Traditionalists, revisionists, & synthesists

I've seen some posts lately (mostly elsewhere) that suggest revisionism
regarding Richard's character & history is passé; they suggest that the
next phase is synthesis, that the Truth is somewhere between traditionalism
& revisionism. This sometimes seems to accompany an attitude that one must
accept everything a given source says (haven't seen an associated opinion
that some sources must be rejected outright - but maybe I've just missed
it).

This makes me extremely uncomfortable, because as observed in a book I
started reading a while ago

The basic assumption that the truth lies between the testimony of the two
sides always shifts the advantage to the lying side and away from the side
telling the truth.

I also don't understand where this idea comes from that people who believe
Richard to have been a principled person regard him as a saint.

What to do?

A J

don't back down, you're absolutely right. Truth is what can be proven, not a compromise between opposing opinions! I have little to do with judges, juries and lawyers, but I have never heard of a judge instructing a jury to give a decision somewhere in between the defence and the prosecution. This attitude reminds me of Fox News calling itself "fair and balanced"
Nicole

~~~ Music is lots of sound waves coming toward us in a completely chaotic manner and somehow our brain receives that as something beautiful - Matthew Bellamy

To:
From: ajhibbard@...
Date: Sat, 25 May 2013 09:08:28 -0500
Subject: Traditionalists, revisionists, & synthesists


























I've seen some posts lately (mostly elsewhere) that suggest revisionism

regarding Richard's character & history is passý; they suggest that the

next phase is synthesis, that the Truth is somewhere between traditionalism

& revisionism. This sometimes seems to accompany an attitude that one must

accept everything a given source says (haven't seen an associated opinion

that some sources must be rejected outright - but maybe I've just missed

it).



This makes me extremely uncomfortable, because as observed in a book I

started reading a while ago



The basic assumption that the truth lies between the testimony of the two

sides always shifts the advantage to the lying side and away from the side

telling the truth.



I also don't understand where this idea comes from that people who believe

Richard to have been a principled person regard him as a saint.



What to do?



A J

Nicole said:

 I have never heard of a judge instructing a jury to give a decision somewhere in between the defence and the prosecution.
 
Liz replied:  Brilliant.  I might just pinch that if you don't mind.

















  


    
      
      
      I've seen some posts lately (mostly elsewhere) that suggest revisionism

regarding Richard's character & history is passé; they suggest that the

next phase is synthesis, that the Truth is somewhere between traditionalism

& revisionism.  This sometimes seems to accompany an attitude that one must

accept everything a given source says (haven't seen an associated opinion

that some sources must be rejected outright - but maybe I've just missed

it).



This makes me extremely uncomfortable, because as observed in a book I

started reading a while ago



The basic assumption that the truth lies between the testimony of the two

sides always shifts the advantage to the lying side and away from the side

telling the truth.



I also don't understand where this idea comes from that people who believe

Richard to have been a principled person regard him as a saint.



What to do?



A J










   
   

   
   






                         





------------------------------------

Yahoo! Groups Links

From: liz williams
To:
Sent: Sunday, May 26, 2013 4:32 PM
Subject: Re: Traditionalists, revisionists, &
synthesists


> Nicole said:

> I have never heard of a judge instructing a jury to give a decision
> somewhere in between the defence and the prosecution.

> Liz replied: Brilliant. I might just pinch that if you don't mind.

In truth, that's what happens here in Scotland when a "Not Proven" verdict
is passed, and I suppose there must have been some occasions when a judge
has actively advised the jury to find a case Not Proven.

The point about the truth being in between the two sides depends of course
on the the idea that nobody is lying, and both sides are telling the truth
to the best of their limited knowledge. If you have reason to think that
somebody *is* deliberately lying it's a whole other kettle of fish.

Maybe I can help clear up this confusion, as it seems to be my suggestion of a 'Ricardian dialectic' that's inspired this (and other) comments. First of all, a 'dialectic' isn't the same as a 'compromise', nor need there be a suggestion that what it will turn up is something in between two extremes. Here's one definition of the term 'dialectic':

"The process especially associated with Hegel of arriving at the truth by stating a thesis, developing a contradictory antithesis, and combining and resolving them into a coherent synthesis."

Ok, so the 'thesis' here is Shakespeare, More and 500 odd years of what a lot of people refer to as 'Tudor propaganda'.

The 'antithesis' is the work of modern (and some not so modern) revisionists, including various fictional works.

The 'synthesis' then is likely to be a further step, not a compromise nor some kind of arbitrary middle ground.

I don't recall saying that every source had to be accepted. I do believe, though, that sources shouldn't be rejected simply because they don't agree with a given view of history. I'm a little concerned that this idea is being rejected out of hand as possibly resulting in 'lies' without it first being understood. Pretty much all advances in scholarship come about as the result of a dialectic and most people involved aren't consciously aware of it. It's just the way ideas develop and change over time.

I've met a good many people over the last year or so (mainly online) who are dissatisfied with both the thesis and the antithesis. What is being sought here is something beyond both. I've never actually claimed that the 'revisionist' view (the antithesis) is 'passe'. I do believe that, as it currently stands, it's certainly done its job. People are thinking about Richard very differently now. But for those who aren't entirely satisfied with that view, there is nothing sinister about the seeking something that does satisfy. Quite what this will be, of course, can't possibly be known. As with a lot of things, the joy will be in the journey.

Karen Clark

--- In , liz williams <ferrymansdaughter@...> wrote:
>
> Nicole said:
>
>  I have never heard of a judge instructing a jury to give a decision somewhere in between the defence and the prosecution.
>  
> Liz replied:  Brilliant.  I might just pinch that if you don't mind.
>
>       I've seen some posts lately (mostly elsewhere) that suggest revisionism
>
> regarding Richard's character & history is passé; they suggest that the
>
> next phase is synthesis, that the Truth is somewhere between traditionalism
>
> & revisionism.  This sometimes seems to accompany an attitude that one must
>
> accept everything a given source says (haven't seen an associated opinion
>
> that some sources must be rejected outright - but maybe I've just missed
>
> it).
>
>
>
> This makes me extremely uncomfortable, because as observed in a book I
>
> started reading a while ago
>
>
>
> The basic assumption that the truth lies between the testimony of the two
>
> sides always shifts the advantage to the lying side and away from the side
>
> telling the truth.
>
>
>
> I also don't understand where this idea comes from that people who believe
>
> Richard to have been a principled person regard him as a saint.
>
>
>
> What to do?
>
>
>
> A J
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>    
>    
>
>    
>    
>
>
>
>
>
>
>                          
>
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
>

Because
I posted the original e-mail, let me state my position.

I don't see that the "revisionist view" has done its job at all; there's
still a ridiculous amount of misinformation about Richard being presented
as gospel truth. Which has very real consequences, such as the extremely
heated debate about the design of a memorial, with the writers of the
cathedral's design brief, using intemperate, even offensive language. The
fact that those of us who do not accept the Tudor-inspired view of Richard
are labelled revisionists perpetuates a superficial view of historical
inquiry, and is a problem in itself.

And personally, my thesis is not Shakespeare & Tudor propaganda; nor is it
accounts like Paul Murray Kendall's. My thesis is that research needs to
start with the most credible sources available & include a critical
evaluation of those sources. This must be done before we can even
characterize the dots that we're trying to connect.

A J


On Sun, May 26, 2013 at 12:39 PM, reswallie_girl
<Ragged_staff@...>wrote:

> **
>
>
> Maybe I can help clear up this confusion, as it seems to be my suggestion
> of a 'Ricardian dialectic' that's inspired this (and other) comments. First
> of all, a 'dialectic' isn't the same as a 'compromise', nor need there be a
> suggestion that what it will turn up is something in between two extremes.
> Here's one definition of the term 'dialectic':
>
> "The process especially associated with Hegel of arriving at the truth by
> stating a thesis, developing a contradictory antithesis, and combining and
> resolving them into a coherent synthesis."
>
> Ok, so the 'thesis' here is Shakespeare, More and 500 odd years of what a
> lot of people refer to as 'Tudor propaganda'.
>
> The 'antithesis' is the work of modern (and some not so modern)
> revisionists, including various fictional works.
>
> The 'synthesis' then is likely to be a further step, not a compromise nor
> some kind of arbitrary middle ground.
>
> I don't recall saying that every source had to be accepted. I do believe,
> though, that sources shouldn't be rejected simply because they don't agree
> with a given view of history. I'm a little concerned that this idea is
> being rejected out of hand as possibly resulting in 'lies' without it first
> being understood. Pretty much all advances in scholarship come about as the
> result of a dialectic and most people involved aren't consciously aware of
> it. It's just the way ideas develop and change over time.
>
> I've met a good many people over the last year or so (mainly online) who
> are dissatisfied with both the thesis and the antithesis. What is being
> sought here is something beyond both. I've never actually claimed that the
> 'revisionist' view (the antithesis) is 'passe'. I do believe that, as it
> currently stands, it's certainly done its job. People are thinking about
> Richard very differently now. But for those who aren't entirely satisfied
> with that view, there is nothing sinister about the seeking something that
> does satisfy. Quite what this will be, of course, can't possibly be known.
> As with a lot of things, the joy will be in the journey.
>
> Karen Clark
>
>
> --- In , liz williams
> <ferrymansdaughter@...> wrote:
> >
> > Nicole said:
> >
> > I have never heard of a judge instructing a jury to give a decision
> somewhere in between the defence and the prosecution.
> >
> > Liz replied: Brilliant. I might just pinch that if you don't mind.
> >
> > I've seen some posts lately (mostly elsewhere) that suggest
> revisionism
> >
> > regarding Richard's character & history is passý; they suggest that the
> >
> > next phase is synthesis, that the Truth is somewhere between
> traditionalism
> >
> > & revisionism. This sometimes seems to accompany an attitude that one
> must
> >
> > accept everything a given source says (haven't seen an associated opinion
> >
> > that some sources must be rejected outright - but maybe I've just missed
> >
> > it).
> >
> >
> >
> > This makes me extremely uncomfortable, because as observed in a book I
> >
> > started reading a while ago
> >
> >
> >
> > The basic assumption that the truth lies between the testimony of the two
> >
> > sides always shifts the advantage to the lying side and away from the
> side
> >
> > telling the truth.
> >
> >
> >
> > I also don't understand where this idea comes from that people who
> believe
> >
> > Richard to have been a principled person regard him as a saint.
> >
> >
> >
> > What to do?
> >
> >
> >
> > A J
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > ------------------------------------
> >
> > Yahoo! Groups Links
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>

I don't mind at all :-) just felt I was agreeing with AJ and expanding on it a bit

--- In , liz williams <ferrymansdaughter@...> wrote:
>
> Nicole said:
>
>  I have never heard of a judge instructing a jury to give a decision somewhere in between the defence and the prosecution.
>  
> Liz replied:  Brilliant.  I might just pinch that if you don't mind.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>   
>
>
>     
>       
>       
>       I've seen some posts lately (mostly elsewhere) that suggest revisionism
>
> regarding Richard's character & history is passé; they suggest that the
>
> next phase is synthesis, that the Truth is somewhere between traditionalism
>
> & revisionism.  This sometimes seems to accompany an attitude that one must
>
> accept everything a given source says (haven't seen an associated opinion
>
> that some sources must be rejected outright - but maybe I've just missed
>
> it).
>
>
>
> This makes me extremely uncomfortable, because as observed in a book I
>
> started reading a while ago
>
>
>
> The basic assumption that the truth lies between the testimony of the two
>
> sides always shifts the advantage to the lying side and away from the side
>
> telling the truth.
>
>
>
> I also don't understand where this idea comes from that people who believe
>
> Richard to have been a principled person regard him as a saint.
>
>
>
> What to do?
>
>
>
> A J
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>    
>    
>
>    
>    
>
>
>
>
>
>
>                          
>
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
>

A dialetic may be fine for talking about philosophy or ideology, I don't think it's as well suited to getting at facts and history.
Also, the wikipedia entry for Hegel claims he's been misunderstood too! "It is widely admitted today[39] that the old-fashioned description of Hegel's philosophy in terms of "thesis-antithesis-synthesis" is inaccurate. Nevertheless, such is the persistence of this misnomer that the model and terminology survive in a number of scholarly works."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Wilhelm_Friedrich_Hegel
Nicole

~~~ Music is lots of sound waves coming toward us in a completely chaotic manner and somehow our brain receives that as something beautiful - Matthew Bellamy

To:
From: Ragged_staff@...
Date: Sun, 26 May 2013 17:39:20 +0000
Subject: Re: Traditionalists, revisionists, & synthesists


























Maybe I can help clear up this confusion, as it seems to be my suggestion of a 'Ricardian dialectic' that's inspired this (and other) comments. First of all, a 'dialectic' isn't the same as a 'compromise', nor need there be a suggestion that what it will turn up is something in between two extremes. Here's one definition of the term 'dialectic':



"The process especially associated with Hegel of arriving at the truth by stating a thesis, developing a contradictory antithesis, and combining and resolving them into a coherent synthesis."



