Category Archives: Writing

Book promotion, History, Scenes from a Life, The Flame Before Us, Writing, Writing Form

Back in the past – the first known use of end-rhyme

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Horus in Roman Costume - British Museum picture
Horus in Roman Costume – British Museum picture

I thought for today I would jump back into the past, and in particular writing. I recently visited the British Museum’s “Faith after the Pharaohs” exhibition. This is well worth a trip if you get the opportunity – it is on display until February 7th, so there’s a bit of time left yet.

Now, among other things I noticed a fragment on display from the Cairo Genizah. This is regarded as the world’s most important and comprehensive store of historical Jewish documents, and consists of around 300,000 fragments. It is a vast and perplexing mix of overtly religious material, together with secular works and everyday documents, and so has illuminated many different aspects of Jewish middle eastern life.

Now, some of the fragments – and in particular the one I saw – were written by a Jewish poet called Yannai. He is variously said to have lived in the 5th, 6th or 7th centuries CE (AD) and was a highly creative innovator in the field of piyyut – Hebrew or Aramaic poetry composed either in place of or as adornments to Jewish statutory prayers. His innovations include:

  • He was the first Hebrew poet to sign his works (albeit with an acrostic rather than direct name)
  • He was one of the first to write for regular weekly services rather than specific religious events
  • He took the practice of payyetan from a very broad-based set of loose constraints into a tightly structure art-form in several innovative ways, and

– the thing I found most immediately interesting –

  • he was the first to use end-rhyme as a poetic device.
Lieber on Yannai - Hebrew Union Monograph cover image
Lieber on Yannai – Hebrew Union Monograph cover

So he not only used traditional devices like alliteration, parallel word pairs, and the like, but also introduced end-rhyme to help structure the poem as a whole. His rhymes were frequently not just the final syllable, but extended over complete words at line ends, and added the possibility of word-play in addition to the rhyme. Laura S. Lieber, one of the major authorities on Yannai, says “As literary works, his poems are as dazzling as they are complex, rich with sound and play, allusion and linguistic beauty.”

Unsurprisingly, his work influenced Hebrew poetry for generations after his death, starting in the Middle East but eventually shaping the way Hebrew poets in Spain created their work as well. So it was very pleasing to see this fragment of his writing on display!

Also back in the world of ancient writing, it’s the time of Scenes from a Life and The Flame Before Us to have Goodreads giveaways. At the time of writing they are pending approval by the Goodreads team, but check out the page links above to find out more, or navigate to the Goodreads listings at Scenes from a Life  and The Flame Before Us to enter, once they go live on January 11th.

Scenes from a Life cover The Flame Before Us cover

Covers – Scenes from a Life and The Flame Before Us

Next week – back to the theme of elements necessary for life, and the subject of Air.

 

Fantasy, Far from the Spaceports, History, Writing

Bits and pieces…

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It’s been a busy week here, with lots of behind-the-scenes work on Far from the Spaceports – mainly the work of getting the print-ready PDF file laid out properly.

As well as that I have been helping my friend David Frauenfelder get his latest book ready for epublication: The Staff and the Shield, Book II in the Master Mage of Rome Series – more news of that in a few weeks’ time.

Smithsonian image - ancient arrow heads
Smithsonian image – ancient arrow heads
And finally I contributed an article to the Review Group’s Commemorating Agincourt – 600 years series of blog posts. I don’t know huge amounts about Agincourt itself so focused on the history of the bow.

The bow is at least 10,000 years old – some evidence suggests over 70,000 – and through all that time has served as both hunting tool and weapon of war. Early arrow heads are found quite often, but bows are less long lived, and the earliest European bow discovered so far dates from around 6000BC. The technological challenge in all that time has been how to gain more power. More power equals more range, or more destructive effect at the same range. But the basic design has remained the same…

Read more at http://thereview2014.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/commemorating-agincourt-history-of-bow.html

Historical fiction, Writing, Writing Form

Language, active and passive

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This is another in my occasional series looking at use of language across different cultures. There is a trend in English to use the active voice: “I had an idea“, “I understood it” and so on. Indeed, in some places, you come across the rather stronger statement that only the active voice is suitable for writing. This is sometimes attributed to George Orwell, though I have also read that he actually meant something entirely different, and I have never actually tracked down his original words!

