12 04:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-12 03:31 pm (UTC)80
Wealth
Date: 2013-01-12 05:48 pm (UTC)The worst common offenses I see in fantasy have to do with egalitarianism, sexual morals and wealth. And they all stem from the same false belief about pre-industrial as compared to industrial societies.
An awful lot of fantasy writers seem not to realize just how poor was the pre-industrial world.
In a pre-industrial civilization, the vast majority of people are condemned to live lives of what we would today call grinding poverty. They have to work for long hours under dangerous and unpleasant conditions, their productivity is so low that even the fairest and most enlightened employers can pay them what we would today consider a pittance -- barely enough to live on with (maybe) a very small surplus for "luxuries" (such as a little meat or an entertainment) in good economic times. If they are able to save money or time to improve their economic lot either by education or investment, it is only at the cost of real suffering in other aspects of their lives. And their likeliest fate is to see their health collapse in their thirties or forties, and then if they are lucky live another few decades on the charity of their kin.
This means that most poor people in such societies literally don't look or think like us. Their growth has been stunted in body and mind, they are raddled by diseases their weakened immune systems can't fully defeat, they are ignorant of the wider world, prey to all sorts of superstitions (even if magic works they probably aren't educated enough to know how) and they are like this generation after generation, with all the effects one would imagine on their subculture.
And this is not because the "nobles are cruel" or the "merchants are greedy," though indeed both statements may be true of particular nobles or merchants, or even those whole classes in particular socities. It is because these societies have such a low aggregate productivity that most people are unable to by their labor produce enough to live in the manner that we consider normal -- indeed we consider our present opulence "normal" because of the Industrial and Information Revolutions, and we would live just as badly as they had those revolutions not occurred.
Re: Wealth
Date: 2013-01-12 08:07 pm (UTC)Many writers don't realize how large it would have to be to have the same effect.
Equality
Date: 2013-01-12 05:48 pm (UTC)Due to the effects of the Western social revolutions of the 18th-20th centuries, this is very difficult for modern writers to grasp. We have spent so long adapting to our new state of affairs, in which rich and poor really aren't all that different, and the rich may be poor or the poor rich and accepted as such within one or two generations, that we don't realize the extent to which this was once not so, and not so for reasons other than irrational prejudice.
For instance, one common plot, used by the best authors (probably because it started in fairy tales and has sometimes happened in real life) is the poor kid, raised as a normal poor kid, who suddenly discovers that he is the Rightful Heir to the Throne and must fight for that position. The problem is that if he really was raised poor, and didn't discover this until he was a young adult, he would probaby not be able to function as a king (or noble, or whatever) because he would have neither received the proper diet nor education. He'd be stunted (though he might be taller than his fellow poor if he survived, due to the microevolutionary adaptation within even a dozen or so generations to economic class: he'd have the genes to grow big but might not be able to obtain enough food for his larger frame to enable him to keep living), and he would not know not merely how to behave in polite society but also to fight, among other things.
What's an even harsher lesson is that, barring technological progress, this was how things HAD to be. The only even remotely-egalitarian people were barbarians: civilized societies were always inegalitarian, and for a very good reason. If a society lacks the resources to amply-feed and educate all its people (because its technological mode of production is too inefficient and its lands too crowded) then the solution which always culturally-evolves is simple: take from the majority to support a minority of people who will be well-fed and well-educated. Without such an aristocracy, pre-industrial civilization is impossible. Thus, the oppression which is seen in all pre-industrial civilizations is unavoidable.
(though it can be harsher or smoother, crueller or kinder, more arbitrary or fair: and the smoother kinder and more fair versions are the ones which lead to technological progress and eventually the Industrial Revolution, so they are to be encouraged).
In contrast, much modern fantasy assumes that there is no difference between rich and poor save for an arbitrary and unnecessary social construction which can simply be abolished without harm to civilization. Rich people who do not respect the poor as much as they would respect the rich are irrational snobs; poor people who look up to the rich are toadies. Because this is to some extent true today, writers imagine it to have been true before the Industrial Revolution, and they are dead wrong.
Re: Equality
Date: 2013-01-12 08:10 pm (UTC)In Europe. My reading outside Europe has been sparser, but the Indian caste system, for instance, had fewer such chinks.