Ok, so the 'thesis' here is Shakespeare, More and 500 odd years of what a lot of people refer to as 'Tudor propaganda'.



The 'antithesis' is the work of modern (and some not so modern) revisionists, including various fictional works.



The 'synthesis' then is likely to be a further step, not a compromise nor some kind of arbitrary middle ground.



I don't recall saying that every source had to be accepted. I do believe, though, that sources shouldn't be rejected simply because they don't agree with a given view of history. I'm a little concerned that this idea is being rejected out of hand as possibly resulting in 'lies' without it first being understood. Pretty much all advances in scholarship come about as the result of a dialectic and most people involved aren't consciously aware of it. It's just the way ideas develop and change over time.



I've met a good many people over the last year or so (mainly online) who are dissatisfied with both the thesis and the antithesis. What is being sought here is something beyond both. I've never actually claimed that the 'revisionist' view (the antithesis) is 'passe'. I do believe that, as it currently stands, it's certainly done its job. People are thinking about Richard very differently now. But for those who aren't entirely satisfied with that view, there is nothing sinister about the seeking something that does satisfy. Quite what this will be, of course, can't possibly be known. As with a lot of things, the joy will be in the journey.



Karen Clark



--- In , liz williams <ferrymansdaughter@...> wrote:

>

> Nicole said:

>

> I have never heard of a judge instructing a jury to give a decision somewhere in between the defence and the prosecution.

>

> Liz replied: Brilliant. I might just pinch that if you don't mind.

>

> I've seen some posts lately (mostly elsewhere) that suggest revisionism

>

> regarding Richard's character & history is passý; they suggest that the

>

> next phase is synthesis, that the Truth is somewhere between traditionalism

>

> & revisionism. This sometimes seems to accompany an attitude that one must

>

> accept everything a given source says (haven't seen an associated opinion

>

> that some sources must be rejected outright - but maybe I've just missed

>

> it).

>

>

>

> This makes me extremely uncomfortable, because as observed in a book I

>

> started reading a while ago

>

>

>

> The basic assumption that the truth lies between the testimony of the two

>

> sides always shifts the advantage to the lying side and away from the side

>

> telling the truth.

>

>

>

> I also don't understand where this idea comes from that people who believe

>

> Richard to have been a principled person regard him as a saint.

>

>

>

> What to do?

>

>

>

> A J

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

> ------------------------------------

>

> Yahoo! Groups Links

>

>

>

>

>

The trouble with history is that you'd need to be a robot to be unbiased. So even deciding what are credible sources and evaluating them is going to cause a huge debate. But the debate needs to be had more loudly and more openly particularly as there are a plethora of books appearing which seem to be churning out contemporary records as though they were fact. Some records are of course, because they were written before it was ever envisaged that this period would be controversial. I'm talking of Exchequer Records, land transfers and to some extent, Parliament Rolls. But the core is the well known texts of More, Croyland, Vergil, Commines, Rous, to name but a few and they need evaluation with fresh eyes, rather than being tainted with some earlier scholar's interpretation. As for the dots, they are huge in themselves; it isn't the clean plot of a crime novel.
 
So yes AJ I agree with you wholeheartedly and we so call revisionists need to make it clear that we welcome the findings, whatever they may be. We are seekers after the truth and that truth is bound to have shades of grey. What we do not countenance is supposition presented as fact. 
 

________________________________
From: A J Hibbard <ajhibbard@...>
To: "" <>
Sent: Sunday, 26 May 2013, 19:25
Subject: Re: Traditionalists, revisionists, & synthesists


Because
I posted the original e-mail, let me state my position.

I don't see that the "revisionist view" has done its job at all; there's
still a ridiculous amount of misinformation about Richard being presented
as gospel truth.  Which has very real consequences, such as the extremely
heated debate about the design of a memorial, with the writers of the
cathedral's design brief, using intemperate, even offensive language.  The
fact that those of us who do not accept the Tudor-inspired view of Richard
are labelled revisionists perpetuates a superficial view of historical
inquiry, and is a problem in itself.

And personally, my thesis is not Shakespeare & Tudor propaganda; nor is it
accounts like Paul Murray Kendall's.  My thesis is that research needs to
start with the most credible sources available & include a critical
evaluation of those sources.  This must be done before we can even
characterize the dots that we're trying to connect.

A J


On Sun, May 26, 2013 at 12:39 PM, reswallie_girl
<Ragged_staff@...>wrote:

> **
>
>
> Maybe I can help clear up this confusion, as it seems to be my suggestion
> of a 'Ricardian dialectic' that's inspired this (and other) comments. First
> of all, a 'dialectic' isn't the same as a 'compromise', nor need there be a
> suggestion that what it will turn up is something in between two extremes.
> Here's one definition of the term 'dialectic':
>
> "The process especially associated with Hegel of arriving at the truth by
> stating a thesis, developing a contradictory antithesis, and combining and
> resolving them into a coherent synthesis."
>
> Ok, so the 'thesis' here is Shakespeare, More and 500 odd years of what a
> lot of people refer to as 'Tudor propaganda'.
>
> The 'antithesis' is the work of modern (and some not so modern)
> revisionists, including various fictional works.
>
> The 'synthesis' then is likely to be a further step, not a compromise nor
> some kind of arbitrary middle ground.
>
> I don't recall saying that every source had to be accepted. I do believe,
> though, that sources shouldn't be rejected simply because they don't agree
> with a given view of history. I'm a little concerned that this idea is
> being rejected out of hand as possibly resulting in 'lies' without it first
> being understood. Pretty much all advances in scholarship come about as the
> result of a dialectic and most people involved aren't consciously aware of
> it. It's just the way ideas develop and change over time.
>
> I've met a good many people over the last year or so (mainly online) who
> are dissatisfied with both the thesis and the antithesis. What is being
> sought here is something beyond both. I've never actually claimed that the
> 'revisionist' view (the antithesis) is 'passe'. I do believe that, as it
> currently stands, it's certainly done its job. People are thinking about
> Richard very differently now. But for those who aren't entirely satisfied
> with that view, there is nothing sinister about the seeking something that
> does satisfy. Quite what this will be, of course, can't possibly be known.
> As with a lot of things, the joy will be in the journey.
>
> Karen Clark
>
>
> --- In , liz williams
> <ferrymansdaughter@...> wrote:
> >
> > Nicole said:
> >
> >  I have never heard of a judge instructing a jury to give a decision
> somewhere in between the defence and the prosecution.
> >
> > Liz replied:  Brilliant.  I might just pinch that if you don't mind.
> >
> >      I've seen some posts lately (mostly elsewhere) that suggest
> revisionism
> >
> > regarding Richard's character & history is passé; they suggest that the
> >
> > next phase is synthesis, that the Truth is somewhere between
> traditionalism
> >
> > & revisionism.  This sometimes seems to accompany an attitude that one
> must
> >
> > accept everything a given source says (haven't seen an associated opinion
> >
> > that some sources must be rejected outright - but maybe I've just missed
> >
> > it).
> >
> >
> >
> > This makes me extremely uncomfortable, because as observed in a book I
> >
> > started reading a while ago
> >
> >
> >
> > The basic assumption that the truth lies between the testimony of the two
> >
> > sides always shifts the advantage to the lying side and away from the
> side
> >
> > telling the truth.
> >
> >
> >
> > I also don't understand where this idea comes from that people who
> believe
> >
> > Richard to have been a principled person regard him as a saint.
> >
> >
> >
> > What to do?
> >
> >
> >
> > A J
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > ------------------------------------
> >
> > Yahoo! Groups Links
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
> 
>






------------------------------------

Yahoo! Groups Links

A judge in a court of law would never have the power or discretion to allow a jury to reject either side and come up with its own conclusions.  That is unheard of and would result in a mistrial.  At most, a judge has the power to "direct a verdict" if he/she finds one side to have produced no evidence (and in criminal cases, this can only operate for the defense as the presumption of innocence is the default).  This happens incredibly rarely even in civil cases, and most judges fear being reversed by the court of appeals if they do so.  As you said quite accurately, Nicole, the standard jury instructions direct the jurors to only consider the evidence at hand and they are repeatedly warned in trials *not* to do independent research or to consider facts, evidence or theories that were not put forth to them.  However, I realize that we are talking about history, not trial law, and the metaphor is inexact, but it remains one way in which adversarial
positions are addressed in our society.


Another observation I have is that no one can render a "verdict" until all the evidence is in, and this is true no matter whether we are talking about historical or legal analysis.  I find that the "revisionist" viewpoint about Richard has not yet been fully fleshed out, and it is developing as we speak.  In my humble opinion, it may be somewhat premature to begin talking about its flaws until we give historians ample opportunity to investigate the revisionist position in light of recent developments.  I welcome criticisms in the way that inquiry may be handled, from a methodological viewpoint, but to introduce a new theory may give disservice to the one that is currently being explored.  So, to answer the original question, I would simply respond that I am still intrigued by the revisionist viewpoint, and want to give it the courtesy of a full airing and development before subscribing to a new dialectic or theory.  That way, I would hope to avoid
the ad hominem nature of debate that so often follows.


Hope that makes sense.

ST

Nicole

I'm still trying to work out why this idea is so troubling. I guess if the concept of using the dialectic to describe what's going on in historical study (and just about every other area of human study) doesn't suit someone, they can always set it to one side and stop worrying about it. Personally, I think the prospect of revisionist ideas influencing academic study of Richard's life and times to be a positive rather than a negative. What will come out of it, we can't possibly know, but I doubt it will be an entrenchment of the 'traditional'.

Karen Clark

--- In , NICOLE MASIKA <nicolemm_99@...> wrote:
>
> A dialetic may be fine for talking about philosophy or ideology, I don't think it's as well suited to getting at facts and history.
> Also, the wikipedia entry for Hegel claims he's been misunderstood too! "It is widely admitted today[39] that the old-fashioned description of Hegel's philosophy in terms of "thesis-antithesis-synthesis" is inaccurate. Nevertheless, such is the persistence of this misnomer that the model and terminology survive in a number of scholarly works."
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Wilhelm_Friedrich_Hegel
> Nicole
>
> ~~~ Music is lots of sound waves coming toward us in a completely chaotic manner and somehow our brain receives that as something beautiful - Matthew Bellamy
>
> To:
> From: Ragged_staff@...
> Date: Sun, 26 May 2013 17:39:20 +0000
> Subject: Re: Traditionalists, revisionists, & synthesists
> Maybe I can help clear up this confusion, as it seems to be my suggestion of a 'Ricardian dialectic' that's inspired this (and other) comments. First of all, a 'dialectic' isn't the same as a 'compromise', nor need there be a suggestion that what it will turn up is something in between two extremes. Here's one definition of the term 'dialectic':
> "The process especially associated with Hegel of arriving at the truth by stating a thesis, developing a contradictory antithesis, and combining and resolving them into a coherent synthesis."
> Ok, so the 'thesis' here is Shakespeare, More and 500 odd years of what a lot of people refer to as 'Tudor propaganda'.
> The 'antithesis' is the work of modern (and some not so modern) revisionists, including various fictional works.
> The 'synthesis' then is likely to be a further step, not a compromise nor some kind of arbitrary middle ground.
> I don't recall saying that every source had to be accepted. I do believe, though, that sources shouldn't be rejected simply because they don't agree with a given view of history. I'm a little concerned that this idea is being rejected out of hand as possibly resulting in 'lies' without it first being understood. Pretty much all advances in scholarship come about as the result of a dialectic and most people involved aren't consciously aware of it. It's just the way ideas develop and change over time.
> I've met a good many people over the last year or so (mainly online) who are dissatisfied with both the thesis and the antithesis. What is being sought here is something beyond both. I've never actually claimed that the 'revisionist' view (the antithesis) is 'passe'. I do believe that, as it currently stands, it's certainly done its job. People are thinking about Richard very differently now. But for those who aren't entirely satisfied with that view, there is nothing sinister about the seeking something that does satisfy. Quite what this will be, of course, can't possibly be known. As with a lot of things, the joy will be in the journey.
> Karen Clark
>

