[As I write this on Christmas night, I declare “Bah, Humbug”. The dishwasher is running, the family birthdays and memorials are done… time to get back to work.] So… sparked by my current holiday read, I have some observations about the absence of a clanging bell that should have made itself heard.
It’s not enough to be sure that the technology, culture, and physical reality in your fictional environment suit the time and place. It can be even more difficult to purge your language of the words and expressions you’re accustomed to using that are based on metaphors that are impossible for your fictional world.
Case in point — Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall (pub. 2009). Masterful work, terrific writing, professional editing, vivid portrait of a time, place, and personalities (Tudor England), in all of its society, technology, and culture. And then, this appears (in “Alas, What Shall I Do For Love”) :
“My lord … if your wife will not go to France, if you cannot persuade her … shall we say that she is ill? It would be something you could do for the king, whom you know is your friend. It would save him from—” He almost says, from the lady’s harsh tongue. But he backs out of that sentence, and says something else. “It would save face.”
(Do I need to explain that the Oriental concept of “face” used in English and this particular expression date from the mid-19th century, and not the Tudor period?)
In book 2 of Mantel’s work (Bring Up the Bodies), in “Master of Phantoms”, she writes, of a man placed in an awkward position while asked an opinion:
“It is hard, Majesty, not to think marriage is sinful inherently, since the celibates have spent many centuries saying that they are better than we are. But they are not better. Repetition of false teachings does not make them true. You agree, Cranmer?”
Just kill me now, the archbishop’s face says. Against all the laws of king and church, he is a married man; he married in Germany when he was among the reformers, he keeps Frau Grete secretly, he hides her in his country houses. Does Henry know? He must know. Will Henry say? No, because he is intent on his own plight.
I blinked when I encountered that modern slang, and checked my dates. That sarcastic phrase becomes popular circa 2005, 4 years before Wolf Hall is published. Mantel submitted book 1 in 2005. Maybe this text was written before the phrase was used — hard to know. The OED doesn’t help in its citations. So, while I can’t prove that the phrase in the work is the modern sarcasm instead of just a coincidence of verbal phrasing, I sure think it is.
But, to be fair, I wondered for a moment if I was fooled when I thought I’d found another inexplicable lapse, when in book 3 (“The Five Wounds”, (The Mirror and the Light), she has a character comment:
“Cremuel, what kind of imbecile do you take me for? You know what I must say, and I know what you must say. Why do we not, as the tennis players say, cut to the chase?”
Ouch. I was sure this was hideously modern, from the usage in the early film industry, but just in case, I looked more closely. A Google search turns up the silent film references as the origin, but there was one outlier from 2008 which claimed (without citation) that the early tennis fashion of Shakespeare’s time had court divisions called “chases”… I wasn’t buying that and sought out the earliest citations from the OED which referenced…. the silent film industry and nothing earlier. So, this is indeed modern, and Mantel may perhaps have wondered herself and been taken in by the Google search rando.
I’ve got another 1000 pages to go, my ereader tells me. There may be more surprises in store.
These linguistic metaphors are as deeply embedded in our contemporary reading sources and spoken language as any other part of our linguistic expertise. We know what these words mean and how to use them in contemporary communication. But unless you are particularly interested in the history of languages, etymology, and how (and when) words and phrases and cultural concepts are borrowed from various sources into English, it may not be easy to notice when they are out of place in a fictional world.
It’s the sort of error that even excellent writers can commit in a moment of inattention, and that professional editors can miss, quod erat demonstrandum. I don’t fully understand how these three obvious examples could have occurred without raising alarms from all sorts of people before publication, but they did.
Just as it is useful to have a subject-matter-expert read your story containing futuristic or primitive technology or specialist jargon, so it is also useful to have a general language-maven act as a second reader, the sort of language pedant for whom this kind of anachronism is as a clanging bell. People like me.
How do you ensure this sort of thing doesn’t creep into your own work?