Delos statues
Delos statues

But this is another of those language constructions which is culturally bound. Some languages, often but not exclusively Asian ones, prefer a passive form here: “An idea came to me“, “Understanding reached me” and so on. If one was speculating on reasons for this, it might be that in modern Europe and America, we like the idea of being agents rather than recipients. Or maybe we like to keep the fiction of absolute self-determination, and rather resent the idea that other things in the universe – especially things we like to think of as abstract qualities – might themselves have agency and intentions towards us.

This casual western assumption (if that is what it is) has come in for some serious knocking in the last few decades, what with quantum mechanical ideas of probability and uncertainty coming in from physics, insights about heredity and genetics from the life sciences, and an appraisal of the effect of the collective unconscious from psychological studies. However, my sense is that these perspectives have a lot of ground to make up before they make any serious inroads into our feelings of being an agent.

What does this mean for writing about other cultures and other times, and especially writing dialogue? Over the past few months I have picked out a number of other ways in which people in the past – or people in various parts of the world today – use language differently. There was repetition, social position, use of personal names, habits of speech, and grammar. It’s certainly a way to differentiate between the thought and word patterns of different people-groups. Some editors, and some reviewers, appear not to like this, and there are certainly big questions as to how far a book written in modern English ought to use constructions like this outside of interpersonal dialogue. I suppose in part it depends on whether the writer wants the internal worlds of his or her characters to impinge onto the main flow of the book.

Extract, The Flame Before Us, Writing

The burial place

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Today it is time for another look at a cover element of The Flame Before Us, and another extract to go with that. Like my other cover designs, this has been put together by Ian Grainger (www.iangrainger.co.uk), whose skills with photography and image manipulation have been essential. Ian’s site is well worth a look.

Lamp and smoke cover image partSo, the cover piece today is the third individual element of the whole, being an oil lamp nicely lit. Ian and I had a lot of fun tracking down a suitable lamp and working out how to get a good flame with olive oil. Other than being manufactured within the last year or so, this is a pretty good match to an oil lamp of the era described in the story.

Today’s extract is from near to the end of the book. In the extract, we have been following Anilat, her daughter Haleyna, and their nurse Damatiria throughout the book. Damariel and Nepheret are priests: readers of earlier books in the series will recognise them.

Some time later, they stood at what had been the gateway of a walled area. Wild grasses and bright flowers straggled between the buildings. It had indeed been a short distance, but the old couple moved only at a slow pace. They had headed south from the city, away from the house near the city wall, away from the area containing Anilat’s new home, past the scattering of dwellings starting to spill outside the old boundary.

The spring sun shone on the holy place. It was deserted now, the buildings of the interior lying empty. Anilat recognised the design from places that her mother had spoken of. Beside her, just outside the walls, was a guardhouse. Ahead of her was the main shrine, stripped now of everything valuable. Over to one side were halls where the women would have eaten, sung, and slept. On the other side was a low stone enclosure wall. The priest, Damariel, led them towards it.

The track they walked on curved around behind the wall, and then stopped at a flight of steps going down. Anilat realised that they led underground, under the walled area. The stone flags of the steps were still neat, but trailing thorns and briars were starting to encroach. The bottom of the stairs lay in a pool of shadow. Nepheret struck fire from a stone and lit a small clay lamp.

They went down the stairs in a group. The two priests were first, with Anilat following closely. Haleyna was on her right, and Damatiria on her left, and all three women had linked arms. As they descended the steps into the shadows, the flame in Nepheret’s hand cast ever darker shadows behind them. Little rustling sounds came from crevices in the rocks.

At the bottom of the stairs they stood on a bare earth floor. Rock pillars, decorated with twisting painted vines and lotus flowers, supported the vaulted ceiling. The air was a little damp, and the patterns on the pillars were already starting to fade. The lamplight was lost in the curves of the roof, but Anilat could see that the dark expanse above them was sprinkled with stars. Damariel took Anilat by the hand and stepped confidently across the floor away from the daylight, then turned to his right through a narrow arch into a second room.

Pillars leaned out of the gloom like tree trunks. Here, the darkness was thick, silent. The little flame cast only a small puddle of light. They approached the end wall.

A great figure of the Lady Nut stretched from side to side. Her feet were arched, with her toes on the ground to their left, her body stretched over their heads, and her fingertips touched the earth again on their right. Her naked body was speckled with the stars of the heavens, and her eye gazed at them without blinking. She was glorious, magnificent, life-affirming.