It's troubling because I don't think you can "synthesize" an objective truth. I am not an academic or a historian, but we are not trying to develop a moral or political philosophy here. I want to know what really happened and who Richard really was. We "revisionists" think that will show he was a good man and that Tudor propaganda was exaggeration and lies. I don't know if we will ever find enough reliable evidence, but that is what I want- truth, evidence. I don't think you necessarily get that by reconciling opposing viewpoints. Sometimes a POV is just plain wrong, has no basis in fact.
Nicole

~~~ Music is lots of sound waves coming toward us in a completely chaotic manner and somehow our brain receives that as something beautiful - Matthew Bellamy

To:
From: Ragged_staff@...
Date: Mon, 27 May 2013 02:38:13 +0000
Subject: Re: Traditionalists, revisionists, & synthesists


























Nicole



I'm still trying to work out why this idea is so troubling. I guess if the concept of using the dialectic to describe what's going on in historical study (and just about every other area of human study) doesn't suit someone, they can always set it to one side and stop worrying about it. Personally, I think the prospect of revisionist ideas influencing academic study of Richard's life and times to be a positive rather than a negative. What will come out of it, we can't possibly know, but I doubt it will be an entrenchment of the 'traditional'.



Karen Clark



--- In , NICOLE MASIKA <nicolemm_99@...> wrote:

>

> A dialetic may be fine for talking about philosophy or ideology, I don't think it's as well suited to getting at facts and history.

> Also, the wikipedia entry for Hegel claims he's been misunderstood too! "It is widely admitted today[39] that the old-fashioned description of Hegel's philosophy in terms of "thesis-antithesis-synthesis" is inaccurate. Nevertheless, such is the persistence of this misnomer that the model and terminology survive in a number of scholarly works."

> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Wilhelm_Friedrich_Hegel

> Nicole

>

> ~~~ Music is lots of sound waves coming toward us in a completely chaotic manner and somehow our brain receives that as something beautiful - Matthew Bellamy

>

> To:

> From: Ragged_staff@...

> Date: Sun, 26 May 2013 17:39:20 +0000

> Subject: Re: Traditionalists, revisionists, & synthesists

> Maybe I can help clear up this confusion, as it seems to be my suggestion of a 'Ricardian dialectic' that's inspired this (and other) comments. First of all, a 'dialectic' isn't the same as a 'compromise', nor need there be a suggestion that what it will turn up is something in between two extremes. Here's one definition of the term 'dialectic':

> "The process especially associated with Hegel of arriving at the truth by stating a thesis, developing a contradictory antithesis, and combining and resolving them into a coherent synthesis."

> Ok, so the 'thesis' here is Shakespeare, More and 500 odd years of what a lot of people refer to as 'Tudor propaganda'.

> The 'antithesis' is the work of modern (and some not so modern) revisionists, including various fictional works.

> The 'synthesis' then is likely to be a further step, not a compromise nor some kind of arbitrary middle ground.

> I don't recall saying that every source had to be accepted. I do believe, though, that sources shouldn't be rejected simply because they don't agree with a given view of history. I'm a little concerned that this idea is being rejected out of hand as possibly resulting in 'lies' without it first being understood. Pretty much all advances in scholarship come about as the result of a dialectic and most people involved aren't consciously aware of it. It's just the way ideas develop and change over time.

> I've met a good many people over the last year or so (mainly online) who are dissatisfied with both the thesis and the antithesis. What is being sought here is something beyond both. I've never actually claimed that the 'revisionist' view (the antithesis) is 'passe'. I do believe that, as it currently stands, it's certainly done its job. People are thinking about Richard very differently now. But for those who aren't entirely satisfied with that view, there is nothing sinister about the seeking something that does satisfy. Quite what this will be, of course, can't possibly be known. As with a lot of things, the joy will be in the journey.

> Karen Clark

>

I wholeheartedly agree that the 'revisionist view' hasn't done it's job. (I also agree that labels can sometimes be unhelpful, but they're pretty much all we've got.) There are far too many questions that have been answered, but not to everyone's satisfaction, and many questions still being explored. I imagine it would be quite difficult to find someone to take a fresh look at sources who hasn't been influenced by the work of previous scholars. (I resist using the word 'tainted' here, as it's a little harsh. While I don't necessarily agree with every word he wrote, I'm sure Peter Hancock (just to name one) has 'influenced' my thinking in some way, even though I don't fully accept his ultimate findings. I'd hardly say I was 'tainted' by reading his work, though. The same applies to the work of other writers, both academically trained and not.) The idea, really, is to take the whole of it and work out what makes sense (not what fits what the ends we hope to achieve) and, from that, develop our 'fresh look'. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if there were multiple 'fresh looks' on the horizon. Will we ever come at a 'truth' about Richard that satisfies everyone? Probably not. That shouldn't discourage anyone from attempting it. I'm well aware that there are people who *are* fully satisfied with the 'truth' they've found, or are on their way to finding. There are some who are still searching.

Karen Clark



--- In , Hilary Jones <hjnatdat@...> wrote:
>
> The trouble with history is that you'd need to be a robot to be unbiased. So even deciding what are credible sources and evaluating them is going to cause a huge debate. But the debate needs to be had more loudly and more openly particularly as there are a plethora of books appearing which seem to be churning out contemporary records as though they were fact. Some records are of course, because they were written before it was ever envisaged that this period would be controversial. I'm talking of Exchequer Records, land transfers and to some extent, Parliament Rolls. But the core is the well known texts of More, Croyland, Vergil, Commines, Rous, to name but a few and they need evaluation with fresh eyes, rather than being tainted with some earlier scholar's interpretation. As for the dots, they are huge in themselves; it isn't the clean plot of a crime novel.
>  
> So yes AJ I agree with you wholeheartedly and we so call revisionists need to make it clear that we welcome the findings, whatever they may be. We are seekers after the truth and that truth is bound to have shades of grey. What we do not countenance is supposition presented as fact. 
>  
>
> ________________________________
> From: A J Hibbard <ajhibbard@...>
> To: "" <>
> Sent: Sunday, 26 May 2013, 19:25
> Subject: Re: Traditionalists, revisionists, & synthesists
>
>
> Because
> I posted the original e-mail, let me state my position.
>
> I don't see that the "revisionist view" has done its job at all; there's
> still a ridiculous amount of misinformation about Richard being presented
> as gospel truth.  Which has very real consequences, such as the extremely
> heated debate about the design of a memorial, with the writers of the
> cathedral's design brief, using intemperate, even offensive language.  The
> fact that those of us who do not accept the Tudor-inspired view of Richard
> are labelled revisionists perpetuates a superficial view of historical
> inquiry, and is a problem in itself.
>
> And personally, my thesis is not Shakespeare & Tudor propaganda; nor is it
> accounts like Paul Murray Kendall's.  My thesis is that research needs to
> start with the most credible sources available & include a critical
> evaluation of those sources.  This must be done before we can even
> characterize the dots that we're trying to connect.
>
> A J
>
>
> On Sun, May 26, 2013 at 12:39 PM, reswallie_girl
> <Ragged_staff@...>wrote:
>
> > **
> >
> >
> > Maybe I can help clear up this confusion, as it seems to be my suggestion
> > of a 'Ricardian dialectic' that's inspired this (and other) comments. First
> > of all, a 'dialectic' isn't the same as a 'compromise', nor need there be a
> > suggestion that what it will turn up is something in between two extremes.
> > Here's one definition of the term 'dialectic':
> >
> > "The process especially associated with Hegel of arriving at the truth by
> > stating a thesis, developing a contradictory antithesis, and combining and
> > resolving them into a coherent synthesis."
> >
> > Ok, so the 'thesis' here is Shakespeare, More and 500 odd years of what a
> > lot of people refer to as 'Tudor propaganda'.
> >
> > The 'antithesis' is the work of modern (and some not so modern)
> > revisionists, including various fictional works.
> >
> > The 'synthesis' then is likely to be a further step, not a compromise nor
> > some kind of arbitrary middle ground.
> >
> > I don't recall saying that every source had to be accepted. I do believe,
> > though, that sources shouldn't be rejected simply because they don't agree
> > with a given view of history. I'm a little concerned that this idea is
> > being rejected out of hand as possibly resulting in 'lies' without it first
> > being understood. Pretty much all advances in scholarship come about as the
> > result of a dialectic and most people involved aren't consciously aware of
> > it. It's just the way ideas develop and change over time.
> >
> > I've met a good many people over the last year or so (mainly online) who
> > are dissatisfied with both the thesis and the antithesis. What is being
> > sought here is something beyond both. I've never actually claimed that the
> > 'revisionist' view (the antithesis) is 'passe'. I do believe that, as it
> > currently stands, it's certainly done its job. People are thinking about
> > Richard very differently now. But for those who aren't entirely satisfied
> > with that view, there is nothing sinister about the seeking something that
> > does satisfy. Quite what this will be, of course, can't possibly be known.
> > As with a lot of things, the joy will be in the journey.
> >
> > Karen Clark
> >
> >
> > --- In , liz williams
> > <ferrymansdaughter@> wrote:
> > >
> > > Nicole said:
> > >
> > >  I have never heard of a judge instructing a jury to give a decision
> > somewhere in between the defence and the prosecution.
> > >
> > > Liz replied:  Brilliant.  I might just pinch that if you don't mind.
> > >
> > >      I've seen some posts lately (mostly elsewhere) that suggest
> > revisionism
> > >
> > > regarding Richard's character & history is passé; they suggest that the
> > >
> > > next phase is synthesis, that the Truth is somewhere between
> > traditionalism
> > >
> > > & revisionism.  This sometimes seems to accompany an attitude that one
> > must
> > >
> > > accept everything a given source says (haven't seen an associated opinion
> > >
> > > that some sources must be rejected outright - but maybe I've just missed
> > >
> > > it).
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > This makes me extremely uncomfortable, because as observed in a book I
> > >
> > > started reading a while ago
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > The basic assumption that the truth lies between the testimony of the two
> > >
> > > sides always shifts the advantage to the lying side and away from the
> > side
> > >
> > > telling the truth.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > I also don't understand where this idea comes from that people who
> > believe
> > >
> > > Richard to have been a principled person regard him as a saint.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > What to do?
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > A J
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > ------------------------------------
> > >
> > > Yahoo! Groups Links
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> >
> > 
> >
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
>

A.J, I have been beleaguered with this for last few months. How do I make people understand that being a revisionist doesn't make me a romantic in love with a "Saint Richard"? I loved it when someone on Facebook countered the " passé " attitude with " revisionism is just starting after 500 years of traditionalism."

Ishita Bandyo
Sent from my iPad

On May 25, 2013, at 10:08 AM, A J Hibbard <ajhibbard@...> wrote:

> I've seen some posts lately (mostly elsewhere) that suggest revisionism
> regarding Richard's character & history is passé; they suggest that the
> next phase is synthesis, that the Truth is somewhere between traditionalism
> & revisionism. This sometimes seems to accompany an attitude that one must
> accept everything a given source says (haven't seen an associated opinion
> that some sources must be rejected outright - but maybe I've just missed
> it).
>
> This makes me extremely uncomfortable, because as observed in a book I
> started reading a while ago
>
> The basic assumption that the truth lies between the testimony of the two
> sides always shifts the advantage to the lying side and away from the side
> telling the truth.
>
> I also don't understand where this idea comes from that people who believe
> Richard to have been a principled person regard him as a saint.
>
> What to do?
>
> A J
>
>
>
>

Nicole, can I pinch it too?

Ishita Bandyo
Sent from my iPad

On May 26, 2013, at 11:32 AM, liz williams <ferrymansdaughter@...> wrote:

> Nicole said:
>
> I have never heard of a judge instructing a jury to give a decision somewhere in between the defence and the prosecution.
>
> Liz replied: Brilliant. I might just pinch that if you don't mind.
>
>
>
>
>
>
> I've seen some posts lately (mostly elsewhere) that suggest revisionism
>
> regarding Richard's character & history is passé; they suggest that the
>
> next phase is synthesis, that the Truth is somewhere between traditionalism
>
> & revisionism. This sometimes seems to accompany an attitude that one must
>
> accept everything a given source says (haven't seen an associated opinion
>
> that some sources must be rejected outright - but maybe I've just missed
>
> it).
>
> This makes me extremely uncomfortable, because as observed in a book I
>
> started reading a while ago
>
> The basic assumption that the truth lies between the testimony of the two
>
> sides always shifts the advantage to the lying side and away from the side
>
> telling the truth.
>
> I also don't understand where this idea comes from that people who believe
>
> Richard to have been a principled person regard him as a saint.
>
> What to do?
>
> A J
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>

From: "NICOLE MASIKA" <nicolemm_99@...>
To: <>
Sent: Monday, May 27, 2013 4:05 AM
Subject: RE: Traditionalists, revisionists, &
synthesists


> It's troubling because I don't think you can "synthesize" an objective
> truth. I am not an academic or a historian, but we are not trying to
> develop a moral or political philosophy here. I want to know what really
> happened and who Richard really was. We "revisionists" think that will
> show he was a good man and that Tudor propaganda was exaggeration and
> lies. I don't know if we will ever find enough reliable evidence, but that
> is what I want- truth, evidence. I don't think you necessarily get that by
> reconciling opposing viewpoints. Sometimes a POV is just plain wrong, has
> no basis in fact.

Yes, exactly. We can synthesize opinions: when we have all the facts in
front of us, and we come to make our minds up as to whether Richard was good
or bad in a moral or an administrative sense, the truth will probably lie
somewhere in between - although I happen to think it will be weighted
considerably more towards the "good" end.

We can sort-of synthesize on factual events too, in that if we have
incomplete or contradictory information we try to find a scenario which will
fit all the information we have. But in that case there is a real event
which for the most part either did or did not happen (in only a few cases
will the truth be "it depends on how you look at it"), and if we can find
enough evidence to prove it one way or another then synthesis becomes
irrelevant.

Ishita, 'revisionism is just starting after 500 years of traditionalism'. Exactly! The nail hit well and truly on the head! I missed that comment, but it would have got my full endorsement. The whole gamut of 'revisionist' arguments are hugely important to the process. I think that 'pure revisionism' (as in Tey and others) is past its prime simply because it doesn't satisfactorily answer a whole bunch of questions and is based on a fair bit of wishful thinking. Time to move onto the next step. Wonder what we'll be calling that? I'm still wondering why there's so much resistance to the idea of 'revisionism' finding its way into academic study of history. I'm truly astonished that more people aren't behind that!

