Russell Cruse
  • Home
  • The Rothko Room
    • Writing The Rothko Room
    • The Rothko Room Characters
    • The Council
    • The Real Rothko Room
    • Rothko Room Covers
    • The Rothko Room Music
    • The Rothko Room Puzzles
    • Locations in The Rothko Room
    • Waifs & Strays >
      • Churchill
      • The Origin of The Council
      • The First Meeting of The Council
  • Books
    • Head Count
    • The Circling Song
  • Weblog
  • Comments
  • Ukulele Stuff
  • Weblog Selections

Takest Thou The Piss, Good My Lord?

16/6/2011

0 Comments

 
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”.

0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    Follow this blog

    RSS Feed

    UK Amazon Kindle Forum's group-authors-bookshelf book montage
    UK Amazon Kindle Forum 222 members
    Somewhere else for those who hang around on the official Amazon Kindle Forum to slouch around.

    Our group-authors-bookshelf shelf



    View this group on Goodreads »

    Archives

    November 2015
    August 2014
    May 2014
    March 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    June 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011
    August 2011
    July 2011
    June 2011
    May 2011
    April 2011
    March 2011

    Categories

    All
    A Clockwork Orange
    Alice Cooper
    American Literature
    Andrew Mitchell
    Anthony Burgess
    Blogging
    Book Cover
    Cover Design
    Crossword
    Eastwood
    Editing
    Emperor's New Clothes
    English
    English Language
    Films
    Frazier
    Gary Barlow
    Godfrey Bloom
    Homeless
    Homeless Man
    Homophones
    Internet Down
    John Farris
    Julian Fellowes
    Kelsey Grammer
    Language
    Left-Wing
    Literary Fiction
    Lord Mcalpine
    Mark Rothko
    Nomophilia
    Nomophobia
    Patrick O'Brian
    Pleb
    Politics
    Prejudice
    Pretentious
    Promoting Literature
    Publishing
    Raimi
    Reliance On Mobile Phones
    Richard Matheson
    Self-publishing
    Semiotics
    Spin
    Twitter
    Without The Internet
    Writing


Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.