The wall itself was pierced with little alcoves and pockets. Small jars and pots rested in some of them, but most were empty. Damariel gestured towards them, the shadow of his hand ranging across the wall as the flame bowed and danced. His voice sounded hollow in the chamber.

To find out who is being laid to rest here, you will have to be patient… the release date for The Flame Before Us is set as mid-April, probably 15th for the Kindle version and a few days later for the paperback to become available.

History, Writing

The Act of Writing – part 1 – Cuneiform tablets

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I thought that in this new year, I would spend some time writing occasional articles exploring a few of the varied ways in which writing was captured in the ancient near east. Of course, there were comparatively few men – and even fewer women – who could actually read what had been set down, but often the writing itself was displayed publicly. Whether on a temple or a tomb, in many cases the written word was often meant to be seen. At other times, it was a private message, smaller in scale and less demonstrative in production.

Cuneiform tablet with observations of Venus, Neo-Assyrian, 7th century BCToday I want to look at one specific kind of writing – cuneiform tablets. These are usually surprisingly small, and incredibly densely packed with information. One wonders how, in dim light, it was possible to read the contents at any speed. One’s expectation is that the surface will be rough like a brick, but (unless the tablet has been physically damaged over the years) the surface is typically surprisingly smooth.

Physically producing the tablet from clay was itself a challenge – the raw material had to be damp enough to take the impression of the wedge-shaped stylus, but firm enough to retain the shape. The two sides are visibly different – the side originally against the table is almost flat, while the one uppermost has a distinct curved pillow shape. We still use the terms recto and verso for the two sides of a piece of paper – nowadays the only difference is of physical relationship, but once upon a time the “right” side and the “turned” side really were quite different.

Turning to actual writing, the scribe had to work swiftly in order to get the message impressed into the surface as it was drying. Sometimes we see that the last few lines have been squashed together with smaller signs, or else continued round the edge onto the vertical sides of the tablet – better that, than have to stray onto a second piece for just a few signs!

The great virtue of clay tablets is that, if everything goes horribly wrong, they can be softened and reused, so long as you are prepared starting from scratch. But this commits the scribe to a lot of effort, so one suspects that the decision was not made lightly. Cuneiform tablets often contain minor slips and typos – it is possible that a poorly trained scribe did not notice, but it is also possible that somebody chose to let the mistakes slip through the net rather than go through the pain of rework.

Cuneiform tablet with schoolwork, Old Babylonian, about 1900-1700 BCThe most common cuneiform tablet is written using the Akkadian script – a character set where a symbol represents a syllable rather than a single letter. Akkadian was used as an international written form for well over 2 millennia, and on a smaller scale for nearly 3. It was used by different scribes to capture several different spoken languages – exactly like modern English letters are used today – so today’s reader of the tablet has to not only decipher the syllabic signs, but then identify the specific language being used. Another form of cuneiform, using the same technology to produce tablets, is found in Ugarit, on the Syrian coast. Ugaritic employs a smaller sign-list representing a true alphabet, closely related to modern Arabic but of course visually quite different.

Finally, it would not be right to finish this without mentioning a recipe for cuneiform tablet cookies, courtesy of the University of Pennsylvania museum blog – a fine way to practice your writing and then eat your words. Audible books have been making the rounds for some little while, and perhaps now it is the time for edible books…

Credits: I discovered the cookie recipe through Judith Starkston’s excellent blog, and the pictures are served from the British Museum web site.

Blog Hop, History, The Flame Before Us, Writing

The Hunt – Feasting at Ugarit

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Helen Hollick Blog Hop LogoIt’s my pleasure today to be taking part in Helen Hollick’s Christmas Party blog hop. Although this was originally focused on Christmas celebrations, several participants, including me, write about places and times where Christmas is unknown. Scroll to the end of the post for the complete list of participants and blog links.

So after casting about for a few culturally-appropriate festivals, I decided to go with an Ugaritic festival, The Hunt. This is suited to the work-in-progress The Flame Before Us, due to be released early next year.