Karen Clark

--- In , Ishita Bandyo <bandyoi@...> wrote:
>
> A.J, I have been beleaguered with this for last few months. How do I make people understand that being a revisionist doesn't make me a romantic in love with a "Saint Richard"? I loved it when someone on Facebook countered the " passé " attitude with " revisionism is just starting after 500 years of traditionalism."
>
> Ishita Bandyo
> Sent from my iPad
>
> On May 25, 2013, at 10:08 AM, A J Hibbard <ajhibbard@...> wrote:
>
> > I've seen some posts lately (mostly elsewhere) that suggest revisionism
> > regarding Richard's character & history is passé; they suggest that the
> > next phase is synthesis, that the Truth is somewhere between traditionalism
> > & revisionism. This sometimes seems to accompany an attitude that one must
> > accept everything a given source says (haven't seen an associated opinion
> > that some sources must be rejected outright - but maybe I've just missed
> > it).
> >
> > This makes me extremely uncomfortable, because as observed in a book I
> > started reading a while ago
> >
> > The basic assumption that the truth lies between the testimony of the two
> > sides always shifts the advantage to the lying side and away from the side
> > telling the truth.
> >
> > I also don't understand where this idea comes from that people who believe
> > Richard to have been a principled person regard him as a saint.
> >
> > What to do?
> >
> > A J
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>
>

Not a clue. I mentioned it because I don't understand it myself.

Perhaps it comes back to the paraphrase (of Chesterfield?) offered by an
author I've now forgotten.

Tell me what you think of Richard III, and I'll tell you who you are.


Which echoes what Hilary said about since we're not robots, we can't even,
it seems, agree on what the "facts" are. (I've started thinking of them as
dots we're trying to connect. Some are sharply defined, but some are still
big blobs).

Take the re-burial of the dead at Towton, for instance. If you're disposed
to regard most people as mostly trying to do the right thing, this action
seems to indicate Richard's concern for the proper disposition, according
to the religious beliefs of the time, of the remains of the men killed
there & buried in unconsecrated ground. If you are disposed to believe
that people in general are only motivated by self interest, you may believe
that Richard was trying to cover-up Edward's actions (or you may search for
some other rationale that would be in Richard's self-interest). If you're
a politician, you may see it as a crass, hypocritical action to win over
some constituency....

So I suppose one strategy is to just let those judgements (Ricardians =
romantics) lie where they are, and go on with the primary task. (I hate to
ask, do we even all agree on that?)

A J



On Sun, May 26, 2013 at 10:59 PM, Ishita Bandyo <bandyoi@...> wrote:

> **
>
>
> A.J, I have been beleaguered with this for last few months. How do I make
> people understand that being a revisionist doesn't make me a romantic in
> love with a "Saint Richard"? I loved it when someone on Facebook countered
> the " passý " attitude with " revisionism is just starting after 500 years
> of traditionalism."
>
> Ishita Bandyo
> Sent from my iPad
>
> On May 25, 2013, at 10:08 AM, A J Hibbard <ajhibbard@...> wrote:
>
> > I've seen some posts lately (mostly elsewhere) that suggest revisionism
> > regarding Richard's character & history is passý; they suggest that the
> > next phase is synthesis, that the Truth is somewhere between
> traditionalism
> > & revisionism. This sometimes seems to accompany an attitude that one
> must
> > accept everything a given source says (haven't seen an associated opinion
> > that some sources must be rejected outright - but maybe I've just missed
> > it).
> >
> > This makes me extremely uncomfortable, because as observed in a book I
> > started reading a while ago
> >
> > The basic assumption that the truth lies between the testimony of the two
> > sides always shifts the advantage to the lying side and away from the
> side
> > telling the truth.
> >
> > I also don't understand where this idea comes from that people who
> believe
> > Richard to have been a principled person regard him as a saint.
> >
> > What to do?
> >
> > A J
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>
>
>

What is "pure" revisionism? Tey was writing a work of fiction, with a basis
in factual events and historical characters. I suspect she hoped to turn a
lot of people like myself, who never thought about Richard III, or people
who believed that Shakespeare's play was pretty much true, on to the fact
that there might be another side to the story of Richard III. In that sense,
*The Daughter of Time* was a tremendous success. It is still widely read
and available today - a major accomplishment for a work of fiction more than
50 years old.



I think there is still something that can be learned from reading and
studying *The Daughter of Time*. I read it first in 1970, and I was riveted
by it, and I read it again last year, after the discovery of Richard's
remains, and I was still riveted by it. From there I went on to read and
re-read as much as I could find about Richard, both fiction and non-fiction
and all the newspaper and magazine articles I could find about the
discovery. My enthusiasm (obsession?) for Richard goes right back to Tey and
my wonderful English History prof who made us read the book for our course.
So I definitely applaud Josephine Tey for her accomplishment. BTW, at the
time she was writing, around 1950, Kendall's bio had not yet been published,
and I suspect that the "revisionist view" of Richard was far less in
evidence than it is today. The thing about Tey - I think she was dedicated
to artistic, poetic truth, regardless of whether it brought her financial
success or popularity. I suspect that's part of the reason that Agatha
Christie is supposed to have characterized Tey disdainfully. But when I
think of the two, I am reminded of Jesus' words, "For what shall it profit a
man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?"



We have many more resources available than Tey had. But, considering, are
there major errors of fact in her work? Do any errors vitiate her reasoning?
Or do most of her major findings seem borne out by subsequent discoveries? I
recollect her tracing the whereabouts of the other potential Plantagenet
pretenders during and after Richard's reign, pointing out that the Tudors
were far more hazardous to the health of potential pretenders than Richard
was, and I believe that finding is still essentially valid. So - still
useful, although it is a work which was created in the past by a woman who
died not long after it was published; but it is still in my view worth
recommending as a starting point (along with Kendall) for people who are
interested in learning about Richard. As far as literary quality, both books
imho have rarely if ever been surpassed.



Loyaulte me lie,



Johanne



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Johanne L. Tournier



Email - <mailto:jltournier60@...> jltournier60@...

or <mailto:jltournier@...> jltournier@...



"With God, all things are possible."

- Jesus of Nazareth

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~



From:
[mailto:] On Behalf Of reswallie_girl
Sent: Monday, May 27, 2013 8:38 AM
To:
Subject: Re: Traditionalists, revisionists, &
synthesists





Ishita, 'revisionism is just starting after 500 years of traditionalism'.
Exactly! The nail hit well and truly on the head! I missed that comment, but
it would have got my full endorsement. The whole gamut of 'revisionist'
arguments are hugely important to the process. I think that 'pure
revisionism' (as in Tey and others) is past its prime simply because it
doesn't satisfactorily answer a whole bunch of questions and is based on a
fair bit of wishful thinking. Time to move onto the next step. Wonder what
we'll be calling that? I'm still wondering why there's so much resistance to
the idea of 'revisionism' finding its way into academic study of history.
I'm truly astonished that more people aren't behind that!

Karen Clark




.

.
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group//files;_ylc=X3oDMTJndGt
wdTNqBF9TAzk3MzU5NzE0BGdycElkAzU1Mjc3OTEEZ3Jwc3BJZAMxNzA1Mjk3MzMzBHNlYwN2dGw
Ec2xrA3ZmaWxlcwRzdGltZQMxMzY5NjU0Njk2> New Files 1


<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/;_ylc=X3oDMTJlZ29oYXNnB
F9TAzk3MzU5NzE0BGdycElkAzU1Mjc3OTEEZ3Jwc3BJZAMxNzA1Mjk3MzMzBHNlYwN2dGwEc2xrA
3ZnaHAEc3RpbWUDMTM2OTY1NDY5Ng--> Visit Your Group


<http://groups.yahoo.com/;_ylc=X3oDMTJkZ2FtNzA5BF9TAzk3MzU5NzE0BGdycElkAzU1M
jc3OTEEZ3Jwc3BJZAMxNzA1Mjk3MzMzBHNlYwNmdHIEc2xrA2dmcARzdGltZQMxMzY5NjU0Njk2>
Yahoo! Groups

Switch to:
<mailto:[email protected]?subject=Change%20
Delivery%20Format:%20Traditional> Text-Only,
<mailto:[email protected]?subject=Email%20Delive
ry:%20Digest> Daily Digest .
<mailto:[email protected]?subject=Unsubscri
be> Unsubscribe . <http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/> Terms of Use .
<mailto:[email protected]?subject=Feedback%20on%20the%20r
edesigned%20individual%20mail%20v1> Send us Feedback

.

http://geo.yahoo.com/serv?s=97359714/grpId=5527791/grpspId=1705297333/msgId=
36696/stime=1369654696

I am too, except many academicians have built their careers on the Tudor Dynasty, authors have become wealthy on their Tudor novels, and it is a huge cabal of people trying to pull protection cover over their views, which will turned on its head if they truly start to dig.

On May 27, 2013, at 6:38 AM, "reswallie_girl" <Ragged_staff@...<mailto:Ragged_staff@...>> wrote:



Ishita, 'revisionism is just starting after 500 years of traditionalism'. Exactly! The nail hit well and truly on the head! I missed that comment, but it would have got my full endorsement. The whole gamut of 'revisionist' arguments are hugely important to the process. I think that 'pure revisionism' (as in Tey and others) is past its prime simply because it doesn't satisfactorily answer a whole bunch of questions and is based on a fair bit of wishful thinking. Time to move onto the next step. Wonder what we'll be calling that? I'm still wondering why there's so much resistance to the idea of 'revisionism' finding its way into academic study of history. I'm truly astonished that more people aren't behind that!

Karen Clark

--- In <mailto:%40yahoogroups.com>, Ishita Bandyo <bandyoi@...> wrote:
>
> A.J, I have been beleaguered with this for last few months. How do I make people understand that being a revisionist doesn't make me a romantic in love with a "Saint Richard"? I loved it when someone on Facebook countered the " passý " attitude with " revisionism is just starting after 500 years of traditionalism."
>
> Ishita Bandyo
> Sent from my iPad
>
> On May 25, 2013, at 10:08 AM, A J Hibbard <ajhibbard@...> wrote:
>
> > I've seen some posts lately (mostly elsewhere) that suggest revisionism
> > regarding Richard's character & history is passý; they suggest that the
> > next phase is synthesis, that the Truth is somewhere between traditionalism
> > & revisionism. This sometimes seems to accompany an attitude that one must
> > accept everything a given source says (haven't seen an associated opinion
> > that some sources must be rejected outright - but maybe I've just missed
> > it).
> >
> > This makes me extremely uncomfortable, because as observed in a book I
> > started reading a while ago
> >
> > The basic assumption that the truth lies between the testimony of the two
> > sides always shifts the advantage to the lying side and away from the side
> > telling the truth.
> >
> > I also don't understand where this idea comes from that people who believe
> > Richard to have been a principled person regard him as a saint.
> >
> > What to do?
> >
> > A J
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>
>

I'm all in favour of a reassessment' of Richard's character, deeds and reasons. A fair reassessment, with considered calm argument from both sides. I believe that while there will still be some question marks---there have to be, because we simply do not know all the facts---the reassessment will come down in his favour. The fact we do have speak for themselves...and for Richard.

IMO a man does not change his real self overnight, but he can be forced into a situation from which there is only one honourable way out. And if that honourable way does not suit others, both then and now, it does not make his ascending to the throne wrong. Richard was always an honourable and loyal brother, always supportive and dependable, and always a good lord in the north. Could such a man really become a monster in the blink of an eye? Simply because Edward IV died unexpectedly and a suddenly wicked Richard spied a chance for himself? No, not in my view. Only a man who had always been on the wicked side would do that. So, unless Richard was suddenly struck with a brain tumour or some other such dreadful thing, he seemed to me to have remained reasoned and reasonable. No suddenly sign of lunacy, no megalomania, no howling at the moon. How ever much he deplored the Woodvilles, he would still have protected Edward V and done the right thing, because Edward V was the rightful king. Once it became clear Edward V was NOT the rightful king, everything changed. Someone killed the princes, but I feel sure it was not Richard. Someone with an eye on blackening his good name, maybe, and there were a number with such motives. Yes, Richard ordered a few executions, who could blame him? On the whole he was responsible for remarkably few such sentences. Too lenient. A few more and he would have fared much better. So perhaps I am a little on the wicked side, even if he was not.

Richard had a lot to put up with---not least great personal grief---but he was never untrue to his principles. There were precious few such highborn noblemen in that century, or for a few centuries before or after, of whom it could be truly said he was a good man'. Well, Richard was, and he didn't fling that aside on a whim in 1483. That is my view of him, my reassessment, which is not hopelessly romantic, because the facts are there. And if they conflict with the traditionalist' stance, which IS blinkered, then hard luck.

Johanne, I was totally charmed by Tey's book, and have Kendall on my reading table. I think you are correct.

On May 27, 2013, at 7:59 AM, "Johanne Tournier" <jltournier60@...<mailto:jltournier60@...>> wrote:



What is "pure" revisionism? Tey was writing a work of fiction, with a basis
in factual events and historical characters. I suspect she hoped to turn a
lot of people like myself, who never thought about Richard III, or people
who believed that Shakespeare's play was pretty much true, on to the fact
that there might be another side to the story of Richard III. In that sense,
*The Daughter of Time* was a tremendous success. It is still widely read
and available today - a major accomplishment for a work of fiction more than
50 years old.

I think there is still something that can be learned from reading and
studying *The Daughter of Time*. I read it first in 1970, and I was riveted
by it, and I read it again last year, after the discovery of Richard's
remains, and I was still riveted by it. From there I went on to read and
re-read as much as I could find about Richard, both fiction and non-fiction
and all the newspaper and magazine articles I could find about the
discovery. My enthusiasm (obsession?) for Richard goes right back to Tey and
my wonderful English History prof who made us read the book for our course.
So I definitely applaud Josephine Tey for her accomplishment. BTW, at the
time she was writing, around 1950, Kendall's bio had not yet been published,
and I suspect that the "revisionist view" of Richard was far less in
evidence than it is today. The thing about Tey - I think she was dedicated
to artistic, poetic truth, regardless of whether it brought her financial
success or popularity. I suspect that's part of the reason that Agatha
Christie is supposed to have characterized Tey disdainfully. But when I
think of the two, I am reminded of Jesus' words, "For what shall it profit a
man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?"

We have many more resources available than Tey had. But, considering, are
there major errors of fact in her work? Do any errors vitiate her reasoning?
Or do most of her major findings seem borne out by subsequent discoveries? I
recollect her tracing the whereabouts of the other potential Plantagenet
pretenders during and after Richard's reign, pointing out that the Tudors
were far more hazardous to the health of potential pretenders than Richard
was, and I believe that finding is still essentially valid. So - still
useful, although it is a work which was created in the past by a woman who
died not long after it was published; but it is still in my view worth
recommending as a starting point (along with Kendall) for people who are
interested in learning about Richard. As far as literary quality, both books
imho have rarely if ever been surpassed.

Loyaulte me lie,

Johanne

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Johanne L. Tournier

