Monday 11 December 2017

The Elizabethan Age

Last night: improvisation drama/comedy at the Duke's Playhouse (and see here).

Today: Barton Grange Garden Centre and Garstang Victorian Festival.

Tomorrow: Christmas preparations, including buying a tree.

On this blog:

reading about falconry in SM Stirling's Emberverse reminded me of falconry in Poul Anderson's Time Patrol universe;

Anderson mentioned that Emperor Frederick II wrote a book on falconry;

Sean listed other rulers who wrote books;

I added Henry VIII's Defense Of The Seven Sacraments;

SM Stirling mentioned that the Defense was probably ghost written;

Sean, Mr Stirling and Nicholas discussed Henry VIII, Elizabeth I and sixteenth century global politics -

- so what did Poul Anderson write about the Elizabethan Age?

First, it was part of a time war:

"'...in this present century, Denmark is not where our real European strength lies. Rather we are concentrated in Britain. King Henry has forsaken the Roman Church; but we saw to it that he did not go over to Lutheranism either, and for us his kingdom is pivotal. What you know as the episode of the two Queen Marys is a time of gain for the Wardens; the Rangers will resurge with Cromwell, but we will drive them out at the Restoration.'"
-Poul Anderson, The Corridors Of Time (Frogmore, St Albans, Herts, 1975), Chapter Eleven, p. 102.

"...King Henry snored beside Anne Boleyn...poor Anne whose head would fly from the ax in less than a year, and none to warn her. But her daughter lay cradled in that same palace and was named Elizabeth. The strangeness possessed Lockwood like a vision: not merely his own fate, but the mystery that was every man's."
-op. cit., Chapter Twelve, p. 104.

(By referring to the mystery of every man's fate, Anderson raises this time travel novel to the level of all literature as he also does in There Will Be Time:

("It was a strange thing to meet her at intervals of months which for Havig were hours or days. Each time, she was so dizzyingly grown. In awe he felt a sense of that measureless river which he could swim but on which she could only be carried from darkness to darkness."
-Poul Anderson, There Will Be Time (New York, 1973), Chapter IX, p. 98.)

Secondly, Noah Arkwright questions whether the Polesotechnic League period is a neo-Elizabethan age. See Noah Arkwright III.

Thirdly, in "Call Me Joe," human colonists of Jupiter will experience:

"'A hard, lusty, stormy kind of life, granted - dangerous, brawling, violent - but life as no human, perhaps, has lived it since the days of Elizabeth the First. Oh, yes, there will be small trouble finding Jovians.'"
-Poul Anderson, "Call Me Joe" IN Anderson, The Collected Short Works Of Poul Anderson, Volume 1: Call Me Joe (Framingham, MA, 2009), pp. 11-36 AT p. 35.

Meanwhile, Crown Princess Orlaith's friends and allies have protected her from those two tigers.  

3 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

There were other rulers of a literary bent who wrote books. One being the Eastern Roman Emperor Constantine VII, who wrote the DE CEREMONIIS, DE ADMINISTRANDO IMPERIO, VITA BASILII, etc. Another was James VI and I of Scotland/England, among whose works the DAEMONOLOGIE and BASILIKON DORON, etc.

One thing to remember about THERE WILL BE TIME and Jack Havig was how he discussed with Robert Anderson that Elizabethan England seemed very ORIENTAL to him.

Sean

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

Sean,
An important, interesting and relevant remark by Havig that I had not remembered.
Paul.

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

Kaor, Paul!

And I should have found and quoted that bit from THERE WILL BE TIME before this miserable, frustrating difficulty about my comments some how mysteriously disappearing started!

Sean