There's More to Thomas More than meets the Eye.

Who was Richard III’s greatest enemy? The obvious answer might be Henry Tudor, Henry VII, who defeated and killed the last Yorkist King at Bosworth in 1485. Others might cite Shakespeare, whose compelling portrayal placed the image of the hunch-back at the heart of later cultural representations. Some may even follow the Bard’s line by suggesting Richard was his own worst enemy, a classic over-reacher in the Marlovian model. Next on the list, reserved for a particular type of Ricardian derision, is the humanist scholar Sir Thomas More.

There is little doubt that More’s unfinished “history” re-enforces many of the excesses of anti-Richard myth, portraying an archetypal tyrant who removes his innocent nephews in cold blood in order to achieve his long-cherished ambition. And there is no question that More made things up, in order to make his work more vivid and powerful. This has brought the opprobrium of militant Ricardians down upon his severed saintly head, reputed to have been rescued from Tower Bridge and smuggled to Canterbury by his devoted daughter. Some have gone to the lengths of refusing to read him at all, or ridiculing references to his work, making him some sort of literary pariah.

Revered in the Catholic Church for his martyrdom in 1535, More is still being vilified in certain circles as a liar, steeped in bias, a self-serving partisan. Yet to judge his account in purely historical terms is to overlook the conventions and genres of late medieval literature, which determined the author’s methods and intentions. It also fails to recognise the important bridge he provides between classical accounts and modern historiography. And nowhere, does it take account of More the man. Just as it would be anachronistic to judge Richard III according to modern sensibilities, the same mistake must not be made when it comes to his early biographer.

More was born around 1478-80. He was still a small child when Richard III came to the throne and five at the time of the battle of Bosworth, which drew the Yorkist dynasty to a close. The rest of his life was spent in the service of Richard’s dynastic nemeses, Henry VII and his son, Henry VIII. He was the London-born son of lawyer John More, who had won favour and the right to bear arms under Edward IV. In fact, his 1530 will included provision for prayers to be said for the souls of Edward and his family. According to More’s son-in-law, William Roper, John had been treated vindictively by Henry VII, whilst employed as a sergeant at law. This meant that More had little reason to write purely out of subservience to the new regime and may account for the absence of Henry from the work.

According to the custom of the time, the young Thomas was placed in the household of the Archbishop of Canterbury and staunch Lancastrian, John Morton. He would describe his tumultuous life as the “violent changes of fortune” from which he had “learned practical wisdom.” Morton was equally pleased with his protégée, nominating him for a place at Oxford University. It is likely that during this time, More absorbed his patron’s opinions and experiences of Richard; perhaps as his clerk, he even wrote up notes Morton had made during the 1480s. The seventeenth century Ricardian George Buck even suggested that Morton was the original author of the work, which More simply copied up. With Bosworth less than a decade away, it is “inconceivable” according to Professor Caroline Barron, that it was not a frequent topic of conversation.

More went on to be an advocate of Renaissance Humanism, of female education, a lawyer and Speaker of the House of Commons, Chancellor, a prolific author, political visionary and devoted family man. In 1512, when Under Sherriff of London, he began work on his “history” of Richard III and tinkered with it for seven years, during which time he also wrote his most famous work Utopia (1516) and was appointed a Privy Councillor to Henry VIII. In 1519, for some reason, he put his account aside, unfinished. It may or may not be significant that the year before, he had moved into Crosby Place, the London house owned and occupied by Richard during many of the dramatic events of his 1483 coup.

More’s depiction of Richard tallies with other early Tudor chronicles, authored by John Rous and Polydore Vergil. More adds to Rous’s horrific picture of Richard’s birth, following a reputed gestation of two years, with the imagined details that he was breech-born, his head covered with hair and a mouth full of teeth. These would prove a gift to Shakespeare eight decades later and enter the literary canon as portentous of the king’s tragic fate. Soon though, sceptical voices were raised. Given the unlikeliness of More’s details, Enlightenment historians began to question why they, and other obvious fabrications, had been included in the account. The answer lies in the question of authorial intention. There is no doubt that More blends fact with fiction but this is exactly what his chosen genre dictated. He would have been remiss not to exaggerate, when his aim was to write within the didactic conventions of instructional literature.