Of course hunting of itself was a regular part of life in the Levant, and much of the time had no particular religious angle. But it seems, from occasional textual mentions and a certain amount of interpretation of archaeology, that from time to time this ordinary secular pursuit was elevated into a sacred ceremony. The perhaps tenuous connection with Christmas is that here in the UK, there has been for many years a custom for landowners to ride out fox hunting over the Christmas holiday. This is typically regarded as senseless and brutal by city dwellers, but is still popular in many rural areas, where it is seen as an essential part of community life and wildlife husbandry. By law nowadays it has been watered down to a less violent version where foxes do not in fact get killed, and a lure rather than a wild animal is pursued. Such measures would be unthinkable in ancient Ugarit.

One of the Ugaritic texts alluding to this idea of The Hunt is The Birth of the Gracious Gods. In one part of this, the goddesses Athirat and Rahmay go out from the presence of the chief god El in order to hunt. The goddess Anat has a hunting bow which features strongly in some other stories. Gods got involved as well as goddesses – usually what one might call “second tier” rather than centrally important deities. Similar ideas are found in texts from other Bronze Age locations in the Levant and Mesopotamia – and indeed across in ancient Greece a little later.

To appreciate the role of The Hunt, a basic threefold division of terrain must be understood. There are populated settlements – cities, towns, and the daughter villages linked to these. A high proportion of the religious literature which has survived focuses on urban life and urban worship. Around these places was the sown land – not just planted fields, but also pastures for flocks. These were regarded as part of a town’s territory and (by and large) were clear of dangerous predators and wild game. Outside that again was the wilderness. This was the province of the wild things.

Our textual record of religious actions to do with the sown land and the wilderness is scant. We are told of sacred processions which go out from the town into these peripheral areas, lay symbolic claim to them, and then return. And the offerings which are recorded are often typical of the zones concerned – dairy produce or domesticated animals on the one hand, and wild animal sacrifices on the other.

The sacred dimension of The Hunt has to be understood from this perspective. Men went out from their homes into the unknown wild places, and, if skill and divine favour coincided, came back again with bounty. Archaeology loosely supports the idea that The Hunt could have a sacred dimension – we find places where considerable numbers of wild animal bones – deer, gazelle, mountain goat, and so on – are found in clusters around altar sites. In terms of the overall diet, such wild food forms a relatively small component, so these finds suggest that from time to time these animals formed part of religious ceremonies.

It may be important that the law code in the biblical book of Deuteronomy specifically allows slaughter of undomesticated animals outside the system controlled by the priesthood – perhaps recognising not only the food value but also a long-standing custom of informal sacred observance. If so, then the practice seems to have attracted the criticism of later – and generally stricter – generations of priests, and the practice is scarcely mentioned favourably in later books. Perhaps the patriarchal story of Jacob and Esau remembers something of this; Jacob is at home in the domesticated world of the sown land, while his brother Esau delights in the wilderness – The Hunt.

Back at Ugarit, we do not know how often, or by whom, The Hunt was celebrated. In The Flame Before Us, I have taken the narrative liberty of assuming that it was not just for the elite, but a male pursuit shared across a broad social range. This would make it loosely analogous to watching sport today, which cuts right across other measures of status and rank. So here following are a selection of extracts from one strand of The Flame Before Us, scattered through the book.

LampTadugari is a high-ranking Ugaritic official, currently a refugee with his wife Anilat and the rest of their family following the sack of their city. Khuratsanitu is a personal guard.

Tadugari turned back again to look downhill. Little eddies of onshore breeze stirred the cloud bank, allowed glimpses of the sea beyond the city. At this distance it looked calm, placid. He wore a confused, haggard expression.

“It was to be the hunt tomorrow. One of the king’s own sons wanted me to ride beside him on the chase, and sit beside him at the feast. I won’t be able to do that now. How will I earn his favour again now that I ran away?”

Anilat stared at him in disbelief, and her voice sharpened in anger.

“How can you be thinking of the hunt? My city is ruined. My mother died, and her body was treated vilely before my eyes. My brother and sister are gone, and I have to believe them dead. Out of all this I have my own three children, and my brother’s two. And all you can talk about is missing the hunt?”

He hunched down under the torrent of words and said nothing. She looked around in exasperation. The hillsides around the hut were empty and desolate, and the west was shrouded and gloomy. It was a bitter place.

…

…

Ahead of them Anilat could hear the two men talking. Tadugari was once again lamenting the hunt that he would not be able to join. Her thoughts filled briefly with a burning rage: was there nothing else to talk about?