Misunderstood Archetypes
Date: 2013-01-12 05:50 pm (UTC)The issue of wealth and egalitarianism is important because they set the framework for the world in which the protagonists strive, and if they are set falsely then the whole story rings false. Tolkien, note, knew enough history that he came up with reasons why things worked the way they did: he deliberately focused on aristocrats in a largely-depopulated world, some of whom had magically-amplified means of production.
Don't believe me? It's all there in the Appendices. Middle-Earth at the time of the Quest of Erebor and the War of the Ring had been repeatedly devastated by plagues, wars and insurrections, many of them secretly sparked by Sauron or Saruman to weaken the West for conquest. As a result, pretty much everyone was farming the best possible soils and working the best available mines. Tolkien may not have liked post-Norman English medieval history, but he had and probably knew well the clear analogy, the 14th-century Black Death which created "Merrie Olde England" by reducing the population to the point where the survivors were all richer than they had been before the cataclysm.
But most of those who copied Tolkien had much less understanding of economic and social history, and because Tolkien wrote a glorious epic rather than "The Report of the Ithlien Commission to King Elessar on the Economic Condition of Modern Arnor and Gondor," it's easily missed. Even if you read the Appendices, you may not realize the implications (I didn't, when I read them as a teenage boy).
So they wind up creating stories where the protagonists are supposedly ordinary farmers, just like Bilbo and Frodo (who were actually the scions of several of the Shire's oldest and richest prominent families, and had their wealth further increased by Bilbo's share of dragonhoard) or Pippin and Merry (Peregrin Took, who would have been a prince if the Shire had a king; and Meriadoc Brandybuck, who would have been the heir to an earldom if the Shire had that title). And they act just like the Hobbits, and the writers never realize that what they're copying is the mannerisms of an (unusually civilized) rural aristocracy.
Or, if they're channeling Robert E. Howard (the other main source of modern fantasy) they make gloomy warlike heroes like Conan -- not grasping that Conan was not merely an outsider to most of Hyborea but was also a very exceptional one -- he was blessed by genetics with extreme strength, speed, endurance and intelligence, and the whole series is about how the exceptional man can transcend the limitations of his age. Conan, incidentally, never tried to reform Aquilonia beyohd providing firm and fair rulership, but the modern writers often go one better and try to have their warlike heroes be social revolutionaries without considering environmental and institutional constraints, so their stories have happy endings as their world's version of what really would be Merrie Olde Northe Korea is born.
This leads to sex.
Re: Misunderstood Archetypes
Date: 2013-01-12 08:18 pm (UTC)He never pulls off actually climbing to his position on his own merits.
I think this is one reason why I tend to make my heroes come from the gentry. You need ability enough to make a difference, and your social class matters.
I note that the independent farmer of Edwardian days was often a fairly prosperous fellow. You actually get this in the Belgariad, where Polgara is one of many, many, many people working for the farm where Garion grew up.
Re: Misunderstood Archetypes
Date: 2013-01-13 12:27 am (UTC)It was also noted that Faldor's farm was prosperous and that he was known to be a fair master of good morals and very upright reputation and standing in the community - not all farms are alike, and his was reputed to be a place of quite desirable employment.
In fact, Eddings' setup for Garion's childhood neatly and realistically avoids the poverty and the health/food problems (Polgara was the COOK after all!) and gives Garion his solid, down to earth background, which he frequently notes is why he hasn't got courtly polish - and the same reason he uses to run roughshod over the rest of nobility when necessary. The lack of his polish does cause problems now and again, so it avoids the deus ex machina aspect.
Re: Misunderstood Archetypes
Date: 2013-01-13 02:14 am (UTC)Sex (1)
Date: 2013-01-12 06:32 pm (UTC)In most pre-industrial societies, the combination of the fragility of the rule of law, the low productivity of the unsupported individual even in the upper and middle classes, and the limited ability of women to control their own fertility in either direction, inevitably leads to moral codes which are harsh and have little regard for individual happiness, by modern standards.
What do I mean by this?
