That's So Gay: The Prescriptivist's Nightmare

"Not a Homosexual or somehing [sic] that you find stupid, dumb, idiotic, pointless, and or annoying.
It is simply a term to describe a happy mood or expression."

—      Urbandictionary.com user Tyler Turner, March 22, 2008[1]

Mr. Turner’s definition of the word “gay,” posted on Urbandictionary.com reveals a linguistic and cultural sore spot among many English speakers: the semantic drift that inevitably has given a word a meaning he does not like. Gay has, since at least the 1970s, almost exclusively meant “homosexual,” replacing the supposed original definition of “happy.” However, Mr. Turner is incorrect in saying “gay” only has one definition. The OED lists 72 senses (32 main senses, 40 subentry senses) of the word, beginning with “bright or lively-looking, esp. in colour; brilliant, showy” in the late Middle Ages. The word has a far more complicated legacy than the amateur lexicographer quoted above realizes.

The etymology of “gay” is difficult to trace. The OED is itself unsure of its origins, pointing to both Old High German and Occitan as possible originators. The word entered Middle English through French. Where the French got it from is debated. Both the OED and the DEAF, the Dictionnaire Étymologique de l'Ancien Français[2] suggest the French gai and its variants was descended from Old High German gāhi[3] (sometimes spelt gæhe) meaning quick and impetuous.[4] According to the OED's 2^nd edition in 1989, this theory "is now generally abandoned."[5] The 3^rd  edition seems less sure about it being abandoned, instead discussing at some length its possible Germanic origins. In my opinion, a more likely origin for the French word is from Old Occitan, also spelled gai or jai, meaning “joyful” as an adjective and “joy” as a noun.[6] This is analogous to the medieval French spellings gai, gae, gaye, gay, guai; wai, and way; which survives in modern French’s “gai,” which means happy, joyful, always in good humor,[7] identical to its meaning in the Middle Ages.[8] The Occitan word would be applied to the region’s troubadour poetry as “gai saber”: “gay knowledge,”[9] which Thomas Rymer would introduce to English as a name for poetry in 1693 as “the gay science.”[10]

“Gay” has several meanings in Anglo-Norman, the dialect of Old French spoken in England after the Norman Conquest. It could mean “frolicsome,” “happy,” and “lighthearted,” but it could also mean “fickle,” “impetuous,” “rash,” and “lascivious, lewd.”[11] These meanings were carried over to Middle English. The earliest use of “gay” attested to in the OED is in a Middle English manuscript dated to around 1200-1225, Cotton MS Cleopatra C.vi, part of the Ancrene Riwle, a book of instructions for anchoresses. A marginal note reads, in a very archaic dialect, "Hwi þe Gay world is to fleon," though the exact sense of gay is unclear. It is not clear when the first sense of gay—"Bright or lively-looking, esp. in colour; brilliant, showy” is attested to, as medieval books were rarely the first version of their contents. The earliest possible date for an attestation in the popular poem Kyng Alisaunderis 1300, though the manuscript is probably from around 1425. Other earlier uses are in a 1338 chronicle by Robert Mannyng; and The Romance of William of Palerne in 1350.[12]

The earliest uses of “gay” in English were relatively neutral and indeed, often positive. It soon came to mean “finely or showily dressed,” as used by Chaucer in his Parlement of Foules; “noble and excellent” as early as 1350 and often used poetically as an epithet for a noble woman, notably in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. The familiar definition of "cheerful, lighthearted, merry" also dates to the 1380s, with the Pearl Poet in Cleanness and Chaucer in Troilus & Crisyde. Somehow a regional expression developed along the lines of "to have a gay mind," meaning "to be inclined to," like the modern "I have a good mind to...", first attested to by William of Palerne around 1350. This would be used as late as 1932 but is now considered obsolete. The noble definition became ironic, especially when employed by the Scots, beginning in the 1580s. “Gay” in modern English is both an adjective and a noun. This study will focus on its adjectival use.

Like its Anglo-Norman predecessor, the Middle English “gay” had negative connotations. Chaucer uses it in “The Miller’s Tale,” when the smith asks Absalom “What eyleth yow? Som gay gerl, God it woot, / Hath broght yow thus upon the viritoot.” (Mil.l.3769-3770).[13] Here, “gay” means lewd and wanton, like one of the earlier Anglo-Norman definitions. The late sixteenth century introduced “dedicated to social pleasures; dissolute, promiscuous; frivolous, hedonistic” to the definitions, and this would be popular through the nineteenth century, appearing in terms such as “gay blade,” “gay deceiver,” and “gay lothario.” At this point, the word indicated someone who may not have been always moral but also wasn’t depraved.[14] By the 1790s, a “gay lady” could be a prostitute and a “gay house” a brothel, extending the definitions of dissolution and promiscuity. It is probably the combined senses of frivolity, hedonism, and ultimately immorality that led to “gay” being applied to homosexual men.