To her surprise, though, it seemed that Khuratsanitu had also been a regular participant. The common soldiers apparently had their own part in it alongside the nobility, and all shared alike in the drinking afterwards, regardless of rank. The anxiety that had been building within her for several days suddenly burst out.

…

…

[“Should we not stay in Shalem rather than go on further?”]

“The Mitsriy land is good. But the journey to reach it can be desolate and harsh, depending which way we choose. I hope it does not come to that; better by far to find that Shalem is the safe harbour that we have been looking for all this time.”

“Sir, look, they still have the hunt in the Kinahny lands. You have often spoken of how you missed it: you could enjoy it again here. I do not think the Mitsriy have it, though. I hear they snare fish and birds, rather than hunt wild beasts.”

“Their great kings boast of the hunt. But I have not heard that others in their land go out like that. But see, you and I could enjoy it together again: it would not be me alone.”

“Then, sir, would it be so bad to stay among the Kinahny? Their ways are more like ours than those of the Mitsriy. You would find a place among the nobility here; I could serve with their guardsmen. Should we stop here rather than continue south? Surely it is a long way yet if we kept going.”

Other participants are listed below… please follow the links and check them out! Please note also that some items may not be accessible until Saturday 20th December so be patient.. there is some great holiday reading here.

Thank you for joining our party now follow on to the next enjoyable entertainment…

1. Helen Hollick : “You are Cordially Invited to a Ball” (plus a giveaway prize) – http://tinyurl.com/nsodv78
2. Alison Morton : “Saturnalia surprise – a winter party tale” (plus a giveaway prize) – http://tinyurl.com/op8fz57
3. Andrea Zuvich : No Christmas For You! The Holiday Under Cromwell – http://tinyurl.com/pb9fh3m
4. Ann Swinfen : Christmas 1586 – Burbage’s Company of Players Celebrates – http://annswinfen.com/2014/12/christmas-party/
5. Anna Belfrage : All I want for Christmas – http://tinyurl.com/okycz3o
6. Carol Cooper : How To Be A Party Animal – http://wp.me/p3uiuG-Mn
7. Clare Flynn : A German American Christmas – http://tinyurl.com/mmbxh3r
8. Debbie Young : Good Christmas Housekeeping (plus a giveaway prize) – http://tinyurl.com/mbnlmy2
9. Derek Birks : The Lord of Misrule – A Medieval Christmas Recipe for Trouble – http://wp.me/p3hedh-3f
10. Edward James : An Accidental Virgin and An Uninvited Guest – http://tinyurl.com/o3vowum and – http://tinyurl.com/lwvrxnx
11. Fenella J. Miller : Christmas on the Home front (plus a giveaway prize) – http://tinyurl.com/leqddlq
12. J. L. Oakley : Christmas Time in the Mountains 1907 (plus a giveaway prize) – http://bit.ly/1v3uRYy
13. Jude Knight : Christmas at Avery Hall in the Year of Our Lord 1804 – http://wp.me/p58yDd-az
14. Julian Stockwin: Join the Party – http://tinyurl.com/n8xk946
15. Juliet Greenwood : Christmas 1914 on the Home Front (plus a giveaway) – http://tinyurl.com/q6e9vnp
16. Lauren Johnson : “Farewell Advent, Christmas is come” – Early Tudor Festive Feasts – http://wp.me/p1aZWT-ei
17. Lucienne Boyce : A Victory Celebration – http://tinyurl.com/ovl4sus
18. Nancy Bilyeau : Christmas After the Priory (plus a giveaway prize) – http://tinyurl.com/p52q7gl
19. Nicola Moxey : The Feast of the Epiphany, 1182 – http://tinyurl.com/qbkj6b9
20. Peter St John: Dummy’s Birthday – http://tinyurl.com/nsqedvv
21. Regina Jeffers : Celebrating a Regency Christmas (plus a giveaway prize) – http://tinyurl.com/pt2yvzs
22. Richard Abbott : The Hunt – Feasting at Ugarit – http://bit.ly/1wSK2b5
23. Saralee Etter : Christmas Pudding — Part of the Christmas Feast – http://tinyurl.com/lyd4d7b
24. Stephen Oram : Living in your dystopia: you need a festival of enhancement… (plus a giveaway prize) – http://wp.me/p4lRC7-aG
25. Suzanne Adair :The British Legion Parties Down for Yule 1780 (plus a giveaway prize) – http://bit.ly/1r9qnUZ
26. Lindsay Downs : O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree – ​http://lindsaydowns-romanceauthor.weebly.com/

Thank you for joining us – please read, enjoy, and leave comments to encourage all the participants!

