Whatever the Three of Ys think about the new Mithraeum in their city, the Emperor Maximus denounces it as:
"...a new temple of Antichrist..." (p. 159)
- and demands:
"...the prompt installation of a new Christian pastor." (ibid.)
Gratillonius interacts with historical figures:
the Duke of Armorica, unnamed in the text
and others
The Andersons place the legendary figure of Grallon/Gradlon firmly in a historical context despite the elements of fantasy that remain in the story as they tell it.
2 comments:
Well, people back then lived in a different -perceptual- universe(*).
Their perceptions weren't accurate in some respects, though -- that's the difference between historical fiction and fantasy.
(*) realizing this is the antidote to 'presentism' -- presuming that people in the past were more like us than they really were. You need to be able to get outside your own skin and inside someone else's to do historical fiction well... or even just history, for that matter.
My own take is that when you go to the past, you should do it for the past's own sake, and on its own terms.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Falling behind again, real life stuff keeps eating up time.
And I agree with you about how historians and novelists should write about past times--they should try to understand how and why people of past eras thought and acted as they did, instead of shoehorning their own biases and preferences into those times. That's a big reason why I became dissatisfied with Thomas Costain's historical works--because he kept writing into the past his preferences and beliefs. Beliefs which did not then exist!
Ad astra! Sean
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