I feel a shudder of sympathy with the medievalist who can't read Ellis Peters,
as those of you who read my tirade about 'alternative' or 'future' Victorian
societies may imagine! It's ironic, given that a taste for historical novels
probably turned me into a historian in the first place, but there are few
historical novels I can bear to read any more (especially the ones I enjoyed
in my teens). Dorothy Dunnett is an exception, but that's probably because her
books can almost be read as 'alternative history/fantasy' (which may be the
explanation why somewhere in the Niccolo sequence the French king is said to
be afflicted with the Pox, i.e. syphilis, several decades before it either a)
arrived from the Americas with Columbus or b) suddenly became a virulent
sexually transmitted epidemic after a long period of quiesence, depending on
which theory one adheres to). I'm sure it is a question of how much one knows,
since I am quite happy reading novels set in periods/cultures about which I
only have a fairly general idea (though basic mistakes like the cotton
underwear are a real turnoff).
I also read a fantasy recently which was allegedly set in an alternative
Oxford, shortly in the future, in which magic and sorcery were accepted and
taught subjects. However, the author didn't seem to me to have done her (I
think it was her) homework about Oxford as a university of long and eccentric
tradition and had homogenised the idiosyncratic college system (which could
have worked extremely well) into a standard competing university departments
background. In fact I couldn't see why Oxford at all, except for the name
alone. But it might have worked for others (though probably not anyone who'd
read D Sayers 'Gaudy Night')
Lesley
Lesley_Hall@classic.msn.com
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