Email - <mailto:jltournier60@...<mailto:jltournier60%40hotmail.com>> jltournier60@...<mailto:jltournier60%40hotmail.com>

or <mailto:jltournier@...<mailto:jltournier%40xcountry.tv>> jltournier@...<mailto:jltournier%40xcountry.tv>

"With God, all things are possible."

- Jesus of Nazareth

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

From: <mailto:%40yahoogroups.com>
[mailto:<mailto:%40yahoogroups.com>] On Behalf Of reswallie_girl
Sent: Monday, May 27, 2013 8:38 AM
To: <mailto:%40yahoogroups.com>
Subject: Re: Traditionalists, revisionists, &
synthesists

Ishita, 'revisionism is just starting after 500 years of traditionalism'.
Exactly! The nail hit well and truly on the head! I missed that comment, but
it would have got my full endorsement. The whole gamut of 'revisionist'
arguments are hugely important to the process. I think that 'pure
revisionism' (as in Tey and others) is past its prime simply because it
doesn't satisfactorily answer a whole bunch of questions and is based on a
fair bit of wishful thinking. Time to move onto the next step. Wonder what
we'll be calling that? I'm still wondering why there's so much resistance to
the idea of 'revisionism' finding its way into academic study of history.
I'm truly astonished that more people aren't behind that!

Karen Clark

.

.
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group//files;_ylc=X3oDMTJndGt
wdTNqBF9TAzk3MzU5NzE0BGdycElkAzU1Mjc3OTEEZ3Jwc3BJZAMxNzA1Mjk3MzMzBHNlYwN2dGw
Ec2xrA3ZmaWxlcwRzdGltZQMxMzY5NjU0Njk2> New Files 1

<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/;_ylc=X3oDMTJlZ29oYXNnB
F9TAzk3MzU5NzE0BGdycElkAzU1Mjc3OTEEZ3Jwc3BJZAMxNzA1Mjk3MzMzBHNlYwN2dGwEc2xrA
3ZnaHAEc3RpbWUDMTM2OTY1NDY5Ng--> Visit Your Group

<http://groups.yahoo.com/;_ylc=X3oDMTJkZ2FtNzA5BF9TAzk3MzU5NzE0BGdycElkAzU1M
jc3OTEEZ3Jwc3BJZAMxNzA1Mjk3MzMzBHNlYwNmdHIEc2xrA2dmcARzdGltZQMxMzY5NjU0Njk2>
Yahoo! Groups

Switch to:
<mailto:[email protected]<mailto:-traditional%40yahoogroups.com>?subject=Change%20
Delivery%20Format:%20Traditional> Text-Only,
<mailto:[email protected]<mailto:-digest%40yahoogroups.com>?subject=Email%20Delive
ry:%20Digest> Daily Digest .
<mailto:[email protected]<mailto:-unsubscribe%40yahoogroups.com>?subject=Unsubscri
be> Unsubscribe . <http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/> Terms of Use .
<mailto:[email protected]<mailto:ygroupsnotifications%40yahoogroups.com>?subject=Feedback%20on%20the%20r
edesigned%20individual%20mail%20v1> Send us Feedback

.

http://geo.yahoo.com/serv?s=97359714/grpId=5527791/grpspId=1705297333/msgId=
36696/stime=1369654696

Excellent post, Sandra!

But, hey, I think reassessment is what we do every time we find out some new bit about Richard, his family, and his era. The only problem  I really want all this to be presented with certainty, a bit of black and white; unfortunately much of the material is like ancient documents from the Ancient Near East  what they say and what they mean are often a matter of interpretation. At least so far as I can tell (not being a Medieval specialist and all).



BTW, that's another thing: how can one have a thesis  antithesis  synthesis in cases where you could refer to some sets of views as 50 shades of tradition or 50 shades of revision. I'll bet not one of us, no matter how much we agree on many aspects of Richard's life, agree on 100%. The same goes for the Traditionalists. Some, as we know, are much more egregious anti-Ricardians than others. Then you get some like Pollard who believe that Richard probably did it, but that overall he wasn't a bad guy. So, rather than having distinct positions, there is a whole spectrum of views about Richard. I am a great supporter of Richard as an essentially good (correction: great!) man but I still recognize that he seems to have done things I wouldn't condone. However, I do feel that if he did things that were *wrong* according to his ideals, that his conscience bothered him and that he also did what he could to rectify the wrongs that had been done.



BTW, if you look at any of us today, even with all the records of our lives that exist, you could still say, Johanne only spoke kindly of so-and-so or gave a donation to charity, because she was a hypocrite. Which was one of the common charges against Richard. What that means is that, gee, in actuality, if one examines the known facts of Richard's life, his deeds, gee, his seems to have been an admirable man  well advanced in his humane ideas. Instead of being the last medieval monarch, he may have been the first modern monarch. And I find that person a fascinating figure!



Loyaulte me lie,



Johanne



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Johanne L. Tournier



Email - jltournier60@...

or jltournier@...



"With God, all things are possible."

- Jesus of Nazareth

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~



From: [mailto:] On Behalf Of SandraMachin
Sent: Monday, May 27, 2013 10:32 AM
To:
Subject: Re: Traditionalists, revisionists, & synthesists





I'm all in favour of a reassessment' of Richard's character, deeds and reasons. A fair reassessment, with considered calm argument from both sides. I believe that while there will still be some question marks---there have to be, because we simply do not know all the facts---the reassessment will come down in his favour. The fact we do have speak for themselves...and for Richard.

IMO a man does not change his real self overnight, but he can be forced into a situation from which there is only one honourable way out. And if that honourable way does not suit others, both then and now, it does not make his ascending to the throne wrong. Richard was always an honourable and loyal brother, always supportive and dependable, and always a good lord in the north. Could such a man really become a monster in the blink of an eye? Simply because Edward IV died unexpectedly and a suddenly wicked Richard spied a chance for himself? No, not in my view. Only a man who had always been on the wicked side would do that. So, unless Richard was suddenly struck with a brain tumour or some other such dreadful thing, he seemed to me to have remained reasoned and reasonable. No suddenly sign of lunacy, no megalomania, no howling at the moon. How ever much he deplored the Woodvilles, he would still have protected Edward V and done the right thing, because Edward V was the rightful king. Once it became clear Edward V was NOT the rightful king, everything changed. Someone killed the princes, but I feel sure it was not Richard. Someone with an eye on blackening his good name, maybe, and there were a number with such motives. Yes, Richard ordered a few executions, who could blame him? On the whole he was responsible for remarkably few such sentences. Too lenient. A few more and he would have fared much better. So perhaps I am a little on the wicked side, even if he was not.

Richard had a lot to put up with---not least great personal grief---but he was never untrue to his principles. There were precious few such highborn noblemen in that century, or for a few centuries before or after, of whom it could be truly said he was a good man'. Well, Richard was, and he didn't fling that aside on a whim in 1483. That is my view of him, my reassessment, which is not hopelessly romantic, because the facts are there. And if they conflict with the traditionalist' stance, which IS blinkered, then hard luck.

"I'm still wondering why there's so much resistance to the idea of 'revisionism' finding its way into academic study of history. I'm truly astonished that more people aren't behind that!"

I am wondering about same think. All we get in Skidmore's " Richard was 4'8" tall version...... Human beings generally has a tendency to stick with status quo. The other alternative is uncomfortable and would require them to think outside the box. And I also think the historians do not want to rock the boat so much and jeopardize their career. If you are doing your phd under Hicks, you wouldn't want to extol Richard's good qualities.
At least there is a lot of interest and questions regarding Richard and WotR and hopefully younger historians would step out with new analyses and Reinterpretation the primary sources.
Carol's translation of the Latin texts is a very good start, IMO!

Ishita Bandyo
www.ishitabandyo.com
www.facebook.com/ishitabandyofinearts
www.ishitabandyoarts.blogspot.com

On May 27, 2013, at 7:38 AM, "reswallie_girl" <Ragged_staff@...> wrote:

> Ishita, 'revisionism is just starting after 500 years of traditionalism'. Exactly! The nail hit well and truly on the head! I missed that comment, but it would have got my full endorsement. The whole gamut of 'revisionist' arguments are hugely important to the process. I think that 'pure revisionism' (as in Tey and others) is past its prime simply because it doesn't satisfactorily answer a whole bunch of questions and is based on a fair bit of wishful thinking. Time to move onto the next step. Wonder what we'll be calling that? I'm still wondering why there's so much resistance to the idea of 'revisionism' finding its way into academic study of history. I'm truly astonished that more people aren't behind that!
>
> Karen Clark
>
> --- In , Ishita Bandyo <bandyoi@...> wrote:
> >
> > A.J, I have been beleaguered with this for last few months. How do I make people understand that being a revisionist doesn't make me a romantic in love with a "Saint Richard"? I loved it when someone on Facebook countered the " passé " attitude with " revisionism is just starting after 500 years of traditionalism."
> >
> > Ishita Bandyo
> > Sent from my iPad
> >
> > On May 25, 2013, at 10:08 AM, A J Hibbard <ajhibbard@...> wrote:
> >
> > > I've seen some posts lately (mostly elsewhere) that suggest revisionism
> > > regarding Richard's character & history is passé; they suggest that the
> > > next phase is synthesis, that the Truth is somewhere between traditionalism
> > > & revisionism. This sometimes seems to accompany an attitude that one must
> > > accept everything a given source says (haven't seen an associated opinion
> > > that some sources must be rejected outright - but maybe I've just missed
> > > it).
> > >
> > > This makes me extremely uncomfortable, because as observed in a book I
> > > started reading a while ago
> > >
> > > The basic assumption that the truth lies between the testimony of the two
> > > sides always shifts the advantage to the lying side and away from the side
> > > telling the truth.
> > >
> > > I also don't understand where this idea comes from that people who believe
> > > Richard to have been a principled person regard him as a saint.
> > >
> > > What to do?
> > >
> > > A J
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>

AJ wrote
"Tell me what you think of Richard III, and I'll tell you who you are."
Love it!

Ishita Bandyo
www.ishitabandyo.com
www.facebook.com/ishitabandyofinearts
www.ishitabandyoarts.blogspot.com

On May 27, 2013, at 8:02 AM, A J Hibbard <ajhibbard@...> wrote:

> Not a clue. I mentioned it because I don't understand it myself.
>
> Perhaps it comes back to the paraphrase (of Chesterfield?) offered by an
> author I've now forgotten.
>
> Tell me what you think of Richard III, and I'll tell you who you are.
>
>
> Which echoes what Hilary said about since we're not robots, we can't even,
> it seems, agree on what the "facts" are. (I've started thinking of them as
> dots we're trying to connect. Some are sharply defined, but some are still
> big blobs).
>
> Take the re-burial of the dead at Towton, for instance. If you're disposed
> to regard most people as mostly trying to do the right thing, this action
> seems to indicate Richard's concern for the proper disposition, according
> to the religious beliefs of the time, of the remains of the men killed
> there & buried in unconsecrated ground. If you are disposed to believe
> that people in general are only motivated by self interest, you may believe
> that Richard was trying to cover-up Edward's actions (or you may search for
> some other rationale that would be in Richard's self-interest). If you're
> a politician, you may see it as a crass, hypocritical action to win over
> some constituency....
>
> So I suppose one strategy is to just let those judgements (Ricardians =
> romantics) lie where they are, and go on with the primary task. (I hate to
> ask, do we even all agree on that?)
>
> A J
>
>
>
> On Sun, May 26, 2013 at 10:59 PM, Ishita Bandyo <bandyoi@...> wrote:
>
>> **
>>
>>
>> A.J, I have been beleaguered with this for last few months. How do I make
>> people understand that being a revisionist doesn't make me a romantic in
>> love with a "Saint Richard"? I loved it when someone on Facebook countered
>> the " passé " attitude with " revisionism is just starting after 500 years
>> of traditionalism."
>>
>> Ishita Bandyo
>> Sent from my iPad
>>
>> On May 25, 2013, at 10:08 AM, A J Hibbard <ajhibbard@...> wrote:
>>
>>> I've seen some posts lately (mostly elsewhere) that suggest revisionism
>>> regarding Richard's character & history is passé; they suggest that the
>>> next phase is synthesis, that the Truth is somewhere between
>> traditionalism
>>> & revisionism. This sometimes seems to accompany an attitude that one
>> must
>>> accept everything a given source says (haven't seen an associated opinion
>>> that some sources must be rejected outright - but maybe I've just missed
>>> it).
>>>
>>> This makes me extremely uncomfortable, because as observed in a book I
>>> started reading a while ago
>>>
>>> The basic assumption that the truth lies between the testimony of the two
>>> sides always shifts the advantage to the lying side and away from the
>> side
>>> telling the truth.
>>>
>>> I also don't understand where this idea comes from that people who
>> believe
>>> Richard to have been a principled person regard him as a saint.
>>>
>>> What to do?
>>>
>>> A J
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>

A J Hibbard wrote:
>
> [snip] I don't see that the "revisionist view" has done its job at all; there's still a ridiculous amount of misinformation about Richard being presented as gospel truth. Which has very real consequences, such as the extremely
> heated debate about the design of a memorial, with the writers of the
> cathedral's design brief, using intemperate, even offensive language. The
> fact that those of us who do not accept the Tudor-inspired view of Richard
> are labelled revisionists perpetuates a superficial view of historical
> inquiry, and is a problem in itself.
>
> And personally, my thesis is not Shakespeare & Tudor propaganda; nor is it accounts like Paul Murray Kendall's. My thesis is that research needs to start with the most credible sources available & include a critical evaluation of those sources. This must be done before we can even characterize the dots that we're trying to connect.

Carol responds:

I agree with you. The thesis and antithesis that Karen presented are, in fact, the respective theses of the traditionalists on the one hand and the more extreme "revisionists" such as the Victorian Sir Clements Markham and the modern American Joe Ann Ricca on the other. The stated purpose of the Richard III Society is already a kind of compromise between those two views, its goal being to "promote, in every possible way, research into the life and times of Richard III, and to secure a reassessment of the material relating to this period, and of the role of this monarch in English history." But the reassessment begins with the undeniable fact that "many features of the traditional accounts of the character and career of Richard III are neither supported by sufficient evidence nor reasonably tenable." That situation in itself necessitates the reassessment.

One problem Ricardians face is that "revisionism" is associated with Josephine Tey rather than with the research by scholars like Peter Hammond or Livia Visser-Fuchs. (The Ricardian editors, in an attempt to be objective, even publish articles by traditionalists like Michael Hicks and A. J. Pollard.) But, in the long run, that is not going to accomplish the stated goal of reassessment.

What we need, in my view only, is to stop going over the same old ground. We cannot simply accept what someone wrote about Richard just because it was contemporary or near contemporary. Otherwise, we have to accept statements that we know to be untrue, such as the Croyland chronicler's reference to the investiture of the Prince of Wales as a second coronation or, worse, his statement that the Earl of Richmond charged Richard instead of the other way around.

In the absence of pro-Richard accounts and adequate documentation for the Protectorate, we have to examine Croyland and Mancini closely (and Rous where he's available) to see which elements in their accounts contradict each other or are inconsistent with other evidence, which kinds of errors they tend to make (for example, Mancini having Richard on his estates in *Gloucester* when he hears the news of his brother's death), what their biases or weaknesses are (Croyland is pro-Edward IV, anti-Richard, and anti-Northerners in general; Mancini, a stranger unfamiliar with English language and customs, is writing for a French patron, consulting mostly with anti-Richard sources like Dr. Argentine, and relying to a great degree on gossip and rumor. He is also a humanist who, like More and Vergil, resorts to imagined dialogue based on second- or third-hand reports of a conversation translated from English to Italian by his source and from Italian to Latin by Mancini himself.)

