![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Continuing to read the literary works of William Morris, Victorian-era medieval enthusiast, founder of the Arts & Crafts movement and creator of the best wallpapers, I recently innocently opened a novella called A Dream of John Ball.
Unlike Morris's pre-Tolkien proto-fantasy-genre classics like The Well at the World's End, The Wood Beyond the World, and The Water of the Wondrous Isles, this is an extended political meditation with long aesthetic digressions: a narrator has a dream that he's time traveled to the 14th century to attend a meeting of peasants organizing for the peasants' revolt of 1381 and listening to an extended speech by the rebel priest John Ball, who was excommunicated for his insistence on social equality and fiery anti-wealth discourse. Which, admittedly, was pretty fun to read at first, even though it came after a bemusingly long passage of extremely detailed descriptions of landscapes and architecture. I didn't read to the end of the peasants' revolt, so I don't know what John Ball says when the time traveler explains the Industrial Revolution to him and he realizes that the egalitarian society of his dreams has yet to materialize.
After quitting halfway through this one I moved on to another of Morris's imitation medieval romances, Child Christopher and Goldilind the Fair, which I now see from Wikipedia is actually just a retelling of the medieval Matter of England Lay of Havelock the Dane. This might somewhat excuse the fact that, contrary to Morris's socialist and egalitarian ideals, this novel depends on the divine right of kingship or at least on the moral authority of inheritance, with orphaned foundling heirs to the throne who were raised in the middle of nowhere being inherently suited to competently rule their fathers' kingdoms in spite of being teenagers with no knowledge or experience thereof. In Morris's retelling one of the usurpers tries to have the prince assassinated, but the other one's evilitude is supposed to be entirely in the fact that while doing a skilled and competent job of ruling the kingdom justly and maintaining the peace, he wants to avoid handing the job over to the teenaged princess. (Arguably I guess you could say that by having her raised in a distant corner of the realm he was already being evil, but I feel history has shown that his fears of political enemies trying to user her as a pawn, possibly to her endangerment, was more than realistic.) To put it mildly, not a very socialist message. Apparently Morris de-emphasized the war plot in favor of the romantic one, but you can't really get around the moral of the story here when Tarzan and ... raised-in-the-forest-girl, without the benefit of skill, specialized education, or any experience, are supernaturally competent rulers as teenagers just because of their genetic superiority and, it's strongly implied, because of their... supreme physical beauty...??? (A concept in line with the philosophy of the ancient and medieval worlds, but not super consonant with socialism or egalitarianism.)
Still, all of his stuff is fun to read, pretty much, although there's a bit of skimming from time to time because Morris was even worse than Tolkien when it came to getting carried away in nerdy transports and describing his world-building in detail, only in his case it's usually architecture or garments instead of language or history. But, as I was saying, his narrative style which is apparently considered a very competent pastiche of medieval romance style is a fun time for me.
Unlike Morris's pre-Tolkien proto-fantasy-genre classics like The Well at the World's End, The Wood Beyond the World, and The Water of the Wondrous Isles, this is an extended political meditation with long aesthetic digressions: a narrator has a dream that he's time traveled to the 14th century to attend a meeting of peasants organizing for the peasants' revolt of 1381 and listening to an extended speech by the rebel priest John Ball, who was excommunicated for his insistence on social equality and fiery anti-wealth discourse. Which, admittedly, was pretty fun to read at first, even though it came after a bemusingly long passage of extremely detailed descriptions of landscapes and architecture. I didn't read to the end of the peasants' revolt, so I don't know what John Ball says when the time traveler explains the Industrial Revolution to him and he realizes that the egalitarian society of his dreams has yet to materialize.
After quitting halfway through this one I moved on to another of Morris's imitation medieval romances, Child Christopher and Goldilind the Fair, which I now see from Wikipedia is actually just a retelling of the medieval Matter of England Lay of Havelock the Dane. This might somewhat excuse the fact that, contrary to Morris's socialist and egalitarian ideals, this novel depends on the divine right of kingship or at least on the moral authority of inheritance, with orphaned foundling heirs to the throne who were raised in the middle of nowhere being inherently suited to competently rule their fathers' kingdoms in spite of being teenagers with no knowledge or experience thereof. In Morris's retelling one of the usurpers tries to have the prince assassinated, but the other one's evilitude is supposed to be entirely in the fact that while doing a skilled and competent job of ruling the kingdom justly and maintaining the peace, he wants to avoid handing the job over to the teenaged princess. (Arguably I guess you could say that by having her raised in a distant corner of the realm he was already being evil, but I feel history has shown that his fears of political enemies trying to user her as a pawn, possibly to her endangerment, was more than realistic.) To put it mildly, not a very socialist message. Apparently Morris de-emphasized the war plot in favor of the romantic one, but you can't really get around the moral of the story here when Tarzan and ... raised-in-the-forest-girl, without the benefit of skill, specialized education, or any experience, are supernaturally competent rulers as teenagers just because of their genetic superiority and, it's strongly implied, because of their... supreme physical beauty...??? (A concept in line with the philosophy of the ancient and medieval worlds, but not super consonant with socialism or egalitarianism.)
Still, all of his stuff is fun to read, pretty much, although there's a bit of skimming from time to time because Morris was even worse than Tolkien when it came to getting carried away in nerdy transports and describing his world-building in detail, only in his case it's usually architecture or garments instead of language or history. But, as I was saying, his narrative style which is apparently considered a very competent pastiche of medieval romance style is a fun time for me.
