Today I’m blogging at The Round Table on magical systems in fiction.
Guest Blogger Sue Burke on Spanish Arthurian Romance
Since my latest novel is set in Avalon, it partakes of the rich mythology of that land, particularly the Arthurian romance and Grail quest stories. In this post, Sue Burke talks about what happened when the Arthurian legends came to Spain and how attitudes toward romance made a once popular novel almost disappear.
Written out of history
By Sue Burke
Who loves a love story? Literary critics don’t when they can label it a romance novel, especially if it includes sorcerers and magic. As a consequence, Europe’s first best-selling novel has been almost completely forgotten.
That book is Amadis of Gaul by Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo, published in 1508. Never heard of it? Maybe you’ve heard of Don Quixote de la Mancha by Miguel de Cervantes, published in 1605. That book made fun of Amadis and the hundred other novels of chivalry that were its sequels and spin-offs. But the whole thing started much earlier.
Tales of King Arthur, Merlin, and the Knights of the Round Table were brought from Britain to France by Eleanor of Aquitaine in 1170, and from there they spread across Europe. In Spain in the early 1300s, troubadours fused the virtues of the knights Tristan and Lancelot into Amadis, the greatest knight in the world, who lived well before King Arthur but in the same medieval fantasy world.
Amadis loved Princess Oriana, the most beautiful woman in the world, in a story filled with sorcery, enchanted weapons, giants, monsters, and magical locales, along with lots of blood-spattered jousts and battles. Rodríguez de Montalvo collected older versions of the story and created a “corrected and polished” edition for the newly developed printing press. It soon became the most popular book of its time, a favorite of kings, New World conquistadors, and illiterate peasants who attended public readings of books the way we now go to movies.
But even before then, it had critics whose complaints still sound familiar. Around 1380, Spanish chancellor Pero López de Ayala wrote a poem against “books of idle pursuit and proven fictions, Amadis and Lancelot and invented falsities, in which I wasted long hours of my time.”
As novels of chivalry became more popular, the criticisms increased until King Phillip II of Spain banned their printing in 1590, although he had been a fan of them in his youth. Cervantes wrote in the preface to Don Quixote that his aim was “the destruction of the ill-founded machinations of the books of chivalry.”
Still, they remained popular, and though they couldn’t be printed or reprinted, old copies were passed from reader to reader, and new books were written by hand and entered circulation — at least 20 new longhand novels of chivalry, neatly bound like printed books, appeared in the 17th century. They had dashing heroes devoted to beautiful princesses, but not always the “correct” morals. Amadis himself was conceived outside of wedlock, as was his son with Oriana. Later novels became even more racy.
Women loved these books, which made them especially dangerous. A Spanish friar called them “golden pills that, with a delicious layer of entertainment, flatter the eyes to fill the mouth with bitterness and poison the soul with venom [and ruin a young woman’s] honest estate of modesty and shame.”
I don’t think women loved these books for the sex — that’s a male fantasy. Renaissance women loved them because in these fantasies, and in contrast to their real world, women were important. Ladies and damsels appear on every page. There are damsels in distress, of course, but so much more: powerful queens and sorceresses, schemers, healers, best friends, brave errand-runners, witnesses, assistants, lovers, temptresses, and beloved wives — even female knights.
How could self-appointed arbiters of literary quality take such books seriously? Amadis of Gaul and the century of chivalric literature that it inspired were too subversive to include in the official history, and when they were mentioned, they were vilified as trash by people who had never read them.
Even today, genre novels — fantasy, science fiction, and romance — remain ridiculed as sub-literate and childish. And yet, like Amadis of Gaul, they sell well, proof that someone loves them. I hope we never forget them, new and old. That’s why I’m translating Amadis of Gaul from medieval Spanish to English, a chapter at a time, at http://amadisofgaul.blogspot.com/
How Publishing Looks in 2031
Today I’m guest blogging at Justine Graykin’s website about what going digital will bring to the publishing industry. Should you buy those eReaders now?