Anyway, we cannot take what these sources (much less the later and more obviously biased Tudor sources) at face value. We need to look, as we have been trying to do on this forum, at movements, primary documents, and whatever other evidence we can find to supplement and, if necessary, correct the chronicles.

Historians also have a tendency, while taking, say, the conversation between Richard, Buckingham, and Edward V as depicted in Mancini at face value, to question Richard's truthfulness and sincerity in his letters and documents and to attribute Titulus Regius to him rather than to the Three Estates/Parliament.

We need to stop looking at events and people as Mancini and Croyland did--from the perspective of what happened afterwards--and to see them as Richard and other participants in the action did--from the perspective of someone who does not know and cannot accurately anticipate the future.

The traditionalist James Gairdner said, "I cannot but think the skeptical spirit a most fatal one in history." Unfortunately, he meant that we should accept traditional accounts such as More and Shakespeare where no other "evidence" exists--even if those accounts fly in the face of all other evidence regarding Richard. Vergil evidently held a similar view, taking all evidence of Richard's goodness (which he could not deny since it was apparent in his legislation and grants to churches and universities) as proof of Richard's hypocrisy:

Either "because he could not reforme the thing that was past, he determynyd to abholishe by all dewtyfulnes the note of infamy wherwith his honor was staynyd, and to geave suche hope of his good governement that from thencefurth no man showld be hable to lay any calamytie that might happen to the commonwelth unto his charge" or "because he new [now] repented of his evell dedes, he began afterward to take on hand a certane new forme of lyfe, and to geave the shew and cowntenance of a good man, wherby he might be accowntyd more righteous, more mylde, better affectyd to the commonaltie, and more lyberall especially toward the powr; and so first might meryte pardon for his offences at Gods hand; than after appease partly thenvy of man, and procure himself good will, he began many woorks as well publick as pryvate, which (being prevented by death before his tyme) he perfyted not."

But if we take the opposite approach, assuming that Richard's good deeds reflected his genuine desire to make the laws more just help his subjects, in particular the common people, live in peace and safety (as he repeatedly says in his proclamations), we can examine his letters, proclamations, and laws as expressing his real intent and beliefs and apply our skepticism to the chronicles, which, however true their writers may have intended them to be, reflect their biases, the biases of their sources, and the gaps in their knowledge, as well as the limitations of human memory, which, as any lawyer can tell you, is not a faithful record of what really happened, which is why first-person accounts of the same incident can differ radically.

Anyway, the goal is not to find a synthesis somewhere between, say, Shakespeare and Richard himself. It's to find the truth, whatever that truth may be. And that truth is not likely to resemble a play written after a hundred or so years of Tudor propaganda had wiped almost all memory of the real Richard from the minds of Englishmen.

Carol

From: Johanne Tournier
To:
Sent: Monday, May 27, 2013 1:59 PM
Subject: RE: Traditionalists, revisionists, &
synthesists


> We have many more resources available than Tey had. But, considering, are
there major errors of fact in her work?

She underestimates how widespread the rumour about the boys being dead was,
and her theory that Henry killed the boys doesn't hold any more water than
the idea that Richard did, but other than that her errors (such as
portraying Richard as dark in a fair family) are minor - and it's an
excellent book, as a book.

> Do any errors vitiate her reasoning?

Her argument that the rumours only appeared where Morton went doesn't hold
water, but other than that, no. In fact, she missed the point that Henry's
behaviour suggests he didn't know what had happened to the boys and that
this in itself makes it very unlikely Richard had had them killed - so in
this case the thing she missed actually *strengthens* rather than weakens
her basic argument, i.e. that Richard was trying hard to do his best in a
difficult situation, and was a very unlikely murderer.

> Or do most of her major findings seem borne out by subsequent discoveries?
> I
recollect her tracing the whereabouts of the other potential Plantagenet
pretenders during and after Richard's reign, pointing out that the Tudors
were far more hazardous to the health of potential pretenders than Richard
was, and I believe that finding is still essentially valid.

Definitely.

I concur absolutely with what you say. Trouble is, as Ishita says, young historians are writing their theses for professors who have been brought up to chew over the same texts again and again and try to trash rival professors' works. This has now been going on for well over a century. It takes courage (and perhaps the freedom of age) to go against the grain, which is why some of the best works are now coming from the JAHs, Hancocks etc. And it's really hard work. But we have more stuff available to us now than ever. Despite all, I live in hope.



________________________________
From: justcarol67 <justcarol67@...>
To:
Sent: Monday, 27 May 2013, 18:04
Subject: Re: Traditionalists, revisionists, & synthesists

 


A J Hibbard wrote:
>
> [snip] I don't see that the "revisionist view" has done its job at all; there's still a ridiculous amount of misinformation about Richard being presented as gospel truth. Which has very real consequences, such as the extremely
> heated debate about the design of a memorial, with the writers of the
> cathedral's design brief, using intemperate, even offensive language. The
> fact that those of us who do not accept the Tudor-inspired view of Richard
> are labelled revisionists perpetuates a superficial view of historical
> inquiry, and is a problem in itself.
>
> And personally, my thesis is not Shakespeare & Tudor propaganda; nor is it accounts like Paul Murray Kendall's. My thesis is that research needs to start with the most credible sources available & include a critical evaluation of those sources. This must be done before we can even characterize the dots that we're trying to connect.

Carol responds:

I agree with you. The thesis and antithesis that Karen presented are, in fact, the respective theses of the traditionalists on the one hand and the more extreme "revisionists" such as the Victorian Sir Clements Markham and the modern American Joe Ann Ricca on the other. The stated purpose of the Richard III Society is already a kind of compromise between those two views, its goal being to "promote, in every possible way, research into the life and times of Richard III, and to secure a reassessment of the material relating to this period, and of the role of this monarch in English history." But the reassessment begins with the undeniable fact that "many features of the traditional accounts of the character and career of Richard III are neither supported by sufficient evidence nor reasonably tenable." That situation in itself necessitates the reassessment.

One problem Ricardians face is that "revisionism" is associated with Josephine Tey rather than with the research by scholars like Peter Hammond or Livia Visser-Fuchs. (The Ricardian editors, in an attempt to be objective, even publish articles by traditionalists like Michael Hicks and A. J. Pollard.) But, in the long run, that is not going to accomplish the stated goal of reassessment.

What we need, in my view only, is to stop going over the same old ground. We cannot simply accept what someone wrote about Richard just because it was contemporary or near contemporary. Otherwise, we have to accept statements that we know to be untrue, such as the Croyland chronicler's reference to the investiture of the Prince of Wales as a second coronation or, worse, his statement that the Earl of Richmond charged Richard instead of the other way around.

In the absence of pro-Richard accounts and adequate documentation for the Protectorate, we have to examine Croyland and Mancini closely (and Rous where he's available) to see which elements in their accounts contradict each other or are inconsistent with other evidence, which kinds of errors they tend to make (for example, Mancini having Richard on his estates in *Gloucester* when he hears the news of his brother's death), what their biases or weaknesses are (Croyland is pro-Edward IV, anti-Richard, and anti-Northerners in general; Mancini, a stranger unfamiliar with English language and customs, is writing for a French patron, consulting mostly with anti-Richard sources like Dr. Argentine, and relying to a great degree on gossip and rumor. He is also a humanist who, like More and Vergil, resorts to imagined dialogue based on second- or third-hand reports of a conversation translated from English to Italian by his source and from Italian to Latin by
Mancini himself.)

Anyway, we cannot take what these sources (much less the later and more obviously biased Tudor sources) at face value. We need to look, as we have been trying to do on this forum, at movements, primary documents, and whatever other evidence we can find to supplement and, if necessary, correct the chronicles.

Historians also have a tendency, while taking, say, the conversation between Richard, Buckingham, and Edward V as depicted in Mancini at face value, to question Richard's truthfulness and sincerity in his letters and documents and to attribute Titulus Regius to him rather than to the Three Estates/Parliament.

We need to stop looking at events and people as Mancini and Croyland did--from the perspective of what happened afterwards--and to see them as Richard and other participants in the action did--from the perspective of someone who does not know and cannot accurately anticipate the future.

The traditionalist James Gairdner said, "I cannot but think the skeptical spirit a most fatal one in history." Unfortunately, he meant that we should accept traditional accounts such as More and Shakespeare where no other "evidence" exists--even if those accounts fly in the face of all other evidence regarding Richard. Vergil evidently held a similar view, taking all evidence of Richard's goodness (which he could not deny since it was apparent in his legislation and grants to churches and universities) as proof of Richard's hypocrisy:

Either "because he could not reforme the thing that was past, he determynyd to abholishe by all dewtyfulnes the note of infamy wherwith his honor was staynyd, and to geave suche hope of his good governement that from thencefurth no man showld be hable to lay any calamytie that might happen to the commonwelth unto his charge" or "because he new [now] repented of his evell dedes, he began afterward to take on hand a certane new forme of lyfe, and to geave the shew and cowntenance of a good man, wherby he might be accowntyd more righteous, more mylde, better affectyd to the commonaltie, and more lyberall especially toward the powr; and so first might meryte pardon for his offences at Gods hand; than after appease partly thenvy of man, and procure himself good will, he began many woorks as well publick as pryvate, which (being prevented by death before his tyme) he perfyted not."

But if we take the opposite approach, assuming that Richard's good deeds reflected his genuine desire to make the laws more just help his subjects, in particular the common people, live in peace and safety (as he repeatedly says in his proclamations), we can examine his letters, proclamations, and laws as expressing his real intent and beliefs and apply our skepticism to the chronicles, which, however true their writers may have intended them to be, reflect their biases, the biases of their sources, and the gaps in their knowledge, as well as the limitations of human memory, which, as any lawyer can tell you, is not a faithful record of what really happened, which is why first-person accounts of the same incident can differ radically.

Anyway, the goal is not to find a synthesis somewhere between, say, Shakespeare and Richard himself. It's to find the truth, whatever that truth may be. And that truth is not likely to resemble a play written after a hundred or so years of Tudor propaganda had wiped almost all memory of the real Richard from the minds of Englishmen.

Carol

Pamela wrote:

> I am too, except many academicians have built their careers on the Tudor Dynasty, authors have become wealthy on their Tudor novels, and it is a huge cabal of people trying to pull protection cover over their views, which will turned on its head if they truly start to dig.

Weds writes:
That's what I thought too, while reading earlier posts on this subject. It reminds me of the medieval/renaissance church's insistence that the church was perfect, there could be no alterations in doctrine or tradition, and to challenge that was to risk being accused of blasphemy. We all know what happened after that....

But what sort of academician would it take to follow up their MA or PhD and published papers with a new paper saying, "Excuse me, but I've done more digging and changed my mind about..." when those changes challenge the status quo of Tudor vs. Plantagenet? It seems to me to do so would be to commit career suicide a la Rupert Sheldrake.

Perhaps it's the armchair historians who haven't anything to risk (the Phillipa Langleys and Ashdown-Hills) who will ultimately realign some opinions? Perhaps it's like the old adage, "When the student is ready, the teacher will appear"?

Personally, I only went looking for the "real" Richard because More read like backstairs gossip and his account "felt" so wrong that it made me set him aside and look elsewhere. So even More can be useful for some things. :\

But my (Tudor) professor of many years ago told me that historians are basically event-driven, not character-driven. (This, from the man whose office was furnished in early Elizabeth I?) Because I was majoring in English and writing fictional, character-driven works (he assumed), I needed to realign my thinking if I was ever to analyze history with any sort of finesse. Oh, and I should also throw out Jung and Maslow, if you please. Psychology is speculation, Tey was fiction, Richard did it as proven by the contemporary sources, end of discussion.

But it was the vulnerable *man* who reached out to me across 500 years, and there was something about him that I couldn't ignore, even as glimpsed through More. It felt like betrayal to throw him away in favor of elevating the events of his life above him -- and this was long before I'd learned of the multiple, tangled betrayals of his life. He hadn't lived in a sterile, heartless vacuum, yet I was being asked to write as a sterile, heartless student and accept that he really was a stereotypical villain who'd orchestrated every evil from the moment his brother died because he'd always coveted the crown.

But no man is that simple -- except to some historians -- and therein lies the problem. Some treat the contemporary sources (inaccurate or not) as dogma, and seem also to be so very unattached to the people talked about in those sources that it's not just boring -- it's heartbreaking -- to read what they produce. But their work serves their purposes, if not their subject's life.

If Richard's reputation is to be restored, I think it will always be through one person at a time rather than through the mass conversion of a future generation of historians. The first thing that has to happen is the man has to matter, or no one looks any further.

Those of us who've taken a second look at Richard seem to have the imagination and curiosity to dig deeper than most people. I came to care about the living man more than for the dead king, and I wasn't contented to shrug and accept the labels the Tudor "winners" have slapped onto him. A lot of other people are more concerned with their own priorities to give a second thought to any dude who lived a long time ago and died in a war that doesn't affect the life they're living today.

In the end, I think Richard is likely destined to be perpetually ignored or demonized -- like Rasputin, another man who was neither devil nor saint.

~Weds

:applause: especially this:
"If Richard's reputation is to be restored, I think it will always be through one person at a time rather than through the mass conversion of a future generation of historians. The first thing that has to happen is the man has to matter, or no one looks any further. "
and so I hope your last prediction will not come true
Nicole
~~~ Music is lots of sound waves coming toward us in a completely chaotic manner and somehow our brain receives that as something beautiful - Matthew Bellamy