More’s “history” is not history as we would recognise it; the term was synonymous then for “account” or “story”, a vehicle for a narrative in the classical model. True to his education and early Renaissance context, he followed the example set by the “histories” of Tiberius, written by Roman authors Tacitus and Seutonius. According to John Jowett, of the Shakespeare Institute, it “lays the foundations for modern historiography” by rejecting the linear portrayal of events in favour of an “admonitory narrative of people acting out their lives under the eyes of God.” More’s account must be seen within the context of late medieval literary tradition, with its emphasis on hagiography, miracle and morality plays and abstract virtues and vices. Whilst living with Morton, the young More also acted in early dramas by Henry Medwall, one of which, Nature, employed the abstract personification of “Pride”, who disguises himself to the audience as “Worship.” By 1513, More was well versed in the literary abilities of villains to conceal their true motives.

He also knew how the other half had lived. Saints’ lives was a very popular genre for the late medieval literate classes. A thirteenth century collection, The Golden Legend, was a bestseller by More’s day, having been copied into over eight hundred manuscript versions, then printed into every major European language. William Caxton brought out an edition in 1483, which was then reprinted nine times before 1527. As a devout Catholic, who was martyred resisting Henry VIII’s reforms, More was steeped in such tales. The usual hagiographic conventions included a birth attended by symbolic features, fictional episodes including conversations and flights of emotion, as well as historical facts. Saints were born to the fluttering of pure white doves and the ringing of bells. These literary signifiers gave less literate readers or listeners an easy shorthand to delineate the good from the bad, just as the costumes and props did in mystery cycles. Thus Richard’s tale of ignominious defeat required the apparatus of an ill-fated birth and physical deformity. Saints’ lives were important vehicles for the study of the past, intended to inspire the living to greater piety.

Yet More did something different with the genre. In taking Richard as his anti-hero and subjecting him to the rules of hagiography, he was not preaching the usual lesson. Instead he was teaching by negative example, creating a dramatic and sometimes terrifying tale that blended recent memory with the stuff of nightmares in order to show the consequences of misplaced ambition. Richard is his instrument in this, a conveniently memorable figure who served a literary purpose. Like Shakespeare, militant Ricardians may not forgive More for selecting the Yorkist King as his subject matter but for an author writing in the medieval tradition, Richard was a gift of a topic. Hindsight made him the perfect teaching tool.

More’s anti-hagiography can be seen as a partner work to the biography he wrote in 1510, the Life of John Picus. Derived from the life of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, it outlined the virtues of the Italian Renaissance philosopher who was poisoned in 1494, probably on the orders of the Medicis. Thus More co-opts two real historical narratives for the benefit of future generations, in the hope that they would not “decline from the steps of their virtuous living” and that such example would “maketh the dark spot of our vice the more evidently to appear.” This was also within the spectrum of instructional literature of the day, encompassing moral fables and behaviour manuals which enacted learning by example in the same way as parables read in the pulpit. In 1522, More wrote the very specific Four Last Things, warning his readers against pride, envy, sloth, gluttony and covetousness. He also produced a number of animal fables. There was little difference to him between animating abstract vices, creatures, classical Gods and the recent dead. All offered the opportunity to teach the living.

More’s work was also a reflection of evolving political models. He cast Richard as an ambitious villain, plotting to usurp the throne even before the death of Edward IV. This scheming, one dimensional version may have been accomplished by More mapping Richard’s story over the literary model of the Machiavel. In fact, Niccolo Machiavelli’s manuscript of The Prince was being circulated among his correspondents and humanist friends well in advance of its 1532 publication. One of its chapters deals with “conquests by criminal virtue” in which a Prince secures his power through cruel deeds and the execution of his political rivals. Machiavelli’s advice was that all such acts should be carefully planned then executed in one swift blow, to allow his subjects the opportunity to forget them. It was only recently that the extensive correspondence between Machiavelli, Erasmus and Thomas More was discovered in the Palazzo Tuttofare in Florence, exploring questions about methods of governance and the nature of writing. More’s Richard III stands at the interface of these.

