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Feb. 4th, 2010 12:37 pmMonths ago ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
schiarire told me that Hilary Mantel was writing a book set in Tudor England, to which my response was basically "wow, she is writing a book FOR ME."
(Look, I know I am not the only person here to confess to an enormous fascination with those wacky Tudors. I would say, 'in my defence, I liked them before it was cool!' On the other hand . . . I don't think there ever was a time when it wasn't cool. But I didn't know it was cool when I was eight!)
Anyway, Wolf Hall is a biopic novel about Thomas Cromwell, a man of Humble Origins who became extremely powerful and influential with Henry VIII during the years of wacky shufflings when he was trying to ditch Katherine and marry Anne Boleyn. Cromwell has been portrayed pretty negatively in Tudor media before, generally as contrasted against Saintly Thomas More (see: A Man for All Seasons) and Mantel is pretty clearly writing against that, showing him a as a logical and clear-thinking as well as ambitious person who is trying to create a different kind of country than the one he grew up in. People of rank frequently remark that Cromwell is a person, with mild surprise; the line that sticks with me is where he's thinking about the struggle to get people to accept Anne Boleyn, and muses that a country where Anne Boleyn could be queen might be a country where Cromwell could be Cromwell.
Mantel is also really, really good at writing complicated politics, and the way they do and don't intersect with the personal - how political enmity can be a kind of friendship, and alliances can turn to enmity like that. I think it's a very good book. I didn't love it the way I loved A Place of Greater Safety, but that's possibly because the emotional intensity did not run quite so high. It's a more logical, quiet book, to fit the protagonist.
( Notes for people who have read Mantel before )
Anyway, while I am talking about Tudors, I am curious: how much of a widespread phenomenon is Tudorphilia? Are the Tudors crazy overrepresented? Does everyone know the names of Henry VIII's six wives growing up? I feel like it's a bit of trivia that people are way more likely to know than, uh, any other piece of English-history trivia, and not only because of John Rhys Meyers (though the overrepresentation has increased in recent years). But I could be wrong on this. I would like to know all of your thoughts!
schiarire told me that Hilary Mantel was writing a book set in Tudor England, to which my response was basically "wow, she is writing a book FOR ME."(Look, I know I am not the only person here to confess to an enormous fascination with those wacky Tudors. I would say, 'in my defence, I liked them before it was cool!' On the other hand . . . I don't think there ever was a time when it wasn't cool. But I didn't know it was cool when I was eight!)
Anyway, Wolf Hall is a biopic novel about Thomas Cromwell, a man of Humble Origins who became extremely powerful and influential with Henry VIII during the years of wacky shufflings when he was trying to ditch Katherine and marry Anne Boleyn. Cromwell has been portrayed pretty negatively in Tudor media before, generally as contrasted against Saintly Thomas More (see: A Man for All Seasons) and Mantel is pretty clearly writing against that, showing him a as a logical and clear-thinking as well as ambitious person who is trying to create a different kind of country than the one he grew up in. People of rank frequently remark that Cromwell is a person, with mild surprise; the line that sticks with me is where he's thinking about the struggle to get people to accept Anne Boleyn, and muses that a country where Anne Boleyn could be queen might be a country where Cromwell could be Cromwell.
Mantel is also really, really good at writing complicated politics, and the way they do and don't intersect with the personal - how political enmity can be a kind of friendship, and alliances can turn to enmity like that. I think it's a very good book. I didn't love it the way I loved A Place of Greater Safety, but that's possibly because the emotional intensity did not run quite so high. It's a more logical, quiet book, to fit the protagonist.
( Notes for people who have read Mantel before )Anyway, while I am talking about Tudors, I am curious: how much of a widespread phenomenon is Tudorphilia? Are the Tudors crazy overrepresented? Does everyone know the names of Henry VIII's six wives growing up? I feel like it's a bit of trivia that people are way more likely to know than, uh, any other piece of English-history trivia, and not only because of John Rhys Meyers (though the overrepresentation has increased in recent years). But I could be wrong on this. I would like to know all of your thoughts!