“Gay” as slang for “homosexual” is usually dated to the early twentieth century, with the OED suggesting a 1922 short story by Gertrude Stein, “Miss Furr & Miss Skeene,” as the first written attestation. Geoffrey Hughes in An Encyclopedia of Swearing reports that the 1972 OED Supplement traces it back even further to 1889 in England, with the Cleveland Street Scandal, in which a homosexual brothel frequented by some of London’s elite was uncovered, though the use of “gay” appears to be the then-current sense of promiscuous rather than anything specific to homosexuality. More certain uses date to the 1930s.[15] “Gay” became the accepted, non-medical and non-derogatory term for homosexual men and women (along with their own term “lesbian”) by the 1970s, and it remains in common use today. A new sense of “lame, stupid” appeared in the 1980s and was popular among children in the mid-2000s, possibly arising from the negative associations of attraction to the same gender, including weakness. This usage has been rejected by members of the LGBT community. The “homosexual” sense of the word is now considered the most prevalent use, and is listed first in most dictionaries organized logically, including The American Heritage Dictionary’s current 5^th edition, The New Oxford American Dictionary, and Dictionary.com. 

Zits, July 25, 2006. Jeremy encounters the ambiguity of "gay." [16]

“Gay” has become a controversial word, with many people objecting to its use by “the gays.” “[The] special-interest use of gay,” fumes John Simon, “undermines the correct use of a legitimate and needed English word. It now becomes ambiguous to call a cheerful person or thing gay; to wish someone a gay journey or holiday, for example, may have totally uncalled-for over- and undertones and, in conservative circles, may even be considered insulting. The insulting aspect we can eventually get rid of; the ambiguous, never. What do we do about it? If we energetically reject gay as a legitimate synonym for homosexual, it may not be too late to bury this linguistic abomination.”[17] This ambiguity is apparently too much for some people. Historian Paul Johnson agrees, saying “There is no historical case for homosexual ownership of ‘gay.’ So can we have our word back, please.”[18]

Johnson is appealing to an etymological fallacy—“gay” doesn’t mean homosexual, that use dates back to only the early twentieth century and the word has been stolen from normal usage! This controversy is, says Fowler’s Dictionary of English Modern Usage, “a cloak for much darker sociological concerns.”[19] Wayne R. Dynes calls this in his Encyclopedia of Homosexuality "a particularly ludicrous complaint… advanced by some heterosexual writers, that the 'innocent' word gay has been 'kidnapped' by homosexuals in their insouciant willingness to subvert the canons of language as well as morals." This complaint ignores that "gay" was applied by an ostensibly heterosexual society to people deemed immoral long before it was supposedly stolen.[20]

The changing definition of “gay” is controversial both for its connection to a controversial topic and the challenge it poses to prescriptivism. The most prevalent definition in the twenty-first century is not what it was in medieval France and England. To prescriptivists, homophobic or not, this is a terrifying thing—someone took a perfectly good, innocent word and changed its meaning, so much that one can no longer employ its “correct use” without people thinking of the evil linguistic thief that is the modern homosexual. Feelings on sexual orientation aside, this represents the apparently arbitrary change of language that prescriptivists abhor—a word changing meaning entirely in a very short time, on the whim of non-experts, and the subsequent ruining of a word. If it happened with “gay” it can happen with anything.

Life in Hell, 1986.[21] The idea that words can be "ruined" is representative of prescriptivist complaints.

There are two problems with this. First, there is no single authority of the English language who tells all English speakers how they can and cannot use words. No one is telling you that you cannot use “gay” to mean happy or bright. Second, “gay” has never had only one meaning. Even the Anglo-Norman predecessor and the Middle English forms had multiple definitions. Geoffrey Chaucer, inarguably the standard of Middle English, used it to mean "showily dressed" in Parlement of Foules, "joyful" in Troilus & Crisyde and "wanton" in The Canterbury Tales. Nor has it always been “innocent.” “Gay” had pejorative senses in both Anglo-Norman and Middle English, and in the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries denoted prostitutes, rakes, and an overall sense of being frivolous and too given to pleasure, hardly innocent subjects.

The semantic drift of “gay” and the subsequent debates over its use reveals the shortcomings of prescriptivism and its underlying social fears. The existence of a polysemous word with an ambiguous origin is bad enough—that its definition has changed almost entirely within living memory is linguistic anarchy. The language of “stealing” and “ruining” is especially indicative of the social dimension of this anxiety. In a way, Paul Johnson is correct, there is no proof of homosexual “ownership” of the word. However, there is no proof of heterosexual ownership. Language develops according to the needs of its users, and “gay” simply managed to fill multiple roles.

