Doing a spot of research, I found myself reading something in one of the “Game of Thrones” books.
Before I go on, I must make it clear that I don’t like fantasy stories. I read The Hobbit, as a child of about twelve and enjoyed it but have never got more than a third of the way through Lord of The Rings. In fact, I still call it “Lord of The Rings” and not LOTR which tells you all you need to know, just as the first half-dozen pages of Harry Potter told me all that I needed to know before closing it with a thunk that rattled the casements.
Yes, it’s me, I know. I just can’t get on with it. But this post isn’t a diatribe against fantasy; I just didn’t want comeback about me being a fantasy philistine who has no respect for the genre but you see, I can understand the silly names, the Victorian Celtic/medieval romanticism and that fact people can chop one another up and no policeman will call. It's true that I find the magic harder to deal with and don’t get me started on dragons but none of these things pulled me up short.
No, what struck me was that the “highborn” – yes, he uses that word – characters speak like they’re caught up in a bad Shakespeare pastiche and the “lower orders” sound like South Yorkshire pitmen.
Curiosity drove me to a number of fantasy forums where I found this matter being discussed. Some respondents took a view that it was about time that modern speech was employed in more fantasy novels. Much as I admire this iconoclasm, I can’t see the “puissant Legions” of fantasy fans rushing to embrace such a development.
I wondered about this when I went back to George R.R. Martin (J.R.R. Tolkein – geddit?) and discovered him using colloquial English for his rude mechanicals. They say things like “Bugger” and “Sod” – Remember how refreshing it was to see Pratchett’s Discworld characters using such language? The incongruity was part of the conceit but if bona fide fantasy writers are doing it, it’s almost beyond satire.
Both Pratchett and Martin signify a character’s lack of formal education and general lower classness in their use of vulgar terms (and I use “vulgar” in the sense of “common” rather than “crude”) but this cliché doesn’t hold much water either. I have little doubt that the royal family (Gawd bless ‘em) exchange frequent buggers, sods, and bloodys on a day-to-day basis and probably the odd fuck to boot. They may well steer clear of twats but then, who can blame them for that?
No, it’s this assumption that trolls speak like West Ham supporters; and wizards like John Milton’s less talented cousin Alf.
As I say, I'm perfectly aware that there are very many fantasy writers who reject the KJV language of some of the earlier exponents of the genre but lines like “…It is well thou hast work to do here”… from one of the “Earthsea” books, or the awful…
And the fire with all the strength it hath,
And the lightning with its rapid wrath,
And the winds with their swiftness along their path…
…from “A Swiftly Tilting Planet” by Madeleine L'Engle, have not yet been entirely cast into the pits of the outer darkness. The irony, of course, is that it would be those South Yorkshire pitmen (had Margaret Thatcher not ethnically cleansed the region) who would most likely to be “thee-ing and thou-ing” - as my mother used to say - because, in South Yorkshire, the use of second person familiar is firmly associated with the ill-educated. I well remember having it beaten out me at school. My brothers, (no less well-educated but far more resilient that I), retain, I'm delighted to say, that wonderful and tragically fast-fading idiomatic mannerism.
Now back to that idea I was working on, in which trolls riding dragons dragons lay siege to a Yorkshire pit village. It will be called “Wrath-on-Dearne”.
Before I go on, I must make it clear that I don’t like fantasy stories. I read The Hobbit, as a child of about twelve and enjoyed it but have never got more than a third of the way through Lord of The Rings. In fact, I still call it “Lord of The Rings” and not LOTR which tells you all you need to know, just as the first half-dozen pages of Harry Potter told me all that I needed to know before closing it with a thunk that rattled the casements.
Yes, it’s me, I know. I just can’t get on with it. But this post isn’t a diatribe against fantasy; I just didn’t want comeback about me being a fantasy philistine who has no respect for the genre but you see, I can understand the silly names, the Victorian Celtic/medieval romanticism and that fact people can chop one another up and no policeman will call. It's true that I find the magic harder to deal with and don’t get me started on dragons but none of these things pulled me up short.
No, what struck me was that the “highborn” – yes, he uses that word – characters speak like they’re caught up in a bad Shakespeare pastiche and the “lower orders” sound like South Yorkshire pitmen.
Curiosity drove me to a number of fantasy forums where I found this matter being discussed. Some respondents took a view that it was about time that modern speech was employed in more fantasy novels. Much as I admire this iconoclasm, I can’t see the “puissant Legions” of fantasy fans rushing to embrace such a development.
I wondered about this when I went back to George R.R. Martin (J.R.R. Tolkein – geddit?) and discovered him using colloquial English for his rude mechanicals. They say things like “Bugger” and “Sod” – Remember how refreshing it was to see Pratchett’s Discworld characters using such language? The incongruity was part of the conceit but if bona fide fantasy writers are doing it, it’s almost beyond satire.
Both Pratchett and Martin signify a character’s lack of formal education and general lower classness in their use of vulgar terms (and I use “vulgar” in the sense of “common” rather than “crude”) but this cliché doesn’t hold much water either. I have little doubt that the royal family (Gawd bless ‘em) exchange frequent buggers, sods, and bloodys on a day-to-day basis and probably the odd fuck to boot. They may well steer clear of twats but then, who can blame them for that?
No, it’s this assumption that trolls speak like West Ham supporters; and wizards like John Milton’s less talented cousin Alf.
As I say, I'm perfectly aware that there are very many fantasy writers who reject the KJV language of some of the earlier exponents of the genre but lines like “…It is well thou hast work to do here”… from one of the “Earthsea” books, or the awful…
And the fire with all the strength it hath,
And the lightning with its rapid wrath,
And the winds with their swiftness along their path…
…from “A Swiftly Tilting Planet” by Madeleine L'Engle, have not yet been entirely cast into the pits of the outer darkness. The irony, of course, is that it would be those South Yorkshire pitmen (had Margaret Thatcher not ethnically cleansed the region) who would most likely to be “thee-ing and thou-ing” - as my mother used to say - because, in South Yorkshire, the use of second person familiar is firmly associated with the ill-educated. I well remember having it beaten out me at school. My brothers, (no less well-educated but far more resilient that I), retain, I'm delighted to say, that wonderful and tragically fast-fading idiomatic mannerism.
Now back to that idea I was working on, in which trolls riding dragons dragons lay siege to a Yorkshire pit village. It will be called “Wrath-on-Dearne”.
RSS Feed