Writing

Perspectives on publishing

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Like, no doubt, many of us, I enjoyed reading the transcript of Ursula LeGuin’s recent speech at the (US) National Book Awards, and on first reading was carried along by her stirring words (eg http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/11/20/365434149/book-news-ursula-k-le-guin-steals-the-show-at-the-national-book-awards)

But longer and more sober thought made me wonder, and then I came across the following open letter contribution to the debate:

http://myth.typepad.com/breakfast/2014/11/an-open-letter-to-ursula-k-le-guin.html

It’s well worth reading, with snippets like “Books are about freedom, as you said. Freedom to write and create what you want…What tore down freedom and made writers think they would never be good enough was the traditional gatekeeping model where agents and editors had to be convinced that a writer’s book was worthy of publication.”

I really don’t want to enter into the debate as to whether the traditional publishing houses should or should not feel threatened by the rise of indie publishing. I myself am wildly enthusiastic about the indie world, and the liberty that some easily available technology and a few willing companies have provided. For me, and for many others, this has provided a back door into a world where the front door is resolutely shut for a whole variety of reasons, often purely commercial.

Cover image - The DispossessedI guess what has remained the biggest disappointment for me in Ursula LeGuin’s words is the sense of establishmentarianism in them. She persevered at writing kinds of literature which were, in the early days, not reckoned to be “proper” genres at all. Now they are accepted, and she herself has been accepted – which is fantastic. But does that then mean that the establishment becomes the norm? Perhaps all it has done is tried to absorb what was – and hopefully still is – a voice of dissent.

I thought back to one of my favourite LeGuin characters – Shevek, the anarchist theoretical physicist of The Dispossessed. What, I wondered, would he have done about publishers and the indie world? But of course we know the answer already – Shevek went ahead and self-published a treatise on highly abstruse, ground-breaking mathematics. There’s a marginal commercial proposition if ever there was one – far harder than science fiction, or fantasy, or Bronze Age historical fiction, and so on. The logical end of his personal commitment to truth, the tradition bound context of both cultures he encountered, and the combined creative ability of a small group of friends… was to self-publish. Long may that remain the case!

Historical fiction, Reading Challenge, Review, Writing

Review – The Summer Queen, by Elizabeth Chadwick

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I have to confess to being disappointed by The Summer Queen, partly because it had had a big build-up from friends. This was a book club choice, and one which I struggled with: at the club discussion there was a lot of talk as to whether it fundamentally appealed to women rather than men. Some of the other club members assured me that they had very much enjoyed others of Elizabeth’s books, so perhaps this was not the best for me to start with.

Buy The Summer Queen from Amazon.co.uk
Buy The Summer Queen from Amazon.com

Cover - The Summer QueenThe Summer Queen follows the life of Eleanor of Aquitaine (Alienor here, a more accurate representation of the name) up to the point where she is about to arrive in England as the new queen of this land. She is already a highly travelled and shrewd ruler of her own territory and others, and the expectation is set in the reader that things are on the up, after some unpleasant experiences in the first part of her life.

However, I found it difficult to enjoy the book. Elizabeth’s research, from the limited quantity of material available, has been thorough, and I understand that where her reconstruction differs from others there are good reasons behind the choice. But I found the writing itself quite formulaic – I had the feeling I was reading more of a Wikipedia article, liberally laced with sex scenes to liven up the narrative.

Elizabeth provides considerable amounts of detailing, but in spite of that I had no real sense of immersion in any particular period. I found myself having to confirm from outside sources that I was actually reading about a time less than a century after the Battle of Hastings and the Norman Conquest. I think this is because of the way in which the inner life of characters is portrayed: Eleanor herself often felt like a modern individual timeslipped into an older period. I found it very hard to have any sympathetic response for Eleanor, despite the several personal tragedies she faced, mainly because the difficulties of an extraordinarily rich and powerful woman don’t have a lot of resonance with me.

Had it not been for the book club I would probably have given up on it well before the end. My initial reaction was quite negative, but a few days reflecting on it has improved this somewhat, mainly because I have come away with more knowledge of the politics of the age. However, still a three star book for me, and I don’t think that I will be looking out for the other books to follow in the trilogy. Clearly many other folk rate it higher than I do, and if you enjoy this period of history it is worth a look. I trust the judgment of my fellow book club members and would happily try another of Elizabeth’s books, in one of her several other series.