My Guest Blogs
I blogged at Delphi’s Daughters on Morgen le Fey.
Another Amazon Review
There’s another review up on Amazon for Beneath the Hallowed Hill. Here’s a link.
Guest Blogger A.J. Walker–Ancient Monuments
Beneath the Hallowed Hill is set in Avalon, home of the Tor and the Twin Springs. One scene takes place in Avebury, the largest megalithic monument in the world. Medievalist and archaeologist A.J. Walker drops by to talk about ancient stone monuments in “Fertility, chastity, and ancient monuments.”
The landscape of Western Europe is dotted with megalithic ruins as well as strange natural rock formations. These enigmatic stones have created an entire mythology around them that’s probably only vaguely related to their original purpose.
Take this naturally cleft stone pictured above in this photo courtesy of Lisa Jarvis. It’s a naturally occurring rock on top of a Celtic hill fort at Traprain Law in Scotland. The little one is called the Maiden Stone, and the big one is the Mother Stone. If you pass naked between them you’ll get good luck and lots of kids. 
This is a common legend for both natural and artificial stones. In European folklore, it seems to be the women who are more interested in them, so it’s no surprise that many of the legends have to do with fertility and childbirth. A married woman had to have children to have status, yet childbirth was often fatal. A little help from the stones must have put many a worried mind to rest!
People were especially attracted to stone circles where one of the stones had a hole through it. Babies would be passed through the hole to give them health or luck, or women would crawl through to ensure fertility. At the Odin Stone in the Orkneys, men and women would join hands through the hole in order to get married. At the Mên-an-Tol in Cornwall, pictured here in a photo courtesy of Jane Osborne. Babies with rickets would be passed through naked to cure them. For some reason these folklore cures often required a person to be naked in public, something frowned on in a traditional society. This added a layer of danger and rebelliousness to the ritual.
The Bhacain in Scotland is different than other stones. It’s a monolith (what we archaeologists called a menhir) but it curves around like a P. In the 19th century, women leaving the Highlands to take jobs in the city would sit under the overhang to ensure they didn’t get pregnant while away from the stern protective gaze of their parents. Most menhirs look pretty phallic and were used for fertility rituals. Perhaps because The Bhacain is a bit droopy it was believed to have the opposite effect!
A.J. Walker is the author of Roots Run Deep, a fantasy novel published by Double Dragon. He works as a medievalist and archaeologist in England.
Guest Blogger Alayna Williams on her Oracle series
In Beneath the Hallowed Hill, I imagine Avalon (the Isle of Glass, Glastonbury) as it might have been. My Morgen le Fey is not a jealous witch out to kill her brother the king, but a great oracle. The power of the twin springs and the Tor still exist today. In her series, Alayna Williams imagines that the famous Delphic Oracle has survived into the present.
Ancient and Modern Oracles
by Alayna Williams
The Delphic Oracle is probably the most famous oracle of the ancient world. The priestess of the Temple of Apollo, the Pythia, wielded a great deal of political influence over leaders who sought both her advice and the advice of the priestesses who served the temple. The Temple of Apollo was sited over a crevasse in the earth emitting noxious vapors, leading to modern-day speculation that the Pythia’s visions were not sendings from Apollo, but toxic hallucinations. The Delphic Oracle operated from roughly the eight century BC until 393 AD, when all pagan oracles were ordered to be dismantled by the Emperor. After that, no one knows what became of the priestesses.
I was intrigued by the idea of an order of women exerting subtle and powerful influence over the ancient world. I wondered what would happen if that order of priestesses went underground and survived to the modern day. What would their role in world events be? In Dark Oracle, the title of Pythia is handed down through generations of women, all oracles with their own unique talent for foreseeing the future. Delphi’s Daughters are a secret organization, nudging world events and gathering information through vast networks of helpers. Their behavior is sometimes sinister, sometimes pure, but always secretive. No one but the Pythia herself knows how the puzzle of world events fits together, and her priestesses are often left in the dark, guessing at her motives.