Of course, none of this is to deny that there are problems with More’s account. Just as with any historical source, it needs to be considered in context and evaluated according to the light it can shed, if any, on the true story of Richard III. However, that context is very much a literary one as well as a historical one. Calls to reject More’s work out of hand fail to do precisely that which they assert as essential: More must not be simply read and digested, he must be used with caution within a framework of contemporary cultural influences. As a master of his craft, he deserves to be read afresh and placed firmly back within the Ricardian canon.

More was a man with a conscience. Having agreed to enter the service of Henry VIII on the provision that he be allowed to act according to his scruples, he had not banked on the momentous religious reforms that his King was to introduce in the 1530s. Refusing to swear allegiance to Henry according to the Act of Succession, he was convicted of high treason and beheaded in July 1535. On the scaffold, he was reputed to have said that he remained God’s servant first and the king’s second. His unfinished account of Richard’s life and reign was published after his death. Perhaps the key to rejections of his writing is explained by the clash of ideologies: ultimately his use of the hagiographic conventions has little in common with the deluded deification of Richard which takes places in some forums. There really is more to More than may appear.

A Modernist Voice from the Warsaw Ghetto

Everyday Jews: Scenes from a Vanished Life

Yehoshue Perle

The New Yiddish Library, October 15 2013

 

 

 

Hailed as a modern Yiddish masterpiece and dismissed as too bleak to be possible, this new translation of Perle’s 1935 autobiographical novel Everyday Jews belongs in the same tradition as Gorky’s My Childhood and Joyce’s Dubliners.

Exploring the harsh reality of life for a poor family in a provincial Polish town around the year 1900, this story’s focus and subject certainly place it within the remit of literary modernism but not at its heart. Direct and unblinking, it looks the conditions of poverty and abuse in the eye; the terrible snow storm in which the adolescent narrator passes out, his parents’ dysfunctional relationship and the older women who seduce him. It is bleak and shocking. Like Dubliners it captures a dying way of life, wrapping up family occasions and customs in a sort of breathless stasis that some readers may find suffocating.

And yet it is compelling, in a grim sort of way. The writing is lucid and accessible and Perle carries the reader through the various miserable scenes of his early existence with ease. Dostoevskian in places, its imagery and description are simply yet powerfully constructed, building symbolic landscapes of misery.  In the Joycean model, though, it is more a collection of still lifes than a progressive narrative. There is little development beyond the passage of time; the dumb mute peasant figure stumbles on, little understanding his destiny or actions. We see the family constrained by customs, such as the day permitted for house removals or oppressed by the pictures hung in the house they have rented from Christians. Only at the end, very briefly, does Perle suddenly open a door, telling us that something had changed for his narrator, some rite of passage had been reached. Yet this remains unclarified and signals the book’s abrupt end.

The characters may not undergo much of a developmental arc but they are vividly depicted, perhaps mostly so in the case of his mother, with her nostalgia for her first marriage and civilised city life, her soft double chin and ebony wigs with a curl on the forehead. Her spirit continues to reassert itself, fighting against the conditions into which she considers she has fallen and the aspirations she still entertains. Easily the most compelling figure of the book, she is exceptional amongst the other characters in the depth of her portrayal, as we see her pragmatism when faced by her step-daughter’s miscarriage, then dancing with pride at the girl’s wedding. The continual struggle between husband and wife, the ongoing battle of man and woman, does not descend into a simple gender battle but is delineated as one part of a complicated and compelling marriage. Among their extended family, what emerges here is a sense of shared destiny, through good and bad.

As an insight, a mirror held up to a lost way of life, this book is fascinating and does have real literary merit but read it as a series of vignettes of poverty in early Twentieth century Poland, a reflection of life and character rather than an analysis. It works best as a series of sketches rather than as a novel. Perhaps in this element of its style, as well as its subject matter, it comes closest to being a Modernist text.

Perle was a fascinating figure, born in 1888 and dying in the Warsaw ghetto in 1943. He published Everyday Jews in 1935, looking back to memories of his childhood as Europe's decade was darkening. Those early criticisms, that the book was too bleak to be psychologically believable are unfounded; placed in the Modernist tradition it fits like a missing jigsaw piece. This new translation captures a bleakness and constant struggle for survival that will be like a slap in the face for the twenty-first century reader.

