Anachronisms and other misteaks in literature

[Guest]

Re: Re: Re: Recoil

M "Butch" G

Uh oh, Maths. B. Snake already thinks you're male.

just a warning for when he strikes next,

Perdita

 

[dr_mabeuse]

The idea that the world today is different than it was 100 or 500 years ago is not that old an idea. During the middle ages it was generally assumed that God had created the world just as he wanted it and that nothing much had changed since the creation. The idea that things changed was almost heretical, and history was basically the story of great men doing what they did in a world that hadn't really changed since the Fall. That's why medieval illuminated manuscripts often show anachronisms like Israelites in plate armor using seige engines against contemporary castles, or Roman soldiers with crossbows.

The whole idea of anachronism was probably meaningless to most of the people of Shakespeare's time. They just assumed things had always been pretty much the way they were then.


---dr.M.

 

[Guest]

Interesting proposition, Mab., but I think anachronism is too light a term for this. It’s consciousness I believe you are getting at. “We” do not have the same consciousness as Medieval or Elizabethan people had. Our time and place shapes ours as it did theirs.

E.g., a friend of a friend and her family hid in the Black Forest during a few years of WWII. She was just a girl then living amidst the trees. As an old woman now, despite her experience of modern life and a long and successful academic career, she simply cannot get “the world” beyond the canopy of trees from her formative years; in her depths she thinks the world is covered by the trees and sky just like a big dome. This recalls for me something of how humanity so long viewed the world with the sky as a canopy, the earth their reality and the hell-mouth below (as depicted at the Globe theatre); Heaven was beyond their reckoning.

As for the illuminated mss. you mentioned, those images had more to do with emblems than anachronisms. People then carried around “emblem books” as they were illiterate. They were picture books showing such things as Jews eating children or boiling Gentiles alive. The Church provided them, along with the illuminations of the books and the scenes depicted in stained glass windows. Churches then and for centuries were the illiterate masses’ reading material.

Perdita

 

[The_Fool]

Re: Re: Recoil

Odd thing is that in this day and age your average cruiser probably has enough firepower to demolish an entire city.

Umm....with nukes, probably medium size countries.

 

[MathGirl]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Recoil

Originally posted by perdita Uh oh, Maths. B. Snake already thinks you're male. just a warning for when he strikes next,

Dear Perdita,
Thank you, but don't worry. BS is last in the hearts of his countrymen and first on my ignore list.
MG

 

[Quasimodem]

. . . Churches then and for centuries were the illiterate masses’ reading material. Perdita

And the Boob Tube is now the "stained glass windows" of the present day illiterate masses.

 

[Guest]

And the Boob Tube is now the "stained glass windows" of the present day illiterate masses.

Good insight, Quaz; I'd say all media, it surrounds us like a profane cathedral, and often of our own making. "Give the people what they want."

 

[Vincent E]

Re: Re: Re: Recoil

Dear VE,
1. What a daring title! Only the HChannel could get away with somthing like that.
2. From what I've read (I'm a Tom Clancy fan), the surface navy is mostly obsolete. It exists only to protect the carriers. They have the true firepower. E.g. Aircraft carrying everything from chain guns to nuclear weapons. The ultimate long range artillery.
M "Butch" G

Funny thing, a thread dealing with literary anachronisms gets around to talking about battleships which themselves have become an anachronism. Perdita, is that irony?. Who needs 16-inch guns when a jet can drop a missle from miles away that will be guided by a GPS system to within inches of a designated target. Moreover, missles can be launched and left flying around for a few hours before control picks a target for them to strike.

True about the surface navy being the support and protection of the carriers; there are hardly any armaments on a carrier. The FoxNews website had an excellent breakdown of each of the escort vehcles that accompanied the various carriers this past spring during the Battle of Iraq.

I always think back to the day that the USS Vincennes (sp?) shot down an Iranian passenger jet. The criticism I remember was that the Aegis class cruisers belonged out in the middle of the Pacific for WWIII, not in a bathtub size body of water like the Persian Gulf.

 

[Guest]

irony depleted

Funny thing, a thread dealing with literary anachronisms gets around to talking about battleships which themselves have become an anachronism. Perdita, is that irony?.

Ah, Vincenzo, I really don't know anymore. I'm avoiding irony these day, too stressful for me. It's witty though, to find myself linked to you this way.

Perdita