Special thanks to my research assistant N.

---

[1] Tyler Turner, “Urban Dictionary: Gay,” Urban Dictionary, accessed February 25, 2020, https://www.urbandictionary.com/author.php?author=Tyler%20Turner.
[2] “DEAF Électronique,” accessed March 5, 2020, https://deaf-server.adw.uni-heidelberg.de/?type=image&letter=g&column=35.
[3] "Gay, adj., adv., and n.". OED Online. March 2020. Oxford University Press. https://www-oed-com.ezproxy.library.pfw.edu/view/Entry/77207?isAdvanced=false&result=1&rskey=BAxG22& (accessed March 04, 2020).
[4] “Gâhe Bis Vergâhe (Bd. I, Sp. 454a Bis 455b),” Wörterbuchnetz - Mittelhochdeutsches Wörterbuch von Benecke, Müller, Zarncke, accessed March 5, 2020, http://www.woerterbuchnetz.de/cgi-bin/WBNetz/wbgui_py?sigle=BMZ&lemid=BG00015&mode=Vernetzung&hitlist=&patternlist=&mainmode=.
[5] “Gay, a., Adv., and n.,” Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, https://www.oed.com/oed2/00093147;jsessionid=42AAD765EE4AFB8EAEADAFE1CC85B909.
[6] “Gay, adj., adv., and n.". OED Online.
[7] Éditions Larousse, “Définitions : gai - Dictionnaire de français Larousse,” accessed March 5, 2020, https://www.larousse.fr/dictionnaires/francais/gai/35802.
[8] ATILF - CNRS & Université de Lorraine, “GAI, Adj.,” Dictionnaire du Moyen Français (1330-1500), accessed March 5, 2020, http://atilf.atilf.fr/scripts/dmfAAA.exe?LEM=gai;XMODE=STELLa;FERMER;;AFFICHAGE=0;MENU=menu_dmf;;ISIS=isis_dmf2015.txt;MENU=menu_recherche_dictionnaire;OUVRIR_MENU=1;ONGLET=dmf2015;OO1=2;OO2=1;OO3=-1;s=s126320ac;LANGUE=FR;.
[9] Wayne R. Dynes, “Gay,” in Encyclopedia of Homosexuality, vol. 1 (New York & London: Garland Publishing, Inc, 1990), 455.
[10] “Gay, adj., adv., and n.". OED Online.
[11] The Anglo-Norman Dictionary, “Gai,” The Anglo-Norman Dictionary, accessed March 5, 2020, http://www.anglo-norman.net/D/gai1.
[12] OED Online.
[13] “1.3 The Miller’s Prologue and Tale,” Harvard’s Geoffrey Chaucer Website, accessed March 5, 2020, https://chaucer.fas.harvard.edu/pages/millers-prologue-and-tale.
[14] Dynes, 455.
[15] Geoffrey Hughes, “Homosexuals,” in An Encyclopedia of Swearing: The Social History of Oaths, Profanity, Foul Language, and Ethnic Slurs in the English-Speaking World (Armonk, New York: M. E. Sharpe, 2006), 327.
[16] Jerry Scott and Jim Borgman, Zits, comic strip, July 25, 2006.
[17] John Simon, Paradigms Lost 27 (1980): cited in Geoffrey Hughes, “Homosexuals,” in An Encyclopedia of Swearing: The Social History of Oaths, Profanity, Foul Language, and Ethnic Slurs in the English-Speaking World (Armonk, New York: M. E. Sharpe, 2006), 314.
[18] Paul Johnson (1995): cited in “Gay,” in Fowler’s Dictionary of English Modern Usage (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 338.
[19] Ibid.
[20] Dynes, Homosexuality, 456.
[21] Matt Groening, Life In Hell, comic strip, 1986.

How Easy is it to Read Chaucer?

Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales is often used as an example of how much the English language has changed in 600 years. If anyone knows any Middle English, it's probably the opening of the Tales, the first 18 lines of the General Prologue: "Whan that aprill with hise shoures soote...". English has changed a great deal since Chaucer's medieval tour bus pulled out of Southwark on its way to Canterbury, but how much has it changed? How difficult (or easy) is it to read Chaucer? 

The answer is subjective. However easy or difficult it is to read a text depends on the reader's knowledge of the language used. Despite this, I became interested in how Chaucer's English, dating from the last quarter of the 14th century, compared to 21st century English. I hypothesized that, turns of phrase, cultural references, and pronunciation differences aside, the closer a word was to modern spelling and meaning, the "easier" it would be for someone with no experience in Middle English to read. To test this, I took a simple section of the Canterbury Tales-- The first 18 lines of the General Prologue-- and compared it to modern English. While it is not representative of the Tales as a whole, it is the most well-known part and most commonly used as an example of what I wanted to investigate-- how different it is from English spoken today. I split words into three categories: 1) words that have the same meaning and spelling in Middle English as they do in modern English, 2) words that have Middle English spellings but are recognizable from modern English, and 3) words that are not recognizable with just a knowledge of modern English. This is the result of my study.