Fantasy, Historical fiction, Reading Challenge, Review, Writing

Review – The Mirror and the Mage, by David Frauenfelder

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The Mirror and the Mage is a young adult book – not my usual fodder – but is also a historical fantasy, which is more familiar territory. The story is set in the very early days of the Roman Republic, when the Etruscans were the most significant challengers to the growth of Rome. We follow a youth, Lucius, who wants to serve his king but whose real talents are intellectual. In other cultures he would be a scribe, but his society values Mars more than Mercury. It is a familiar situation for many. Basically, he is a geek trying to survive in the middle of the gang war which was early Roman political life.

Buy The Mirror and the Mage from Amazon.co.uk
Buy The Mirror and the Mage from Amazon.com

Cover image - The Mirror and the MageLucius finds a resolution for his dilemma by becoming an apprentice to an old magician, Publius Litterarius. The basis of magic here is partly verbal – you have to get the words correct in both meaning and grammar – and partly resource-based, requiring particular crystals to become effective. Lucius goes through a sense of progressively more complex and dangerous situations as he learns his art. He also, appropriately for a YA book, grapples with personal responsibility and a growing awareness of the other sex.

The book is not just an entertaining story, but aims to be a tool for learning Latin as well. If you want to be like Lucius, you have to learn your grammar! I have to say that I wish I had been taught Latin like this many years ago – like a lot of other people I was simply exposed to lists of word patterns identified by strange names I did not at that stage know from English – accusative, dative, ablative, pluperfect and so on. Nowadays I have a better sense of what these mean, but at the time they were so much phlogiston (and much less fun). I am fairly sure that if I had had the kind of imaginative presentation used in this book, I would have learned to like languages a whole lot earlier.

So The Mirror and the Mage can be read both as a fun story of magical apprenticeship, and a creative teaching aid. Either way I would recommend it if you like YA books, or are contemplating buying one for somebody else.

Historical fiction, Writing, Writing Form

Historical dialogue and grammar

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Over the last couple of months I have looked at how to use dialogue in fiction to portray the meeting of people of different cultures having to use a common language. The shared language is foreign to at least one of the speakers, maybe both, and so they use it in ways that are not strictly accurate.

Speakers' area, Thira (Santorini)
One striking feature of different languages is the way they arrange words in a sentence in different orders. The standard form of the language may put words in a certain order, but a foreign speaker will probably speak in a mixture of the “proper” order and the one familiar from their native tongue. If I am learning a new language, the most obvious thing in the world is to construct the sentence in my head and then work my way along it. I end up with the right words but spoken with a phrasing which is unnatural in the target language.

Now if this is done too simplistically in dialogue you end up with a lot of characters who sound like Yoda from Star Wars – quaint and laughable rather than foreign. But incorrect word order can mean something much more interesting than just reversing the words to end up with “powerful he is“! It can be something as slight as moving an adjective or preposition from before a word to after, or using the wrong personal pronoun, or moving helper words like “both” or “all” into different places.

Many languages, ancient and modern, do not have an equivalent to “the” – the definite article. So this gives two possibilities – overusing the definite article when a native speaker would avoid it, or leaving it out where one ought to use it. This does not always show different cultural origin. For a time in ancient Egyptian history, using the definite article was seen as a sign of lower class, so social issues such as rank can be compactly shown. Languages which lack the definite article usually make good use of the demonstrative particles “this” and “that“, or reflexive expressions such as “itself“.

Finally for today, lots of languages use verbs differently. English tends to be focused on whether an action is in the past or the future, and can express that quite accurately. The Semitic family of languages, in contrast, is built around whether actions are complete or incomplete. This is not quite the same as past and future, since the choice also draws in questions of whether the action is regular or habitual, or how confident the speaker is that something in progress will ever be finished. So again, the natural expectations and assumptions of a speaker may be thwarted by the different structure of the target language – they will sound slightly off the mark.

Now, none of these things need to make the dialogue incomprehensible. Rather, they can enrich it. There is of course the original purpose of signalling differences in ethnic or social background. But also they can give an added depth to the conversation by showing how much – or how little – the speakers want to communicate with one another despite these obstacles.