![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jsburbidgeNicola Griffith's Hild is a very well-done historical novel, in the sense that it deals fairly well with the historical novelist's dilemma and does not just give us modern people in a mediaeval dress. (Many if not most historical novels do.) It is also a well-written novel, with well-rounded characters, good prose, and a measured pace. I look forward to its successor.
That being said, I'm going to go on a tangent about historicity.
First, we know less about pagan East Anglia in the Seventh Century than we do about Republican Rome, especially if we want to talk about the details of everyday life. (We know the names of kings and battles, and some bits from Bede, essentially.) Every single source we have is written a generation and a half, at best, after the fact, in a Christian society. The texts we have which preserve elements of the earlier society have their own limitations -- embedded heroic stories, the "ruins" of Tolkien's allegory about the writing of Beowulf, do not have much connection with everyday life, even among the nobility. James the Deacon, a character in the novel, lived to be an old man and may have provided information regarding the Synod of Whitby which we have in Bede (which took place, be it noted, well after this first book in the projected trilogy), but even if he or any of his contemporaries told a very young Bede, or a source of Bede's, stories about the early days in the north, and what the fabric of life was like, they have not come down to us. The Chronicle has battles, royal births, and deaths, but it itself was composed rather after the fact and is in no way a primary document. We know virtually nothing about the Anglian (or indeed, general Germanic) practice of the old religion.
Writers didn't suppress details of the old society; they just weren't interested in it, for the parts that had gone away, or took for granted the continuing elements. Much of what we know about social history of the period is actually fairly recent, based on archaeology rather than history.
Griffith takes as much care as she can to get her material and social context right, but she still has a large blank space to fill in, even with all the constraints she conforms to.
Second, Griffith herself has been clear about having "taken heinous liberties with" Paulinus of York. Nothing that she's done with him has been impossible, but the probability of his having been like the man depicted in the novel is low.
Third, Much of the thread of the novel does turn around one entirely made-up character (Cian).
Fourth, the pattern of other royal abbesses of joint monasteries -- Æthelthryth / Audrey of Ely is a later contemporary of Hild's, also East Anglian, about whom we know more of her life before becoming an abbess -- suggests that one need not invoke the exceptional course of being a seer to explain a level of female agency in that society required to become a major figure of this type. Hild is not a one-of-a-kind figure. Occam's Razor leads me to posit, in reality, a rather different life arc for the early Hild.
Fifth, I doubt that the East Angles were as illiterate as depicted; futharc is older than the invasion of England in the Germanic world, was certainly preserved down to the time of (at least) the Ruthwell Cross, and would have been part of the imported culture of the Angles.
The language isn't quite right -- Griffith uses standard West Saxon forms of the Eighth/Ninth Century, as far as I can tell, and not the Northumbrian of Caedmon or Bede. Also, using "York" for the city that was the Roman Eboracum will not fit until after the Vikings name it Jorvik: it is Eoforwic during the period. Similarly, Hild would not have referred to Mercia as "Mercia", which was a Latin form used in the written texts of later Anglo-Saxon England; it would be like us referring to "Anglia" or "Francia"; nor, being Northumbrian, would she have called it "Mearc". She would have said "Marc".
Now, none of this matters all that much. Francis Lymond's world bends somewhat around him as well, to accommodate his story, as does Harry Flashman's. Griffith puts together a coherent world which does not directly contradict what we know. The internal dynamics of that world produce the recorded historical events we have without special assistance from the author. As long as you don't confuse it with the actual past, you're fine.
You could probably write an historical novel about a "most probable" Hild, but (1) it would probably be rather dull and (2) it would also probably be wrong about all sorts of stuff.
But it's worth remembering that for any imaginative recreation of a period in history, it will be shaped by the contemporary concerns of the writer, which will be as transparent to the writer's audience as they are to the writer. Then at some time, thirty, fifty, eighty years later the marks of "period" will become not only visible but inescapable.
That being said, I'm going to go on a tangent about historicity.
First, we know less about pagan East Anglia in the Seventh Century than we do about Republican Rome, especially if we want to talk about the details of everyday life. (We know the names of kings and battles, and some bits from Bede, essentially.) Every single source we have is written a generation and a half, at best, after the fact, in a Christian society. The texts we have which preserve elements of the earlier society have their own limitations -- embedded heroic stories, the "ruins" of Tolkien's allegory about the writing of Beowulf, do not have much connection with everyday life, even among the nobility. James the Deacon, a character in the novel, lived to be an old man and may have provided information regarding the Synod of Whitby which we have in Bede (which took place, be it noted, well after this first book in the projected trilogy), but even if he or any of his contemporaries told a very young Bede, or a source of Bede's, stories about the early days in the north, and what the fabric of life was like, they have not come down to us. The Chronicle has battles, royal births, and deaths, but it itself was composed rather after the fact and is in no way a primary document. We know virtually nothing about the Anglian (or indeed, general Germanic) practice of the old religion.
Writers didn't suppress details of the old society; they just weren't interested in it, for the parts that had gone away, or took for granted the continuing elements. Much of what we know about social history of the period is actually fairly recent, based on archaeology rather than history.
Griffith takes as much care as she can to get her material and social context right, but she still has a large blank space to fill in, even with all the constraints she conforms to.
Second, Griffith herself has been clear about having "taken heinous liberties with" Paulinus of York. Nothing that she's done with him has been impossible, but the probability of his having been like the man depicted in the novel is low.
Third, Much of the thread of the novel does turn around one entirely made-up character (Cian).
Fourth, the pattern of other royal abbesses of joint monasteries -- Æthelthryth / Audrey of Ely is a later contemporary of Hild's, also East Anglian, about whom we know more of her life before becoming an abbess -- suggests that one need not invoke the exceptional course of being a seer to explain a level of female agency in that society required to become a major figure of this type. Hild is not a one-of-a-kind figure. Occam's Razor leads me to posit, in reality, a rather different life arc for the early Hild.
Fifth, I doubt that the East Angles were as illiterate as depicted; futharc is older than the invasion of England in the Germanic world, was certainly preserved down to the time of (at least) the Ruthwell Cross, and would have been part of the imported culture of the Angles.
The language isn't quite right -- Griffith uses standard West Saxon forms of the Eighth/Ninth Century, as far as I can tell, and not the Northumbrian of Caedmon or Bede. Also, using "York" for the city that was the Roman Eboracum will not fit until after the Vikings name it Jorvik: it is Eoforwic during the period. Similarly, Hild would not have referred to Mercia as "Mercia", which was a Latin form used in the written texts of later Anglo-Saxon England; it would be like us referring to "Anglia" or "Francia"; nor, being Northumbrian, would she have called it "Mearc". She would have said "Marc".
Now, none of this matters all that much. Francis Lymond's world bends somewhat around him as well, to accommodate his story, as does Harry Flashman's. Griffith puts together a coherent world which does not directly contradict what we know. The internal dynamics of that world produce the recorded historical events we have without special assistance from the author. As long as you don't confuse it with the actual past, you're fine.
You could probably write an historical novel about a "most probable" Hild, but (1) it would probably be rather dull and (2) it would also probably be wrong about all sorts of stuff.
But it's worth remembering that for any imaginative recreation of a period in history, it will be shaped by the contemporary concerns of the writer, which will be as transparent to the writer's audience as they are to the writer. Then at some time, thirty, fifty, eighty years later the marks of "period" will become not only visible but inescapable.