Part 1 - The Middle English

To get the Middle English, I decided to use my own transcription rather than one published by someone else. This is because published editions often have spelling changed to some degree, even if still in Middle English. I wanted to be sure that the Middle English I was comparing was as Middle English as possible. To do this, I used the "Ellesmere Chaucer" manuscript, Huntington MssEL 26 C 9 as my source. I transcribed the lines using a program called Transkribus.

Transcribing San Marino, Huntington MssEL 26 C f.1r on Transkribus

My completed transcription, with a few abbreviations filled out:

Whan that aprill with hise shoures soote

The droghte of march hath perced to the roote

And bathed euery veyne in swich licour

Of which vertu engendred is the flour

Whan zephirus eek with his sweete breeth

Inspired hath in euery holt and heeth

The tendre croppes and the younge sonne

hath in the Ram his half cours yronne

And smale foweles maken melodye

That slepen al the nyght with open eye

So priketh hem nature in hir corages

Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages

And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes

To ferne halwes kouthe in soundry londes

And specially from euery shires ende

Of engelond to caunterbury they wende

The hooly blissful martyr for to seke

That hem hath holpen whan þat they were seeke

Part 2 - Asking someone who knows nothing about Middle English

To get an idea of what could be understood by someone with no experience in Middle English, I showed the transcription to my mother, who is not familiar with Chaucer or his language. She marked what she could more or less understand and what she didn't understand at all.

Yellow highlights indicate what someone with no experience in Middle English understood, blue for what wasn't understood.

The only things marked were things understood and things not understood. Surprisingly, most of the language was understood to some degree. I didn't count things like whatever "hath in the Ram his half cours yronne" (GP.l.8) actually means in context (halfway through the sign of Ares), just that the reader could understand the words in general. The things that weren't understood were extreme variations in spelling (like "shoures," "seken," and "holpen") and words that have no modern English equivalent (e.g., "yronne," "ferne," and "kouthe").

This only answered part of my question. I had identified three kinds of words and this part only gave me two of them-- things understood and things not understood. What about the in-between of words that were similar to modern English but spelled differently? That led me to:

Part 3 - Breaking things down further

I took the transcription and looked back at my original three criteria-- words that were the same in Middle and modern English, words that had spelling variations but same or similar meanings, and words that were not recognizable from modern English at all. Applying these three criteria, I marked the section according to my own understanding of modern English.

Lines 1-18 with three categories of words

Words marked in yellow are spelled the same as their modern English counterparts, green indicates a Middle English word similar to a modern English word but spelled differently, and blue for words that are either spelled so differently from modern English (like "hem" for "them," "þat" for "that," and "seeke" for "sick") that they are unrecognizable or have no modern English equivalent (like "halwes" and "eek").

There are 128 words in total in the first 18 lines of the General Prologue, and 90 unique words (counting spelling variations, like "his" and "hise"). Of these 90 unique words, 33 were the same as modern English, 42 were similar but with variations in spelling, and 15 were unrecognizable.

A chart representing the distribution of unique words in lines 1-18 of the General Prologue

I was surprised to find that the majority of unique words were similar to modern English, just with spelling variations (like "Caunterbury" for "Canterbury" and "droghte" for "drought"). I was also surprised to find that only a small portion of this text was completely unrecognizable. 

What's changed the most is minor spelling and pronunciation. The vocabulary in the first 18 lines of the Tales is largely still understandable in the modern day, with only 15 unique words-- 16 in total-- not having a clear modern equivalent-- and that's out of a total of 128 words. 

Don't Let the Beasties Escape This Book! - A Review

I received a free digital ARC of this book from NetGalley.com in exchange for a fair review.

Title: Don't Let the Beasties Escape This Book! 
Author: Julie Berry
Illustrator: April Lee
Rating: 5/5

This is a delightful book for anyone who likes manuscripts, beasts both real and fantastic, and stories about kids with overactive imaginations. Godfrey (or, as he sees himself, SIR Godfrey) is a medieval boy who would rather look at the bestiary in production for the lady of the castle than do his chores, and much like the Sorcerer's Apprentice, he imagines the creatures described in the bestiary helping him.

