WSOD and Historical Novels: a case study
Dec. 5th, 2014 11:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jsburbidgeThe original formulation of "willing suspension of disbelief" was by Coleridge, talking about writing poems regarding the supernatural. It was picked up (to my recollection) by Lin Carter in the early 1970's to talk about fantasy and has become generalized within the SFF community.
Historical novels have their own variant of WSOD as well, though, one identified by Chesterton in the Father Brown stories:
I was reading Peter Brown's biography of Augustine and was reminded of a prime example from a number of years ago.
I was reading Jack Whyte's series of books regarding Merlin/Arthur (from the library, so no money was wasted) and found that he was presenting an opposition between a fluffy, tolerant native Christianity to Great Britain (represented by Pelagius) and a rigid, intolerant Christianity associated with Roman Christianity (presumably represented by Augustinians). "That day I read no more."
It was obvious why he was doing this: he wanted to present a completely ahistorical religion for his protagonists which would make them more attractive / make them more like his 20th Century audience. It was also obvious that he didn't understand a thing he was talking about.
First, the Pelagians were more rigorist than the Augustinians. Sure, they defended natural human virtue, but they did so to insist that the only virtue worth praising was a complete ascetic rigorist monastic ideal -- that God had given everyone the capability to be saintly and that it was their own fault if they didn't make use of it. (By contrast, Augustine's views were driven explicitly to make a place for the homme moyen sensuel, the common people of his day; and his views regarding the physical creation were far more positive than those of the Pelagians -- he had grappled with this when he had rejected Manichaeanism.)
Secondly, everything we know about the Celtic Church at any period suggests that it was very rigorist.
Thirdly, by modern standards, everyone was rigorist, and nobody had views which would be sympathetic to everyday modern people. There was a brief period when there were relatively "flexible" Christians after the conversion of the Empire, and historians have come more and more to see these people as a legitimate version of Christianity rather than half-converted pagans: Lactantius would be an example. However, these people were not flexible in that they were like a secular reader of today, or even a mainline protestant; they were flexible in that they were willing to accept both the cultural practices which had come down through paganism (but were not explicitly idolatrous) such as the Lupercalia and the revelation of Christianity. (Their ethical views tended to be on the strict side, as they merged the ethics of Stoicism / Neoplatonism with that of Christianity.) In many ways they were less like us than an Augustinian thinker: we owe a great deal to the relative subtlety of Augustine's thought (as displayed, for example, in the Confessions which was alien to these people.
So, no, just not possible. It made his entire story completely unbelievable, as he was supplying motivations and alliances which were just flat-out impossible. It also showed that, no matter how much formal research Whyte had done, he just didn't grasp the world he was depicting, or trying to depict.
Historical novels have their own variant of WSOD as well, though, one identified by Chesterton in the Father Brown stories:
"I can believe the impossible, but not the improbable. ... It really is more natural to believe a preternatural story, that deals with things we don't understand, than a natural story that contradicts things we do understand. Tell me that the great Mr. Gladstone, in his last hours, was haunted by the ghost of Parnell, and I will be agnostic about it. But tell me that Mr. Gladstone, when first presented to Queen Victoria, wore his hat in her drawing-room and slapped her on the back and offered her a cigar, and I am not agnostic at all. That is not impossible; it's only incredible. But I'm much more certain it didn't happen than that Parnell's ghost didn't appear; because it violates the laws of the world I do understand."
I was reading Peter Brown's biography of Augustine and was reminded of a prime example from a number of years ago.
I was reading Jack Whyte's series of books regarding Merlin/Arthur (from the library, so no money was wasted) and found that he was presenting an opposition between a fluffy, tolerant native Christianity to Great Britain (represented by Pelagius) and a rigid, intolerant Christianity associated with Roman Christianity (presumably represented by Augustinians). "That day I read no more."
It was obvious why he was doing this: he wanted to present a completely ahistorical religion for his protagonists which would make them more attractive / make them more like his 20th Century audience. It was also obvious that he didn't understand a thing he was talking about.
First, the Pelagians were more rigorist than the Augustinians. Sure, they defended natural human virtue, but they did so to insist that the only virtue worth praising was a complete ascetic rigorist monastic ideal -- that God had given everyone the capability to be saintly and that it was their own fault if they didn't make use of it. (By contrast, Augustine's views were driven explicitly to make a place for the homme moyen sensuel, the common people of his day; and his views regarding the physical creation were far more positive than those of the Pelagians -- he had grappled with this when he had rejected Manichaeanism.)
Secondly, everything we know about the Celtic Church at any period suggests that it was very rigorist.
Thirdly, by modern standards, everyone was rigorist, and nobody had views which would be sympathetic to everyday modern people. There was a brief period when there were relatively "flexible" Christians after the conversion of the Empire, and historians have come more and more to see these people as a legitimate version of Christianity rather than half-converted pagans: Lactantius would be an example. However, these people were not flexible in that they were like a secular reader of today, or even a mainline protestant; they were flexible in that they were willing to accept both the cultural practices which had come down through paganism (but were not explicitly idolatrous) such as the Lupercalia and the revelation of Christianity. (Their ethical views tended to be on the strict side, as they merged the ethics of Stoicism / Neoplatonism with that of Christianity.) In many ways they were less like us than an Augustinian thinker: we owe a great deal to the relative subtlety of Augustine's thought (as displayed, for example, in the Confessions which was alien to these people.
So, no, just not possible. It made his entire story completely unbelievable, as he was supplying motivations and alliances which were just flat-out impossible. It also showed that, no matter how much formal research Whyte had done, he just didn't grasp the world he was depicting, or trying to depict.