Mad Genius Club 
14 responses to “Linguistic anachronisms”
I made a little note and hung it where I could see it. The note listed technologies that did not apply, so nothing computer or typewriter related, nothing having to do with electricity, or modern transportation (no “shifting gears” as relates to conversation), no gunpowder. I still caught myself a few times and had to look up terms to see if the concept in them predated 1600.
I don’t do strictly historical fiction, so I have a little more wiggle room, but egregious anachronisms are egregious. (So too is sesquipedalian language, but that’s for a different blog post 😉
Technically accurate usage may sound off, too. I just revised a sentence from “truthfully” to “accurately” because the inaccuracies were sloppiness, not dishonest — pondered it a little longer, and from “accurately” to “faithfully” it went because it just sounded more period. (Reading old books helps.)
Remember that no one has a strong suit before the invention of cheap paper, which allows for playing cards, which allows for the game of bridge!
Also, “faithfully” suggests a more publicly pious era’s usage.
I wonder if future generations will need to be reminded that a character can’t “fail his saving throw” before the development of role-playing games.
Also, it’s more feudal so faithfulness has a resonance for them even in secular settings.
Playing cards show up as early as the 14th century in Europe, and even earlier in the Middle East. “Bridge” is much later. I’m not sure what the relationship to Hornblower’s favorite, whist, is.
I can only think that I am fortunate in writing historicals set in the 19th century. There are numberless contemporary 19th century accounts, letters, memoirs, etc. that I can “load up on” in order to duplicate the flavor of conversation and writings in my own books. Once or twice, I have run across a phrase which turns out to be much older than I assumed. I thought the phrase “trash” – meaning personal baggage and possessions was something from mid-last-century, of Vietnam-era military slang – but I ran across it in a collection of personal letters written just after the American Civil War … so it has a longer vintage than I had assumed. I also have a book written by a person who was part of my writing group, listing the dates when various items and commodities were first developed and available to the public, which was also useful. Did you know that Necco wafer candy was also developed around the time of the ACW, and that strings of electric lights for Christmas trees dated from (IIRC) 1880-90?
I’m going to play “Devil’s Advocate” here.
While there are obvious things that apply to technology “not invented yet”, correct period phrases might “not work” for a modern audience.
IE Writers are always translating from “past language (or foreign languages)” to modern language so the modern readers can understand the story.
David Drake had problems with modern editors when he described Roman Shields being made of plywood even though laminated wood (ie plywood) actually existed then. I wonder how many modern readers would have been thrown off by Roman Shields being made of plywood?
The Tiffany problem. Tiffany being a good medieval name, popular for girls born around — ta-da! — Epiphany.
Sounds right is more important than is right.
I refuse to dumb things down for uninformed readers, though I may offer them a clue. In the case of the shield, I would refer to it as laminated, since plywood is a modern specialized term (which association they are free to make as an “ah-ha!” moment).
The medieval Tiffany can comment casually on the relationship (the name is normal to her, after all) by referring (in passing) to her mother not being “churched” from the birth date on Epiphany to some other date, thus also introducing the concept of a new mother being “churched” as well.
As a writer, I should be able to make it be right, rather than just sound right (but be wrong). How else do any of us learn at any age?
James P Hogan uses a catch phrase in a similar manner as a red flag to spot the fake in a culture, “going ballistic”. I forget the title of the book and I am nowhere near my library. Jolie LaChance KG7IQC
I think that was “The Coming of the Quantum Cats” by Frederik Pohl?
Last read it maybe 15 years ago?
The Multiplex Man by James P Hogan.
When I first looked at John Birmingham’s first novel, the start of a series about mid-21st-century naval vessels dropping through time into World War II, I ran into a scene where a young WWII naval officer saw what the ships from the future were doing, and exclaimed, “They’re firing lasers!” All very well, but I was alive when the word “laser” was first coined, ca. 1960; no one in World War II could have used it. It really damaged my suspension of disbelief.
I think if you’re going to write books set in the past you need to read books that were written in the past. That gives you a chance of knowing when what you’re writing doesn’t sound right. Beyond that, omnivorous curiosity help; see for example Kipling’s fiction, which is full of random information about all sorts of things.
I mean, “death ray” or “heat ray” were right there . . .