The illustrations are absolutely gorgeous, in part based on manuscripts in an exhibit at the Getty, and somehow April Lee manages to draw in a modern style that feels medieval. The one drawback of having to read this on my computer is that it's meant to be read as a physical book, with illustrations often spanning a two-page spread, which is frustrating when you have to zoom in to read the text. This is no fault of the book or its creators, just a comment that you should get a physical copy (I have no idea if it will be released digitally) because that's the best way to read something like this. Like the bestiaries they replicate, the pictures are colorful and lively, with something fun happening even in the smallest details.

The book ends with a historical note that puts bestiaries, and what medieval people got from them, into context-- most people had no real way of knowing what was out in the world far away, and many of the creatures were actually believable-- compared to a rhino, a unicorn doesn't sound all that strange. I really like this. There's a major misconception in our popular culture that people in the Middle Ages were stupid and believed ridiculous things like unicorns, dog-headed people, that the Earth is flat (which they didn't, by the way). The truth is they weren't stupid, they just didn't have the cumulative knowledge we have today, and many things medieval people believed, or at least what they presented as some level of factual, aren't really that strange considering the information they had. Bestiaries are a good example of this, and this book portrays that well. It also includes a section of descriptions and images of creatures from actual bestiaries, which is another good historical note.

This is definitely a book I hope to someday have a physical copy of to read to my young cousins in the hopes that they'll become medievalists. Or at least in the hopes they'll like it.

Nigel Saul's The Three Richards -- A Review

I just finished The Three Richards by Nigel Saul. For this review I'm stepping out of the character of the Persnickity Historian and just sharing my Goodreads review.

It's pretty disorganized though the premise seems simple enough, comparing the three English kings named Richard. There are a few issues with how Saul does this, however. The book is divided into topics, beginning with a biographical chapter for each Richard and then topical chapters-- religion, appearance, family, etc. and within that, each Richard in order. Things are admittedly skewed toward Richard II, in part because the most information on his reign survives, and also probably because Saul's main topic is Richard II, he's written the biography that's still the standard. It gets a little frustrating when trying to compare things that don't have the same amount of information. While comparing people of the same name and of such varying reputation is an interesting idea, the three Richards lived in different eras and covering such vast periods of time and changes in England is also going to be difficult. It'd be like trying to talk about the French and Indian War (Seven Years' War in Europe), the American Civil War, and the Vietnam War in one book, but structured as a biography of William Pitt, Ulysses S. Grant, and Creighton Abrams.

This book reminded me of the usual five paragraph essay structure, and especially a kind of paper assigned in my US history class-- three primary sources to be used to answer a question like "How did Americans before WWI define freedom?" The question here might be "In what ways were Richard I, Richard II, and Richard III similar? In what ways were they different?" Saul's major problem is there's no thesis, no reason to care about the information presented. I really love Richard II (including being sympathetic to him, not just an interest in him) but I don't know a whole lot about Richard I and definitely don't know anything about Richard III. Unfortunately (this may be my fault, I'm biased in my interests) I wasn't as interested in the sections on Dicks I and III. If it's not entirely my fault, it's probably because the topics didn't fit together well enough to show me why comparing the three is important.

 There are also a few issues with Saul's information in general. Perhaps the most inexplicable is when in the sections on their wives, he talks about Margaret of Anjou (wife of Henry VI) rather than Anne Neville, wife of Richard III. I didn't get the sense that he hates Richard III, but I'm not a Richardian so I might not pick up on more subtle signs of dislike. He certainly doesn't show Dan Jones-level of hatred, with whom it's obvious how much he dislikes Edward II and Richard II; but I did notice he is 100% sure Richard killed his nephews and doesn't even mention any theories to the contrary, which isn't very fair. And on the subject of murders, he says all three died violently, which is only partly true. Richards I and III did indeed die in war, but Richard II most likely died of starvation at Pontefract, though the whole being actually physically murdered with a knife version is most well-known and certainly exciting-- but there is no sign of violence on his skeleton. Being starved to death still counts as murder but it's not exactly violent.

The conclusion was disappointing. As I said above, he has no thesis and just states what he already has earlier, at the beginning of the final chapter and the end of it. I was left thinking "so what?" The information was interesting (aside from the things I've mentioned above, there may have been other issues I didn't catch) but it wasn't organized in a meaningful way so I wouldn't really recommend it.

Don't forget the Dewey Decimal System is your friend!

The most helpful library assistant

Summer has finally arrived after a not very fun semester of school. Since I'm out of school I've finally been able to tackle two projects I've been meaning to do-- translate a volume of Middle English poetry and organize all the books and media at my house. I'll talk about my progress and experience on the translation front soon, but today I want to talk a little about the Herculean task of cataloging every book, video, CD, vinyl record, and cat we have (fortunately we only have two cats).

The first part of the collection, books in order from right to left

This is something I've been meaning to do for a long time. My father and I are bibliophiles and have amassed hundreds of book (with a strange lean towards the 900s...) and we also have a lot of VHS tapes, some of which are off-air recordings (and a couple of those were staples of my childhood). Most important are the books and at this stage I've been entering them all into a spreadsheet and preparing to make spine labels with the DDC calls. 