Buy the book here:

 

 http://www.amazon.com/Everyday-Jews-Scenes-Vanished-Life-ebook/dp/B00FFQOAZ0/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&sr=&qid=

“It is the spectator, not life, that art really mirrors:” Does The White Queen have any responsibility towards its viewers?

With over 5 million viewers in the UK tuning in for the first episode of The White Queen last Sunday, fresh debates have been sparked over the nature of historical fiction. While some viewers have been happy to accept the medieval simulacra that the Sunday night Downton slot represents, others have been gleefully vocal in dismembering the series for its anachronistic armour or the wrong shaped pennants. Now there’s nothing wrong with that. The novels and the BBC adaptation can be enjoyed on a number of levels; there’s room for the swooning romantics and the pennant pedants but more worrying, is the suggestion I have seen voiced this week, that novelists have some sort of moral responsibility.

Here's my review of the first episode: http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2013/06/white-queen-romance-sex-magic-scowling-social-snobbery-and-battles

Historical fiction is a hybrid genre, almost oxymoronic in combining the roles of the accuracy-driven historian with the artistic freedom of a novelist. Often, these come into conflict and sometimes lead a work to be misunderstood. Such greats as Jean Plaidy, Anya Seton, Sharon Penman and Josephine Tey have long been enthusing readers with their depictions of real people from the past, which often spark a lifelong interest that quickly translates to the non-fiction shelves. But the most significant thing to remember is that a novel, set in any time period, remains a novel. As such, it is subject to different rules and necessities in order to satisfy its own definition. Novelists are a little bit magic; they can bend rules, adapt events, distort real people and even change the course of history, all in the name of art. The only responsibility a novelist has is to their creation.

Herein lies the problem with The White Queen adaptation. Those claiming that the series, and by association, the screenwriter, Emma Frost, novelist Philippa Gregory and all other historical novelists, have some sort of responsibility to tell history accurately, are operating with a different definition of what novelists do. This week, it seems clear that there are many definitions, depending on whether one is coming from the standpoint of a student of literature or history or both. Many critiques are offered of novels that fall short on the historical facts; if you know your stuff it is easy to pick out an incorrect date or the wrong family relationship, or that so-and-so was not actually at such-and-such a place because he was, in fact, elsewhere. Far less attention is paid to the literary skills displayed in such works. Ultimately, an historical novelist's first responsibility is to literature, then to history. Otherwise they should be writing non-fiction.

So what does the "novelist" part of the historical novelist do? Well, they do not simply tell stories. Nor do they narrate historical events with a few descriptive bits or imagined dialogue. They are jugglers of pitch and tone, balancers of opposing moods and sculptors of satisfying, complimentary narrative threads. They match protagonist against antagonist, lull us into a false sense of security before a sudden moment of fortune reversal (peripeteia in literary parlance) plunges us into pathos or catharsis. They exploit a character’s hubris, or hamartia (error of judgement), for dramatic effect. Factual concessions do sometimes need to be made in order to satisfy dramatic outcomes, so they cut and paste what is included and what left out. Novelists are subject to the same freedoms as artists rather than being bound to the accuracy of historical study. They use mimesis to imitate and perfect life, rather than depict it in a state of realism.

Real people from the past are not “real” to many novelists. (I do not claim to speak for all novelists and I am sure some will disagree.) Put in the simplest of terms, historical figures are the novelist's raw material, to be shaped at will into something beautiful, accurate and true to life. This does not imply a lack of respect nor an intense passion for historical accuracy. Many writers of historical fiction do meticulous research and combine excellent story-telling with spot-on facts. Yet they would be the first to concede that where the history leaves gaps for interpretation, the trade-off with fiction begins. History rarely records the conversations, private emotions and sometimes even the key events of our most beloved heroes and heroines, so the novelist steps in to supply them, in sympathy with their aims. Some may go further and write imagined scenes, or create new offspring, friends or servants alongside real people. Others might even use them as mouthpieces for scenes of witchcraft, as in The White Queen or attribute to them unproven crimes or adventures, in such potentially fertile dearths as Shakespeare’s missing years. The 2011 film Anonymous used the authorship question to explore similar unproven theories about the life of the Earl of Oxford, which was art doing what it does best. It has a licence that history does not. Whilst it might be in danger of irritating those who are wedded to their facts, it certainly does not betray any sort of moral responsibility, simply because it has none.

