I am the girl anachronism (Bitterblue)

[rachelmanija]

I recently read a fantasy novel which was set in a Europe-esque landscape, with swords and bows but (unless I'm forgetting something) no firearms. They had the printing press and herbal birth control, but no antibiotics. People knew the concept of a republic, apparently based on theoretical writings, but actual governments were hereditary monarchies.

Given the ye olde setting, I was jarred to see characters use the phrase "mental health" and mean exactly what I would mean by it, and also the word "process" in the sense of "to process one's emotions." Those were the ones which jumped out at me, but there was enough in the language and concepts known and believed by the characters which was not merely modern, but distinctively modern, that between that and the thematic elements I ended up feeling that I was reading an allegory, not a fantasy. (Allegory is not a dirty word. It is a perfectly legitimate artistic form.)

The book, by the way, is Kristin Cashore's Bitterblue. I thought it was very ambitious and largely successful. But it struck me as an allegory of recovery from personal and political abuse and totalitarianism, not a fantasy on the same theme. I am not using "allegory" to mean "preachy," or anything else negative. I mean that the world of the book did not read as a fantasy world, but as a stand-in for our own. You don't need magical mind-control to be a brainwasher. It was the pervasive use of extremely modern concepts and phrases that made me feel that way.

Do any of you ever notice that sort of thing? What type and amount of modern language or concepts is invisible, what is jarring, and what tips the book into feeling like it isn't truly meant to be historical or fantastical at all?

Comments

On allegory

[daidoji_gisei]

I'm going to skip your questions for a moment to interject one of my own.

(Allegory is not a dirty word. It is a perfectly legitimate artistic form.)

So when, or why, did allegory become a dirty word? One of my favorite works of literature, Dante's Divine Comedy, is an allegory and I love it to pieces, but if I picked up a modern book that labeled itself as an allegory I think I'd put it back down again. Did the form get abused by the preachy, or did it just fall out of fashion?

Re: On allegory

[rachelmanija]

Good question! I'm guessing both. Possibly also that the categories of "preachy" and "allegory" do have significant overlap, and so began to be used synonymously.

Re: On allegory

[ursula]

I was actually thrown because, well, once upon a time my mother published a YA novel which was an allegory of middle school in the precise sense, where events happen which symbolize ideas familiar to the reader, and I think you meant something a bit more general?

Re: On allegory

[rachelmanija]

You are correct about what an allegory is. But the term is often incorrectly used as a synonym for "preachy."

PS. Susan Whittaker is your mom? Is she still writing?

Re: On allegory

[ursula]

Susan Whitcher, yeah, that's my mom. She is writing literary fiction for adults, now (and currently agent-hunting, since alas, her previous agent died). We are slowly talking her into putting her backlist up as ebooks, which will be a bit of an ordeal, since there are no electronic copies.

Re: On allegory

[kore]

I think people get Animal Farm dinned into their heads too often with THIS IS AN ALLEGORY!! - that or the modern taste for naturalism and realism, which means that anything even partly symbolic is automatically suspicious. Pair that with the "This is REALLY that" method of teaching, and you have generations of people who think all allegory takes place at the level of Everyman.