DDC, or the Dewey Decimal Classification, is the most familiar organization for libraries. It's based on sets of three-digit numbers, called classes or schedules, each one for a general topic. In case you were wondering, here's the breakdown: 

000 - Computer science, information science, and general works

100 - Philosophy and psychology

200 - Religion

300 - Social sciences 

400 - Language

500 - Science

600 - Technology

700 - Arts and recreation

800 - Literature

900 - History and geography

A lot of our books are in the 500s and 900s, and at the library you can usually find me in the 200s, 800s, and 900s. 

Then the calls get more specific, each number after the main class (like 900) narrows it down, and after the decimal point it gets even more specific. For example, we have a lot of books on the American Civil War, which is 973.7. 900 tells you it's history, 7 is North America, 3 is the United States, and .7 is the Civil War.

...When I say we have a lot of books on the Civil War, I'm not exaggerating.

Here are some pictures of this last couple of weeks' progress

Remember: labeling books is good, labeling people is bad.

I started by taking the books we had on our dining table and entering them into a spreadsheet. These were then crossreferenced with our local library's catalog to find the DDC. After doing that I made simple labels that I printed and affixed with some library-like tape my mother found... which I'm now out of. You can see the label-affixing progress to the left here. When done, I shelved them and they look very professional and not at all like I stole them from the library. You can get all the supplies needed for managing your own home library from thelibrarystore.com, which is accessible even by civilians. 

A day's worth of work

 Next time I'll talk about some cataloging and organization methods for books and media. Also coming soon, since this blog is a mess of topics, will be a report on the translation project I've undertaken, which will include a hopefully amusing rant on Middle English.

Until then, take care of yourself and may the good news be yours.

The Persnickety Historian Vs. The History Channel

Ah yes, our old friend. The "History Channel."

At one point, I seem to remember them doing stuff on history. I also remember TLC doing educational programming. Television is a vast wasteland of entertainment and education-- call it edutainment-- and . The most infamous example of this, at least in the States, is History Channel. At one point it seemed so saturated with WWII it was jokingly called "The Hitler Channel" and today it's the home of the 100% most incredibly accurate and trustworthy show on television, Ancient Aliens. So it's unsurprising that there is a serious lack of credibility and accountability in anything they say at this point. I just didn't expect to find it in an article about one of my favorite historical figures.
A recent interest (more accurately, obsession) of mine is the 15th century French poet Charles d'Orleans, who briefly appears in Henry V and was far more interesting than Shakespeare let on. He was the nephew of Charles VI, King of France, and became duke at 13 when his father was brutally murdered. He was 21 at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415 and was captured and taken to England, where he was held for 25 years. In his copious amounts of free time, Charles learned English and wrote poetry in it as well as French. His life was fraught with heartache, including the deaths of his father in 1407 and mother in 1408, the death in childbirth of his first wife, being part of a civil war, separation from his daughter, everything possible went wrong for him, but I'll talk more about his life as a whole in the rest of this article.

For background, Charles is attributed with writing the first Valentine poem, usually attributed to his years in captivity with his second wife, Bonne d'Armagnac as the recipient. It's pretty miserable as Valentines Day poetry goes.

I am already sick of love,
My very gentle Valentine,
Since for me you were born too late,
And I for you was born too soon.
God forgives him who has estranged
Me from you for the whole year.
I am already sick of love,
My very gentle Valentine. 

Well might I have suspected
That such a destiny,
Thus would have happened this day,
How much that Love would have commanded.
I am already sick of love,
My very gentle Valentine. (1)

Now that I've talked a little about Charles in general, what's this got to do with the History Channel? An article that somehow managed to get almost everything wrong. History.com, the website of History Channel ran an article this Valentine's Day about Charles and this poem. I honestly have no idea how you can pack so many mistakes into one article, it's simultaneously disappointing and impressive. Here we go.

[Link to article]

1. “As the nephew of King Charles VI of France, also known as Charles the Mad (who was believed to be schizophrenic), he was caught in the crossfire between his father, Louis I, who presided over the House of Orléans, and his uncle’s family, which oversaw the House of Burgundy, in their fight for control of France.” (2)

— Charles VI and Louis I were the nephews of Philip I of Burgundy (brother of their father Charles V). Philip’s son John the Fearless was Louis’s first cousin and therefore Charles d'Orleans’s first cousin once removed. The duchy of Burgundy was more like an independent state at that time, its ruling family being part of the Valois family (the dynasty then ruling France, so Charles VI was Charles of Valois) but not of the royal primogenitor line, rather a cousin branch, the House of Valois-Burgundy. For these reasons Charles VI had no control over Burgundy. However, the Duke of Burgundy John the Fearless (the king’s first cousin) was regent for the king during periods of his illness, during which time he and Louis jockeyed for power through control over the king.
Note also the use of "was believed to be schizophrenic," which is grammatically anachronistic. That indicates people thought that in his own time.