No one has expressed this more clearly that Oscar Wilde, whose prologue to The Picture of Dorian Gray offers such illuminations as “there is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written. That is all” and “the morality of art consists in the perfect use of an imperfect medium.” Wilde proceeds to exonerate writers; “an ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style” which anticipates today’s debates about their role. For what novelists and adaptations like The White Queen ultimately sell is a dream. Their readers/viewers, predominantly women, want to enter into an escapist realm of romantic dreams, similar to those fairy tales of chivalry they read as children; princesses, knights on horseback, castles and battles against seemingly insurmountable odds. They want the chocolate box simulacra of the fifteenth century, not the reality of animals being slaughtered in the back yard and piles of dung in the corners, or dirty faces and clothing. They want clothes to be easily ripped off by lovers, even if that does require a zip being used on set. As Wilde wrote, “It is the spectator, not life, that art really mirrors.”

Historical novelists come in all shapes and forms, from those who loosely weave in and out of the facts to those who animate the past with every period detail correct. The opposing ends of this spectrum cater for very a different readership and are usually marketed as such. The responsibility also lies with the reader to be aware of their own reading requirements as well as remembering the nature and variation of the genre. The only sticking point arises when marketing can mislead and present some novels as vehicles of historical truth. What appears to have annoyed historians most this week is the rash of media headlines along the lines of “Philippa Gregory tells the truth behind The White Queen.”  Gregory herself has acknowledged the nature of her work: “to combine the truth of an historical record with the truth that can be told in a novel is, I think, a great challenge and a pleasure.” She has been criticised by fellow novelist Robin Maxwell for rejecting what she knows to have been the “truth” in favour of what is “most dramatic” for her readers. This criticism would have some validity if she were writing non-fiction; it has none if she is writing a novel. From this, two types of conflicting authors emerge: those who are historians first and novelists second, against those who are novelists first and historians second. Maxwell is the former, Gregory is the latter.

Here's my piece from the BBC History website: The White Queen, who was she really? http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/0/22840690

Of course there are truths and “truths”. There can be little argument in the case of unshakeable facts, such as the battle of Bosworth Field being fought in August 1485 or Anne Boleyn’s delivery of a daughter in 1533. The novelist can exploit the grey areas of emotion around these events, picture Richard charging headlong into Henry VII’s forces or imagine Anne’s feelings during pregnancy and birth. But novelists are also uniquely exploited to deal in emotional “truths”, to present what feels to them to be the most likely explanation of events or to be “true” to character. To facilitate this, they might need to tweak the facts to prioritise one version over another, creating a collision of “truth” and subjectivity which gives rise to criticism. Yet most historical events are open to debate  and this variety of approaches makes for a rich and fascinating dialogue that can move all sides closer to an understanding of what actually happened, if indeed one single “reality” can be extrapolated from the experiences of all involved. Fiction has a part to play in this too, so long as its facility with artistic interpretation is recognised.

 The only responsibility The White Queen BBC series has is to entertain. Its bed linen might be whiter than white but that is a necessary element in the set-design of a dream. The vast majority of Gregory’s fans want to be swept along with the romance, not put off by Edward and Elizabeth romping in grey, torn sheets. There’s nothing wrong with that, as we recognise what we’re looking at. So, criticise The White Queen and Gregory’s novels for being badly written or for falsely claiming historical accuracy, if you will, but do recognise them for what they are, which is “art.” Where we place them on the artistic spectrum is another matter entirely.

 

Women as Angels and Devils: Every Sixteenth Century Man's Nightmare

Check out my guest blog on On the Tudor Trail.


Read how women were depicted in literature in the medieval and Tudor period and how this may have affected perceptions of queens like Anne Boleyn, Katherine Howard, Mary Queen of Scots and Elizabeth I.

http://onthetudortrail.com/Blog/2012/08/30/tudor-women-as-angels-or-devils-every-sixteenth-century-mans-nightmare/

While you're there, explore Natalie's fascinating "On the Tudor Trail" blog. Her forthcoming book "In the Footsteps of Anne Boleyn" will be published by Amberley in 2013.