Sarah Gibbard Cook
  • Home
  • About
  • Writing
  • Contact

Where Fantasy Rules

7/17/2017

4 Comments

 
Another summer, another Saturday of escape into a fantasy of the past. In the depths of winter my husband and I share a litany of future joys, as certain in our life as the rising sun. Part of our litany is always, “We’ll go back to the Faire.” The Bristol Renaissance Faire, midway between Milwaukee and Chicago, has never failed us yet.

Each year delights us with a blend of familiar and fresh. While our favorite porcupine wasn’t at this year’s petting zoo, we got to gape at a large horned zebu cow from Africa. We missed a couple of bands we enjoy and happened onto others that kept us smiling. I shot six arrows from a miniature crossbow. Only one hit the target.

What do you suppose time travelers from Elizabethan England would make of it all? Would they find anything familiar? Not the fairy wings, accordion music, or chocolate-coated bananas. It doesn’t matter. Historical accuracy matters a lot for nonfiction, quite a bit for historical fiction, and not at all for playing at the past. Getting to pick and choose makes the Faire a lot more fun—not to mention safer and more healthful—than if we could actually travel back in time.

The drive home took us through Wisconsin countryside devastated by flash floods. Roads and bridges were out, vehicles half under water, farm fields transformed into ponds. I’ll bet a flood disaster would make perfect sense to visitors from the Renaissance. In real life they, like the residents of this week’s flood-land, didn’t get to pick and choose.
4 Comments
Lisa
7/17/2017 11:17:58 am

Ha, Sarah. Your comments remind me of one of the sessions I attended a week ago at the genealogy conference on German immigration. He showed a slide, and said, This was your ancestors. The image was of a painting by (I should know the artist), and it was a dark and dirty scene. Then he went to the next slide and it was a, shall we say, buxom young woman in ethnic dress holding up a tray of beer, and a quite handsome young man in similar ethnic garb, holding a beer stein, both smiling from ear to ear. He said, This was NOT your ancestors, while pointing to the woman's high heels. Still, I bet the clothes weren't far off otherwise? And who was having more fun, the first slide or the second?

I wonder if Elizabethans had historical fantasies.

Reply
Sarah link
7/17/2017 11:42:44 am

Yes, Lisa, exactly! The fantasy is so much more fun than the reality must have been. I wonder what fantasy people 400 years from now will have of our lives.

Interesting question about whether the Elizabethans had historical fantasies. They probably had religious ones: the Catholics of the good old days before the monasteries were disbanded, and the Protestants of early Christianity before the papacy expanded into a wealthy political institution.

Reply
Lisa
7/17/2017 12:16:50 pm

So, musing here. Does fantasy kind of require a bit of knowledge of history? Mmmm. Maybe not. Is fantasizing a luxury that we have now? Do people who live so hand to mouth have the luxury? Or does it take over their whole minds? I'd like to think they could sit down now and then and go somewhere else, if only in their heads.

Reply
Sarah link
7/17/2017 12:45:57 pm

I'm sure living hand to mouth didn't preclude fantasy, though not necessarily historical. The more labor was physical rather than mental, the more freedom people may have had to let their minds go elsewhere. They wouldn't have to sit down to do it.

I think of fascination with the Middle Ages dating back to the Romantics around 1800, but Cervantes's Don Quixote (finished 1615, not long after Elizabeth died) wanted to revive chivalry, perhaps a form of historical fantasy.

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    Author

    I'm a historian who writes novels and literary nonfiction. My home base is Madison, Wisconsin. 

    Archives

    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016

    RSS Feed


      ​get updates

    Sign up
Proudly powered by Weebly
  • Home
  • About
  • Writing
  • Contact