j_cheney

Oh yes, the Fevronia story. Apropos of nothing, Eve is not only a terrific scholar, but a wonderful human being.

I LOVED her book....and also spent half the time scratching my head, thinking, "What?? People really thought this?"

One of the things that comes out is the fact that we're seeing this through the prism of Church records, which will necessarily evidence some bias. But there just isn't any other source, is there?

There are quite a few other sources. There are many sources that did not survive, but of which we know from church sources and court sourches (e.g. the whole culture of the skomorokhi, which is very poorly documented, but is nevertheless documented somewhat).

The church records that show penalties for various sins are telling, as are birchbark letters, many of which surfaced after Eve wrote her book. However, church law is not the only law around - there are other laws, and chronicles, and literature of various kinds.

I am not sure I can tell you what I know in a comment. But yes, a lot of the things she describes are not inaccurate, there is more evidence though. Regarding love/sex, the lives of peasants were focused on fertility and the agricultural calendar (as focused on fertility). From evidence of folklore there is lust and feelings towards a variety of individuals, but peasant weddings are not about love. They are about fertility. Which is not to say that love and sex did not coincide for early Russians, it's just that the trends of talking about love and/or sex are what they are. The notion of romantic love in general is a relatively late phenomenon.

That's an interesting subject. I do find it very difficult, however; there's a line between "creative license" and "fixing cultures and peoples that don't seem acceptable by modern Western standards", and sometimes it's difficult to avoid crossing it...

I know sometimes we end up "fixing" stuff without even realising it, because we belong to a specific culture and we read the past through this filter anyway. I personally try to do it as little as possible consciously, because I know it's going to happen whether I like it or not. One thing that has made me a bit shy about creative license is the realisation that this "gritty and realistic" approach many writers have today is really utterly selective realism: in many books, it mostly sounds like an excuse to sneak in as much violence, dismal sex, misogyny and casual racism, under pretexts like "in those days, women were not treated the way they are now" or "in those days, white people weren't used to seeing black people"... while not being "realistic" in the slightest when it concerns less juicy details, like linguistic diversity or the influence of agrarian life. In other words, I feel those writers completely believe they're being realistic most of the time and leaving out the boring stuff, when in realisty, what they're doing is picking and choosing from history in order to make it as satisfying to their readers as they can. In the end, it's fun, but it's not a historical approach at all, it's a masquerade.

Of course, I don't believe that it's impossible to take creative license without falling into this pitfall; I'm just saying that this is the reason why I'm shy about it myself. I don't want to end up selecting all the juicy bits in a historical period I enjoy reding about, and then portraying what I do as "realism, with the very difficult bits smoothed out". I prefer leaving some difficult bits even if I know they may be confusing (there's always room to make them play a part in the story anyway...). I think that's the best way to go "historical" and not just "exotic" (and to avoid being exploitative as well).

I think that this one of the most important things to keep in mind...we're seeing everything through our own personal biases in the first place, and we'll pay attention to the historical aspects that interest us...so we're more likely to write those aspects.

The 'fixing others' problem is an interesting one. This is where Romance stomps all over history, mostly because the reader wants to 'relate' to their main character's choices and decisions. So we give a historical character modern thought processes. (This is one of the things that we'll talk about in our presentation in May...that readers of some genres expect less accuracy than others.) I suspect that YA also strongly does this to some extent.

I really like your concept of "realism, with the very difficult bits smoothed out."

for my story set from 1958 to 1966, i'm ignoring a lot of history. there's so much going on in that story to begin with that if i added in (for example) beatlemania, jfk, the cuban missile crisis, then i'd be in over my head and would drag the story down. i think.

Yes, that's always a consideration. There's only so much your readers want to hear...