To:
From: wednesday.mac@...
Date: Mon, 27 May 2013 21:10:11 +0000
Subject: Re: Traditionalists, revisionists, & synthesists


























Pamela wrote:



> I am too, except many academicians have built their careers on the Tudor Dynasty, authors have become wealthy on their Tudor novels, and it is a huge cabal of people trying to pull protection cover over their views, which will turned on its head if they truly start to dig.



Weds writes:

That's what I thought too, while reading earlier posts on this subject. It reminds me of the medieval/renaissance church's insistence that the church was perfect, there could be no alterations in doctrine or tradition, and to challenge that was to risk being accused of blasphemy. We all know what happened after that....



But what sort of academician would it take to follow up their MA or PhD and published papers with a new paper saying, "Excuse me, but I've done more digging and changed my mind about..." when those changes challenge the status quo of Tudor vs. Plantagenet? It seems to me to do so would be to commit career suicide a la Rupert Sheldrake.



Perhaps it's the armchair historians who haven't anything to risk (the Phillipa Langleys and Ashdown-Hills) who will ultimately realign some opinions? Perhaps it's like the old adage, "When the student is ready, the teacher will appear"?



Personally, I only went looking for the "real" Richard because More read like backstairs gossip and his account "felt" so wrong that it made me set him aside and look elsewhere. So even More can be useful for some things. :\



But my (Tudor) professor of many years ago told me that historians are basically event-driven, not character-driven. (This, from the man whose office was furnished in early Elizabeth I?) Because I was majoring in English and writing fictional, character-driven works (he assumed), I needed to realign my thinking if I was ever to analyze history with any sort of finesse. Oh, and I should also throw out Jung and Maslow, if you please. Psychology is speculation, Tey was fiction, Richard did it as proven by the contemporary sources, end of discussion.



But it was the vulnerable *man* who reached out to me across 500 years, and there was something about him that I couldn't ignore, even as glimpsed through More. It felt like betrayal to throw him away in favor of elevating the events of his life above him -- and this was long before I'd learned of the multiple, tangled betrayals of his life. He hadn't lived in a sterile, heartless vacuum, yet I was being asked to write as a sterile, heartless student and accept that he really was a stereotypical villain who'd orchestrated every evil from the moment his brother died because he'd always coveted the crown.



But no man is that simple -- except to some historians -- and therein lies the problem. Some treat the contemporary sources (inaccurate or not) as dogma, and seem also to be so very unattached to the people talked about in those sources that it's not just boring -- it's heartbreaking -- to read what they produce. But their work serves their purposes, if not their subject's life.



If Richard's reputation is to be restored, I think it will always be through one person at a time rather than through the mass conversion of a future generation of historians. The first thing that has to happen is the man has to matter, or no one looks any further.



Those of us who've taken a second look at Richard seem to have the imagination and curiosity to dig deeper than most people. I came to care about the living man more than for the dead king, and I wasn't contented to shrug and accept the labels the Tudor "winners" have slapped onto him. A lot of other people are more concerned with their own priorities to give a second thought to any dude who lived a long time ago and died in a war that doesn't affect the life they're living today.



In the end, I think Richard is likely destined to be perpetually ignored or demonized -- like Rasputin, another man who was neither devil nor saint.