Fragility of the Rule of Law<
In most pre-industrial societies, there is insufficient surplus to support what we think of today as a "normal" police and criminal justice system. Crimes are difficult to detect and guilt difficult to prove. The capture and sometimes even punishment of malefactors may be up to the friends and relatives of the victims. With most of the lower clases uneducated and possessing little leisure time or surplus resources, going to suit at law, even if the mechanisms exist (as they did exist in the Classical Roman and Medieval European worlds) may be impractical.
The implication of this for sexual morals is that women must take care to avoid rape, because if they are raped it is quite likely that the perpetrator will go unpunished -- especially if their rapist is of higher social standing than themselves. The lack of reliable contraception makes it more likely than is the case today that the victim of rape will have to bear the rapist's child; inferior medicine that she will die in childbed; and lower wealth that she will die in consequence of the economic burden imposed by her fatherless child.
Furthermore, many actions which are technically legal may violate custom, and absent a firm rule of law customs may be violently enforced without consequence to the enforcers. If a modern American woman chooses to dress like a prostitute and strut her stuff right in front of a church on Sunday, people may look at her with disapproval but she is unlikely to be beaten, raped or murdered for this offense: both a better legal system and a more enlightened morality protect her. If a woman did the equivalent thing in most pre-industrial societies, not only would her action probably be illegal as some form of "blasphemy" or "disorderly conduct," but she would be publicly declaring herself to be an immoral person who would be a proper target of customary violence.
(This is very common in the world outside the modern West even today: women are beaten, raped or murdered with impunity for far less blatant acts of disrespect to general opinion in modern Egypt, Iran or Pakistan. Sometimes, the people beating, raping or murdering them are the police authorities!)
Low Productivity
People in pre-industrial societies are poor by modern standards even when they are healthy, and when they fall ill or are injured they absolutely depend upon the support of their kin to survive until they recover. This means that families have much more practical authority over their members than is the case today, whether or not this authority is supported in law (by something like the Roman paterfamilial system).
Suppose that you are a woman who gets pregnant. You'd better have a husband who is willing to acknowledge and help support your child. If you don't, your original family is likely to be very annoyed at you for imposing the burden of this unwanted baby upon them. If they aren't willing to help support you, good luck surviving pregnancy and childbirth, and good luck obtaining the resources you'll need to feed and rear your child. Will another man be willing to marry you and help support your bastard, who after all would be at best his stepson?
Re: Sex (1)
Date: 2013-01-12 09:53 pm (UTC)There was an English proverb that who wipes the boy's nose kisses the mother's cheek -- but then, you'd prefer a widow. Raising another man's children born before marriage is one thing. Raising another man's children born after your marriage is another -- and the only thing you have to go by is her past behavior and what clues there are to it.
Sex (2)
Date: 2013-01-12 07:09 pm (UTC)Is it any wonder then that women in pre-industrial societies, unless they have actually decided to be prostitutes, are usually very careful with whom they will have sexual intercourse? What is casual pleasure for him may be death to her, and she knows this. This even extends to courting, since the lack of a firm rule of law means that what we would now term "date-rape" will either be prosecuted by her family or left unpunished.
Limited Control Over Fertility
Many people take for granted the existence of cheap, reliable contraceptives; some of cheap, safe abortions; and almost all of safe childbirth. All are products of the Industrial Revolution: specifically, the medical advances enabled by the increased surplus available to support a large class of professional doctors practicing scientific medicine.
In pre-industrial societies, contraceptives were often expensive and always unreliable; both abortion and childbirth were dangerous: a promiscious woman was gambling with her life every time she had sex. (For that matter, so was a chaste wife, the difference being that she could count on her husband and kin for support if things went wrong, which increased her likelihood of surviving the experience).
Expensive contraception (such as the half-legendary silphium used in Classical Roman times) means that only the wealthy (or at least prosperous) woman can afford promsicuity. Unreliable contraception (ditto for silphium) means that even the wealthy woman is not safe. And speaking of safety, many of the means of contraception practiced in pre-industrial times were anything but safe: some involved noxious tinctures with really severe side-effects.
Abortion was nightmarishly-dangerous. Actual surgical extraction was very likely to cause puerperal or other fevers. The more normal technique was, essentially, the administration of a sub-lethal dose of poison to the mother to induce spontaneous abortion. Good luck measuring the dose! Both methods would be horribly painful: I draw a kindly veil over some of the remaining alternatives, most of which were actualloy attemnpted at one time or another.
