Tag Archive: history
Eglise Saint-Jean de Malte
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While Wonders & Marvels hums along as usual (with the help of my amazing editorial team), I’m actually spending the summer in France. Yes, France. To be more precise, the South of France. Aix-en-Provence. Yes, it’s a rough life.
I’m here teaching at my university’s study abroad program. We’ve had a program in Aix for almost 50 years. One of the greatest perks for faculty is that we get to teach in rotation here.
Several years ago, my family and I spent a full year in Aix. So being here is like coming home. In fact, just yesterday, we had our neighbors—whom we’ve known for years–over for an American breakfast. You can imagine how fun it is to serve grits and bacon here!
Aside from the grits, I can’t begin to tell you how delicious it is to be here. First, of course, because of all of the delicacies to be found. Fresh fruit and vegetable markets dot the city each day. Olives, tapenade [an olive spread], fresh goat cheese, and wine—de préférence, rosé, are a staple for our evening aperitif.
It’s delicious to me for an even more important reason, however. As a professor, I am nearly giddy with the opportunities my students and I get to share together. I’m teaching a course called “Textes et Contextes,” which covers history, art, and literature from the Middle Ages to the Eighteenth Century.
Last week, I talked to the students about medieval architecture—and particularly the shift from Roman to Gothic styles in church construction. A student had a question about a specific type of arch. I pulled up some Google images to give her a better idea. Then it occurred to me…duh, we were literally RIGHT NEXT DOOR to a 13th century church: Saint Jean de Malte.
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By Melissa L.
Here’s a look at what’s coming up in YA.
Beth Ain’s The Revolution of Sabine
is set in 1776 Paris. The American Revolution is the talk of the town, and everyone is planning parties to honor the man behind it all: Benjamin Franklin. Sabine Durand’s mother, obsessed with making her party perfect in order to impress the other members of the French aristocracy, is no exception.
But Sabine herself has much less regard for the social conventions that seem to dictate her mother’s life. When she secretly renews her friendship with Michel, her governess’s son, and has her portrait painted by the famous Fragonard, her outlook begins to change. She visits her first salon, meets Mr. Franklin himself, and begins to read the works of Voltaire. Now Sabine longs for change in her own life…but can she defy her mother and the rest of the aristocracy?
Beth Ain is a former editor who is also the author of When Christmas Comes Again
, a novel set during World War I. In her post for us, she plans to describe how she got the idea for The Revolution of Sabine.
Look for a post from Beth soon on Wonders & Marvels!
Melissa L. is the YA Editorial Assistant for Wonders and Marvels. You can read more about her here: Editorial Staff.
All are invited to a weeklong celebration of the meaning and mystery of fairy tales.
Come hither into the marvelous, mysterious, complex and fascinating world of fairy tales for grown-ups at the Wonders and Marvels website all week beginning December 13. The History of the Fairy Tale week will feature guest blog posts, book giveaways, profiles of the earliest fairy tale writers, and much more.
“Fairy tales weren’t initially written for children. The earliest tales are full of sex, desire, and violence. Hardly the stuff of sweet dreams,” says cultural historian Holly Tucker, who curates Wonders and Marvels.
Among the guest posts from university professors and specialists of the fairy tale will be “5 Fairy Tales about Fairy Tales,” “5 of the Best Tales You’ve Never Read,” and “5 Reasons Why I Would Not Read These Fairy Tales to My Child.”
All week long, readers will be eligible to win copies of fairy tale collections such as The Complete Tales of Charles Perrault (Oxford University Press.)
Those who wrote the earliest fairy tales were many times as colorful as their tales. Readers will be treated to the profiles of such fairy tale authors as Giovanni Francesco Straparola, Giambattista Basile, Madame d’Aulnoy, Charles Perrault, and Madame de Beaumont (author of “Beauty and the Beast.”)
Stayed tuned, as the fun begins December 13th. And if you haven’t signed up for the newsletter for updates, please do so here.
Graphic: The Frog Prince art ©Kris Waldherr 2001. All rights reserved.
By Melissa L.
Today I’m going to continue last week’s post on language in historical fiction. You’d think that after deciding what to do about foreign words in your novel, you’re pretty much safe. You can just write the rest of your novel in regular English, right? Well, not exactly.
A few years ago, an editor critiquing one of my historical novels said she felt the characters sounded too contemporary. Specifically, she had a problem with their use of contractions. I eventually chose to leave most of the dialogue intact, but her comments made me think: How do you translate a foreign language into English so that it sounds right for the time period? In other words, how do you make your characters understandable without making them sound too modern?
Almost all writers will agree that modern slang has no place in historical novels, but there are many areas where language is much fuzzier. For example, in any language, there are ways for people to drop syllables, run words together, and in general speak more casually than they do in formal situations. Are these speech patterns contractions as we understand them in English? Probably not. But in a novel written in English, I do feel they can translate into contractions on the page. Still, I don’t use contractions as liberally in historical novels as I would in a contemporary setting. I also find that overall, my historical characters tend to sound a little more stilted.
So what’s the best way to handle these language problems in historical fiction? How do you communicate that your characters are regular people speaking in a casual setting without making them sound too much like modern Americans? It’s quite a dilemma, but I’m sure there are many ways to solve it. What do you think?
Melissa L. is the YA Editorial Assistant for Wonders and Marvels. You can read more about her here: Editorial Staff.
By Melissa L.
On a discussion board for writers of historical fiction, I recently came across the question “What qualifies as historical?” It’s actually a lot trickier than it sounds. Everybody agrees that ancient Egypt and World War I are historical, but what about the Vietnam War? Where do we cross the line from history to modern times?
It’s always important to note that kids and adults have very different perceptions of history. You probably think of the events of September 11, 2001 as fairly recent, but the 8 to 12 year olds you’re writing for don’t remember that day—if they were even born. Furthermore, kids are learning about events like this in history class, and what seems like yesterday to you might as well be the Middle Ages to them.
At its most basic level, historical means “set in the past.” I take the definition one step further, saying that a book is only historical if it needs to be set in the past for the sake of the plot. If you’re writing about soldiers wounded in Vietnam, it’s fine to set your book in 1973 and say it’s historical. Similarly, if your plot cannot take place in any year other than 2001, I would call that a historical novel. What you should never do is set your book in the past because that’s when you were young and you don’t know what it’s like to be a kid today. If your story could take place in 2009 as easily as 1985, go do some research about the modern day.
In the end, we need to think about what the term “historical fiction” really means. Is it simply about the date? (And if it is, is there a particular year that should be considered a cutoff?) Or is it about the way the time relates to the story?
Melissa L. is the YA Editorial Assistant for Wonders and Marvels. You can read more about her here: Editorial Staff.
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