In the worlds of Dark Oracle and Rogue Oracle, the current Pythia is a pyromancer. She sees the future in dancing flames. The heroine of the story, Tara Sheridan, is a cartomancer who uses Tarot cards to create criminal profiles. Other characters have abilities with scrying, astronomy, and geomancy. Delphi’s Daughters come from all walks of life: they are physicists, soccer moms, artists, farmers, and dancers. They are women just like women you know and walk past on the street. But they are women with a secret.
Tara’s talents were a challenge to create. Use of Tarot cards requires both an intellectual understanding of the ancient symbolism of the cards, as well as the ability to make intuitive leaps from the cards to one’s current situation. Using the cards in her work as a profiler, Tara spends a great deal of time in her own head. She’s not a brash woman who rushes into situations with guns blazing. She’s a thinker, a planner, and it’s simply not in her analytical nature to shoot off at the mouth — or with her guns — when she can get her mission accomplished using less attention-getting means. She is accustomed to having to hide her talents from the people with whom she works, which makes her very circumspect… and isolated. Especially since she’s survived an attack by a serial killer that has left her scarred for life. She’s withdrawn from her work as a profiler and as a member of Delphi’s Daughters.
In thinking about how such an order might survive into the modern world, I imagined the limitations inherent in being an oracle in a secret organization. It would require secrecy, sacrificing a large part of one’s life, and committing to a larger ideal. I decided that, as time passed, fewer and fewer women would be interested in unquestioningly serving Delphi’s Daughters. In Dark Oracle, the order is dying out. Tara Sheridan has left the order after her mother died, refusing to return. After surviving an attack by a serial killer that left her scarred for life, she is unable to bear children. And there are no young women in Delphi’s Daughters any longer.
The Pythia must try to continue the line, whatever the cost. She is challenged to convince the rebellious Tara to return. Or she must find new blood to move into the future, a new order for a new age. And blood will be spilled in the process.
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Alayna Wiliams (a.k.a. Laura Bickle) has worked in the unholy trinity of politics, criminology, and technology for several years. She lives in the Midwestern U.S. with her chief muse, owned by four mostly-reformed feral cats. Writing as Laura Bickle, she’s the author of EMBERS and SPARKS for Pocket – Juno Books. Writing as Alayna Williams, she’s the author of DARK ORACLE and ROGUE ORACLE. More info on her urban fantasy and general nerdiness is here: www.salamanderstales.com
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Blurb for ROGUE ORACLE:
The more you know about the future, the more there may be to fear.
Tara Sheridan is the best criminal profiler around – and the most unconventional. Trained as a forensic psychologist, Tara also specializes in Tarot card reading. But she doesn’t need her divination skills to realize that the new assignment from her friend and sometime lover, Agent Harry Li, is a dangerous proposition in every way.
Former Cold War operatives, all linked to a top-secret operation tracking the disposal of nuclear weapons in Russia, are disappearing. There are no bodies, and no clues to their whereabouts. Harry suspects a conspiracy to sell arms to the highest bidder. The cards – and Tara’s increasingly ominous dreams – suggest something darker. Even as Tara sorts through her feelings for Harry and her fractured relationships with the mysterious order known as Delphi’s Daughters, a killer is growing more ruthless by the day. And a nightmare that began decades ago in Chernobyl will reach a terrifying endgame that not even Tara could have foreseen…
ROGUE ORACLE is available now from Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.
Laura Bickle – also writing as Alayna Williams
Author of EMBERS, SPARKS, DARK ORACLE, & ROGUE ORACLE
www.salamanderstales.com | www.alaynawilliams.com
First Amazon Review
Beneath the Hallowed Hill just got its first review on Amazon! Thank you Susan! Read it here.