2. “Charles and his brothers vowed revenge on their first cousin John the Fearless, the Duke of Burgundy, whom they accused of murdering their father in a power grab, intensifying the family civil war.”

— The civil war began after Louis’s assassination in 1407 (the article does not state the year) and as stated above, John the Fearless was Charles’s first cousin once removed. They also didn't even have to make the accusation, as Burgundy confessed to ordering Louis's death soon after. Despite the confession and the brutal nature of the murder and the fact it was the King's brother who'd been killed, Charles and his family had to forgive Burgundy, who defended his actions as killing a tyrant.

3. “It also put the young duke in his father-in-law’s Armagnac camp in the years-long French civil war between the Armagnacs and the Burgundians.”

— The Orleanist party had no leader after Louis’s death, until Bernard VII took control after Charles and Bonne were married. The party was renamed after Armagnac, so in reality Armagnac technically joined Charles’s side.

 4. “As battle after battle dragged on between the rival factions, Charles was captured and imprisoned by the Burgundians in 1415. While held prisoner in the Tower of London, he penned a poem to his wife the same year that he was captured at the Battle of Agincourt.”

— Charles was not taken prisoner by the Burgundians, he was captured by the English at the Battle of Agincourt as stated, which is why he was imprisoned in the Tower of London. He was imprisoned and kept imprisoned for years by King Henry V, most likely since he would be seen as a major threat to Henry's already shaky claim to the French throne.

5. “Beyond the Valentine he sent to Isabella, Charles wrote hundreds of other poems while in prison—many about love and nobility.” 

 — The recipient was Bonne d'Armagnac, his second wife. In all, Charles would be married three times: first to Isabelle d'Valois, daughter of the King (therefore Charles's cousin) and widow of King Richard II of England; second to Bonne d'Armagnac, daughter of the new head of the party Bernard VII Armagnac; and finally to Marie de Cleves in part of the end of the Burgundian-Armagnac Civil War (interestingly, she was the grandaughter of Burgundy. Yes, that Burgundy.). He and Marie would have three children, including the future King Louis XII of France.

There are also multiple omissions of things that'd be good to note, like who Isabelle was first married to, Richard II; the years of some of these events, and most disappointingly that Charles's mother was named Valentine! The most annoying omission is any form of bibliography. There are no citations, no further reading. This undermines any credibility and leaves the reader stranded. All of this information can be found in the encyclopedia.

If you're interested in Charles and his times and want a well-researched historical novel to get lost in, check out Hella S. Haasse's In a Dark Wood Wandering. I highly recommend it.

(If anything is wrong here, please contact me so I can correct it).

1“A Farewell to Love,” Wikisource, last modified November 2, 2016, https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Translation:A_Farewell_to_Love.

2“Thad Morgan, History’s Oldest-Known Valentine Was Written in Prison,” History Channel, last modified February 14, 2018, https://www.history.com/news/historys-oldest-known-valentine-was-written-in-prison.

Persnickety Historian Review - Victoria ITV

ITV's Victoria wrapped up its second season here in the States a couple of weeks ago. It ended with some bombshells-- okay, the revelation of bombshells we the audience already knew about, only now to other characters. We get another heaping of sumptuous settings, pretty costumes, and the lovely Jenna Coleman. Joining the cast this season is Diana Rigg as the Duchess of Buccleuch, playing the same character she does on Game of Thrones, and adding a lot of old-lady sass and wisdom. I love this woman. So, does Victoria reign supreme? Why am I resorting to reviewer cliches? I'll answer one of those in this review, which is more about the series as a whole but most examples are from the recent season.

First, the show as just a show. Every historical drama now has to measure up to Downton Abbey, which, let's face it, isn't going to happen. Victoria definitely succeeds in the sheer gorgeousness of the setting and costuming, bringing to life the early Victorian period (when you think "Victorian," you're probably thinking of Sherlock Holmes era, some forty years after this show). It truly is some eye candy, especially when they visit locations outside of London. Unfortunately storywise, there isn't much to hold my attention.

To put it bluntly, Victoria fails to have the dramatic and emotional depth to be more than another period piece. It tries desperately for a fictional downstairs story, but it didn't leave much of an impression on me and I can't remember any of the servants' names, except for Mr. Penge (also, is it just me or does Buckingham have far too few servants?). The same goes for the upstairs-- even with the Queen I find it hard to become invested in the fictional plotlines. The trouble, I think, comes from there not being an overarching plot with a single goal in mind to connect episodes and make a meaningful season finale (think the "myth arc" vs. the "monster of the week" formula from The X-Files-- some episodes form a series-spanning plot, others are just one-offs). I was very excited to have Ada Lovelace and Isambard Kingdom Brunell guest star, but I felt like this was something special, rather than just other historical figures in a show about history.

