iβm very curious about the 19th century inaccuracies of grrmβs medievalism because while I know some?? itβs a lot more based in literature rather than history because of my areas of study. i just wrote an essay comparing disability in fantasy and medieval literature so itβs a topic i have somewhat an idea of but what would you say are the main red flag moments?
Hi, Anon! Your essay sounds very interesting. It's easier to point to patterns, ideas, and even set pieces in ASOIAF that echo or draw on 19th-century medievalisms than it is to point out "red flag moments." And to be clear, 19th-century medievalism can be fun! I love William Morris. But also, precisely because those medievalisms are so shaped by 19th-century European (!) ideas about religion, politics, and gender, I think it's good to be able to spot them for what they are.
For one thing, I would argue that the Orientalism and imperialism in the descriptions of the Dothraki and the cultures of the Free Cities are steeped in 19th-century medievalism. For that matter, the same goes for Varys: palace eunuchs, according to 19th-century European tropes, are untrustworthy because the Ottomans have them, unlike the English and French who are performing gender and empire correctly. Edward SaΓ―d was right.
Also the profound anticlericalism and the assumption that literally no one actually cares about religion. The representatives of the Faith are venal and corrupt. Or maybe, at best, incompetent. Unless they're weird fanatics (see: whatever is going on with Rh'llor.) Jules Michelet I just want to talk!!!
As I have said before, at length: gender. The women of ASOIAF deserve better; they all deserve better; and they would have less shitty lives if GRRM read any of the scholarship on medieval women and their agency that has been coming out since the 1970s. As recent events in the US have decisively demonstrated, progress in terms of women's legal privileges is non-linear, but 19th-century Europe was still very invested in the idea of teleological progress towards modernity.
On a platform beyond the southern entrance, formed by a natural elevation of the ground, were pitched five magnificent pavilions, adorned with pennons of russet and black, the chosen colours of the five knights challengers. The cords of the tents were of the same colour. Before each pavilion was suspended the shield of the knight by whom it was occupied, and beside it stood his squire, quaintly disguised as a salvage or silvan man, or in some other fantastic dress, according to the taste of his master, and the character he was pleased to assume during the game.
The central pavilion, as the place of honour, had been assigned to Brian be Bois-Guilbert, whose renown in all games of chivalry, no less than his connexions with the knights who had undertaken this Passage of Arms, had occasioned him to be eagerly received into the company of the challengers, and even adopted as their chief and leader, though he had so recently joined them. On one side of his tent were pitched those of Reginald Front-de-BΕuf and Richard de Malvoisin, and on the other was the pavilion of Hugh de Grantmesnil, a noble baron in the vicinity, whose ancestor had been Lord High Steward of England in the time of the Conqueror, and his son William Rufus. Ralph de Vipont, a knight of St John of Jerusalem, who had some ancient possessions at a place called Heather, near Ashby-de-la-Zouche, occupied the fifth pavilion. From the entrance into the lists, a gently sloping passage, ten yards in breadth, led up to the platform on which the tents were pitched. It was strongly secured by a palisade on each side, as was the esplanade in front of the pavilions, and the whole was guarded by men-at-arms.
This is from Ivanhoe, and it is definitely the literary ancestor of the tournament in Game of Thrones. It even has a Queen of Love and Beauty!
Oh, and don't get me started on the Oppressed Peasantryβ’. I'm not tipping over into another 19th-century medievalism and saying medieval Europe was some sort of pre-industrial paradise. But we have higher wealth inequality now. Ancient Rome was a slave society. Treating medieval European societies as uniquely, unusually oppressive is, I think, harmful; it distorts past realities and obscures present ones.