Childbirth was also dangerous. Depending on conditions (midwife skill, health of the mother, environment) mortality of the mother in a first childbirth might range from 10 to 50 percent (the low end is for skilled midwives, healthy mothers and familiar clean surroundings, the high end is for unskilled midwives delivering sick mothers in unfamiliar filthy surroundings). Subsequent childbirths were safer, though still horribly-dangerous by modern standards.
This all assumes some support by husband and kin. Without such support, the chances were that the mother or child (sometimes both) would die. And a bad delivery often resulted in sterility (it sometimes still does this today).
In short, any woman who was at all remotely wise would make very sure that she only had sex with her husband (or at least betrothed), and was always careful both of her reputation and personal sexual safety against violence. And the sexual morals of pre-industrial societies reflected this fact: double standards, with women expected to be far more chaste than men, and always with an eye toward the preservation of both personal and family honor.
Re: Sex (2)
Date: 2013-01-12 10:29 pm (UTC)One of Ovid's poems is a prayer to Isis and Lucina to spare his mistress's life, in danger because of an abortion. Among other things, he promises that she will not offend in this way again, if spared.
And Tam Lin, of course, is enraged that Fair Janet picks the herb or rose or whatever to scathe the bonnie babe that we got us between.
Sex (3)
Date: 2013-01-12 07:17 pm (UTC)What we particularly miss, given our egalitarian assumptions, was just how normal extremely-exploitative relationships were in pre-industrial societies, especially if the exploiter was of much higher social status than the exploited. The classic example is the rich young gentleman who seduces and ruins the serving girl, who gets pregnant and is cast out of the household in consequence. What he did was always viewed as "bad," but it was not until at least the 18th century that it was viewed (first in England) as being very bad, even though the girl may well have yielded out of fear of being fired if she refused, and when she was fired she may well have been forced to turn to prostitution as her only means of survival. Going back a bit further, in Classical Mediterranean times it was taken for granted that a slave (of either sex) might rightfully be used sexually by the master (and, in some cultures, mistress) without this being considered "rape" or even harsh treatment. (We may genuinely thank Christianity for the fact that this was no longer the case by medieval times, though the evil was merely submerged and survived as long as did slavery).
I've written all this as if it primarily affects women, because it does: women are the ones who get pregnant. This is a case where reality is "sexist," and complaining about this is complaining about reality (to the extent that there is a solution to this sort of "sexism," it would lie not in a mythic past but in some very advanced technologies, such as full-genotypal and phenotypal sex changes and uterine replicators).
Of course it also affected men, because men also might face consequences from a woman's pregnancy. Not only moight they find themselves sexually-rejected by those wise women, but if they were not rejected by their more foolish sisters, said sisters would expect them to take the relationships seriously and might exact revenge (either personally or through kin) if the men didn't. In other words, save for the case of decadent aristocrats and careless peasants, there was little casual sex, and even in those cases there might be duels or murders in consequence.
If a woman actually got pregnant, the reputed father would be under great social pressure, possibly to the point of a threat of direct and lethal physical force, to marry her. Or her kin might not want him as an in-law, and might then just kill him. This could lead to a lot of unhappy marriages, or, alternatively, to characters with good reasons to go far from their original homes and have adventures.
The point is that you aren't going to see a social environment of casual, whimsical "hookups" or one-night stands -- and if you do, it's a sign of some pretty serious social decay in the class or subculture practicing this behavior. And even then, it will have consequences, and possibly consequences beyond the happiness or even survival of the irresponsible individuals.
Not our modern world, especially not the modern world as perceived by twenty-something and thirty-something overgrown spoiled brats. Which, alas, makes up too much of fandom.
But that's another rant :)
Re: Sex (3)
Date: 2013-01-12 10:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-16 11:41 am (UTC)This!!!
The greatest gift of history is perspective. Our way is not the only way, nor even, perhaps, the best way. We are grains of sand on an endless beach when it comes to the eye of history.
I love it!!!
no subject
Date: 2013-01-16 01:53 pm (UTC)