Acting-wise, it's a bit hit-or-miss, especially considering historical portrayal. The first season was graced with Rufus Sewell, who is missed, and this season has the wonderful Diana Rigg, who's worth watching the show for alone. Jenna Coleman continues to be a sweet, energetic Queen, but she doesn't reflect Victoria's forceful personality in its more flawed sense. There never seems to be anything really negative from her, she's just a high-spirited monarch here, despite her historical serious temper and obstinateness. Granted, Queen Victoria was a remarkable figure and I'm not sure she ever truly could be fully emulated. Jenna is still enjoyable though, and I don't fault her too much, just the writing. On the other hand, Tom Hughes, Jenna's real-life boyfriend, is a boring and frustrating Albert. Like his portrayal of the Duke of Aumerle in The Hollow Crown version of Richard II (2012), he seems blank at best and sometimes zoned-out. His ongoing borderline power struggle with Victoria and the inaccurate portrayal of their relationship initially being testy rather than love-at-first-sight as it was historically leave them seeming to not be a good match.

Now for the history.

This show is frustrating. Daisy Goodwin, series creator and head writer brags about balancing history and fiction, but I don't think she's done that at all. Historical fiction can be an awesome genre when done well, but to make it so requires attention to detail and the understanding that history is exciting enough on its own and doesn't need embellishment. Goodwin alters things, saying "My rule is that I can change the odd date, move people around here and there, so long as I am faithful to the emotional truth of the characters."¹ She goes far beyond that-- she does everything from change the ages of figures, like the Duchess of Bucchleuch (who was actually in her thirties at the time) to creating whole new relationships, as with Alfred Paget and Edward Drummond, who weren't actually in one-- which was disappointing, since they were one of the best parts of the season. The decision to include queer characters was great, if only Goodwin had invented them, or better yet found some in history rather than making up a relationship.

Rather unsurprisingly, some things are made a little more positive or palatable to modern viewers, like the episode on An Gorta Mór--  the Irish Famine. Queen Victoria is portrayed as caring a lot about Ireland, whereas in history she wasn't all that concerned-- she certainly isn't appreciated in Irish history, being called "The Famine Queen." However inaccurate the portrayal is, I do see something good came out of the episode as a whole. British viewers were shocked at the depiction of the Famine, having not been taught much about it.²  This is called a difficult encounter in public history, and it forces us to face something we don't want to think about, and I have to praise the show for doing that, even if Victoria's reaction is sanitized (which is still an issue).

I was, however, surprised to find out that some of the stuff that sounded made-up to me (my specialty isn't this period so I've been doing a lot of fact checking) actually do have basis in fact, like the rumor that Albert is actually a bastard, which did exist. In the show, Uncle Leopold claims he believes he is actually Albert's father. This particular paternity claim, made by David Duff (1972) is iffy at best, but works for the show since Uncle Leopold continues to be the Cigarette Smoking Man of the series. On a more verifiable front, this was the first time I'd heard of Sarah Forbes Bonetta, and I learned more about her after looking her up. That's part of the fun of good historical media, learning about the real thing and maybe being introduced to something new in the process.

Victoria isn't perfect, though it has promise. It's held back by its lack of narrative direction, and more seriously it's marred by Goodwin freely admitting she makes things up but still remains true to the history, not to mention inaccurate portrayals of some serious things, like the Queen's reaction to the Famine. However, it's had some great non-political figures appear, like Ada Lovelace, and it's been the first exposure many people have had to some of the period's more difficult topics. It also has prompted me to research more of this period, if just to know the background. Goodwin says season 3 will explore more "sexual tension" between Victoria and Albert, which I can only guess means Tom Hughes will learn to make some facial expressions, but if it means that there will be a more accurate portrayal of this love story, that'd be worth it. Let's just hope Goodwin, who's based the show more or less off of Victoria's copious personal diaries, will let her subject herself tell the story more in the future.

¹ Daisy Goodwin, "Victoria writer Daisy Goodwin: how I struck a balance between drama and historical accuracy," RadioTimes, accessed March 6, 2018, http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2018-03-03/victoria-season-2-finale-itv/.

2“British TV viewers shocked by Famine scenes in Victoria,” Raidió Teilifís Éireann, accessed March 8, 2018, https://www.rte.ie/entertainment/2017/1003/909290-british-tv-viewers-shocked-by-famine-scenes-in-victoria/.