~Weds

I agree very much with you penultimate paragraph concerning the lack of attachment to people mentioned in traditional sources. It's as though they're not real, that they're the characters in a play (and it's usually a play of at most thirty characters). No wonder Shakespeare found his job easy. You could totally forget that round them writhed a country of nearly two million other souls who come through so vibrantly when you read their wills, their quitclaims, their quarrels. And that they had an impact on the lives of the thirty characters. If we reach out to them there's a chance we might find some more rather than regurgitating the same old sources and grappling with the finer points of Latin. (As I write the translation of Croyland's 1484 Christmas festivities is currently doing the rounds of Cambridge and London over the interpretation of one word - and you could say that's where some scholars like to be, never reaching a conclusion, put cynically
it keeps them in a job).
 
Your point about the Church's insistance on being perfect is very well timed. I've just spend time ploughing through pardons that the Pope is giving to priests in England living with 'virgins' (some for twenty-five years). How different is the truth to the illusion! How readily we believe one thing like the perfection of the Church because we've always been taught to believe it - and unfortunately so it is for many with Richard, they've been taught to believe it.
 
But I live in hope. And with that I'll shut up. H 

________________________________
From: wednesday_mc <wednesday.mac@...>
To:
Sent: Monday, 27 May 2013, 22:10
Subject: Re: Traditionalists, revisionists, & synthesists


 

Pamela wrote:

> I am too, except many academicians have built their careers on the Tudor Dynasty, authors have become wealthy on their Tudor novels, and it is a huge cabal of people trying to pull protection cover over their views, which will turned on its head if they truly start to dig.

Weds writes:
That's what I thought too, while reading earlier posts on this subject. It reminds me of the medieval/renaissance church's insistence that the church was perfect, there could be no alterations in doctrine or tradition, and to challenge that was to risk being accused of blasphemy. We all know what happened after that....

But what sort of academician would it take to follow up their MA or PhD and published papers with a new paper saying, "Excuse me, but I've done more digging and changed my mind about..." when those changes challenge the status quo of Tudor vs. Plantagenet? It seems to me to do so would be to commit career suicide a la Rupert Sheldrake.

Perhaps it's the armchair historians who haven't anything to risk (the Phillipa Langleys and Ashdown-Hills) who will ultimately realign some opinions? Perhaps it's like the old adage, "When the student is ready, the teacher will appear"?

Personally, I only went looking for the "real" Richard because More read like backstairs gossip and his account "felt" so wrong that it made me set him aside and look elsewhere. So even More can be useful for some things. :\

But my (Tudor) professor of many years ago told me that historians are basically event-driven, not character-driven. (This, from the man whose office was furnished in early Elizabeth I?) Because I was majoring in English and writing fictional, character-driven works (he assumed), I needed to realign my thinking if I was ever to analyze history with any sort of finesse. Oh, and I should also throw out Jung and Maslow, if you please. Psychology is speculation, Tey was fiction, Richard did it as proven by the contemporary sources, end of discussion.

But it was the vulnerable *man* who reached out to me across 500 years, and there was something about him that I couldn't ignore, even as glimpsed through More. It felt like betrayal to throw him away in favor of elevating the events of his life above him -- and this was long before I'd learned of the multiple, tangled betrayals of his life. He hadn't lived in a sterile, heartless vacuum, yet I was being asked to write as a sterile, heartless student and accept that he really was a stereotypical villain who'd orchestrated every evil from the moment his brother died because he'd always coveted the crown.

But no man is that simple -- except to some historians -- and therein lies the problem. Some treat the contemporary sources (inaccurate or not) as dogma, and seem also to be so very unattached to the people talked about in those sources that it's not just boring -- it's heartbreaking -- to read what they produce. But their work serves their purposes, if not their subject's life.

If Richard's reputation is to be restored, I think it will always be through one person at a time rather than through the mass conversion of a future generation of historians. The first thing that has to happen is the man has to matter, or no one looks any further.

Those of us who've taken a second look at Richard seem to have the imagination and curiosity to dig deeper than most people. I came to care about the living man more than for the dead king, and I wasn't contented to shrug and accept the labels the Tudor "winners" have slapped onto him. A lot of other people are more concerned with their own priorities to give a second thought to any dude who lived a long time ago and died in a war that doesn't affect the life they're living today.

In the end, I think Richard is likely destined to be perpetually ignored or demonized -- like Rasputin, another man who was neither devil nor saint.

~Weds

Karen wrote:

> Ok, so the 'thesis' here is Shakespeare, More and 500 odd years of what a lot of people refer to as 'Tudor propaganda'.

> The 'antithesis' is the work of modern (and some not so modern) revisionists, including various fictional works.

> The 'synthesis' then is likely to be a further step, not a compromise nor some kind of arbitrary middle ground.

Carol responds:

I don't think that revisionists would accept these terms since their thesis would be that Richard *wasn't* the monster Richard depicted him as being, a point, by the way, that even moderate traditionalists like Pollard accept. But for the sake of argument, let's accept those terms and see what happens.

Thesis 1 (Shakespeare): Richard was a hunchback.

Antithesis 1(Markham et al.): Richard was in no way disabled or deformed.

Synthesis 1: Richard was not deformed but may have had one shoulder higher than the other as the result of idiopathic scoliosis.

Okay. That one works.

Thesis 2: Richard had a withered arm from birth .

Antithesis 2: Both arms were perfectly normal.

Synthesis 2: Um, Richard's arm was normal at birth but withered by sorcery or premature old age affecting only one arm?

I can't think of a reasonable compromise, and, in any case, we know that the antithesis is correct here.

Thesis 3: Richard murdered Edward of Lancaster.

Antithesis 3: Edward of Lancaster was killed in battle or fleeing from the battle, possibly by the Duke of Clarence's men.

Synthesis 3: Edward of Lancaster was murdered by a group of men, possibly including Richard, George of Clarence, and Hastings.

In this case, the contemporary accounts for both sides present the antithesis, which must be true if five sources from both sides of the conflict agree on it (even if they differ on the details). The (Tudor) synthesis begins in the Great Chronicle (possibly influenced by unreliable French sources) with unnamed servants of E4 murdering EoL and becomes Richard, George, and Hastings in Vergil, forty years after the event. Not even Shakespeare makes Richard the lone murderer. It's the three Plantagenet brothers working as a team. However much the story of Edward of Lancaster mouthing off to Edward (and paying the price with his death) may appeal to some people (I don't mean you, Karen, but I do have someone specific in mind), it is just that, a story, and one of the best examples of what Tey called Tonypandy in the making that I know of.

Thesis 4: Richard killed the Duke of Somerset in the Battle of St. Albans and cut off his head (Henry VI Part II).

Antithesis 4: Richard was two and a half and was at home in his nursery during the Battle of Saint Albans.

Synthesis: No synthesis is possible. Richard didn't fight in that battle, much less kill anyone, nor was he present at Wakefield or Towton (Henry VI Patr III), both fought when he was nine.

Richard Duke of Gloucester as depicted by Shakespeare in the Henry VI plays is so far from the historical Richard that we must ask ourselves whether we can believe anything at all of his continuation as a character in "Richard III."

Thesis 5 (More): Richard plotted the death of the "Princes" with a "secret page" while sitting on the privy and had them killed by an ambitious knight previously unknown to Richard named Sir James Tyrrell.

Antithesis 5a (Markham): Tyrrell killed the "Princes" for Henry Tudor, not for Richard.

Antithesis 5b: Nobody killed the "Princes." At least one of them escaped to Burgundy and became Perkin Warbeck.

Antithesis 5c: Buckingham killed the "Princes" for his own ends and let the blame fall on Richard.

Synthesis: Nobody knows what happened. Not much of a synthesis, I realize, but until we know more about the bones in the urn, all we can do is examine the conflicting testimony in the light of Richard's character as revealed in other documents and draw our own conclusions.

I'm afraid that the thesis-synthesis-antithesis method isn't going to work here since so much of Shakespeare and More can be rejected out of hand (and since Shakespeare was a dramatist, not a historian).

We need to figure out what More was up to if we can and discard any parts of his work and Vergil's that are contradicted by earlier sources, especially primary ones, as well as any attempts at character assessment (psychology before the concept existed) by men who never even saw Richard. And we need to be very careful about anything we tentatively accept from those sources knowing how far from the mark the rest is.

Mancini, Rous, and Croyland, as well as scattered letters and comments from other people, need to be read with a careful and critical eye and taken as fact only when confirmed by primary sources. (If a favorable source like Langton and an unfavorable source like Rous agree, the views expressed are probably accurate.) The only sources that we can accept as absolutely accurate and authentic are Richard's own letters and official documents and even those need to be read carefully, without bias or preconceptions, and bearing in mind any linguistic ambiguity resulting from translation from Latin to English or Early Modern English to Modern English.

Our understanding of Richard does not require us to start from Tudor sources as our "thesis" with the revisionist views as "antithesis" and arrive at a "synthesis" somewhere between the two. Instead, we should start with contemporary documents, viewing them analytically and without preconceptions other than those which can be supported by other documents. The chroniclers, even Croyland and Mancini, assumed that Richard had aimed from at least the time of Edward IV's death to usurp the throne. To start with idea as our "thesis" requires us to try to *disprove* the "antithesis" (his assumption of the throne was both unanticipated and legal) since the only synthesis possible is the unsatisfactory one of an unanticipated usurpation.

At any rate, we are all trying to arrive at the truth in our own way, but I don't think this particular method will work any more successfully for us (or, at any rate, for me) than it did for James Gairdner, trying to reconcile the documents accessible to him with Shakespeare's Machiavellian Richard.

Carol

Awesome post.
But I disagree that Richard would be perpetually ignored or demonized. Look at the interest he has generated and made some real impact on people. I am sure that here will be a day in our life time when R will find his rightful place in history .

Ishita Bandyo
Sent from my iPad

On May 27, 2013, at 5:10 PM, "wednesday_mc" <wednesday.mac@...> wrote:

> Pamela wrote:
>
> > I am too, except many academicians have built their careers on the Tudor Dynasty, authors have become wealthy on their Tudor novels, and it is a huge cabal of people trying to pull protection cover over their views, which will turned on its head if they truly start to dig.
>
> Weds writes:
> That's what I thought too, while reading earlier posts on this subject. It reminds me of the medieval/renaissance church's insistence that the church was perfect, there could be no alterations in doctrine or tradition, and to challenge that was to risk being accused of blasphemy. We all know what happened after that....
>
> But what sort of academician would it take to follow up their MA or PhD and published papers with a new paper saying, "Excuse me, but I've done more digging and changed my mind about..." when those changes challenge the status quo of Tudor vs. Plantagenet? It seems to me to do so would be to commit career suicide a la Rupert Sheldrake.
>
> Perhaps it's the armchair historians who haven't anything to risk (the Phillipa Langleys and Ashdown-Hills) who will ultimately realign some opinions? Perhaps it's like the old adage, "When the student is ready, the teacher will appear"?
>
> Personally, I only went looking for the "real" Richard because More read like backstairs gossip and his account "felt" so wrong that it made me set him aside and look elsewhere. So even More can be useful for some things. :\
>
> But my (Tudor) professor of many years ago told me that historians are basically event-driven, not character-driven. (This, from the man whose office was furnished in early Elizabeth I?) Because I was majoring in English and writing fictional, character-driven works (he assumed), I needed to realign my thinking if I was ever to analyze history with any sort of finesse. Oh, and I should also throw out Jung and Maslow, if you please. Psychology is speculation, Tey was fiction, Richard did it as proven by the contemporary sources, end of discussion.
>
> But it was the vulnerable *man* who reached out to me across 500 years, and there was something about him that I couldn't ignore, even as glimpsed through More. It felt like betrayal to throw him away in favor of elevating the events of his life above him -- and this was long before I'd learned of the multiple, tangled betrayals of his life. He hadn't lived in a sterile, heartless vacuum, yet I was being asked to write as a sterile, heartless student and accept that he really was a stereotypical villain who'd orchestrated every evil from the moment his brother died because he'd always coveted the crown.
>
> But no man is that simple -- except to some historians -- and therein lies the problem. Some treat the contemporary sources (inaccurate or not) as dogma, and seem also to be so very unattached to the people talked about in those sources that it's not just boring -- it's heartbreaking -- to read what they produce. But their work serves their purposes, if not their subject's life.
>
> If Richard's reputation is to be restored, I think it will always be through one person at a time rather than through the mass conversion of a future generation of historians. The first thing that has to happen is the man has to matter, or no one looks any further.
>
> Those of us who've taken a second look at Richard seem to have the imagination and curiosity to dig deeper than most people. I came to care about the living man more than for the dead king, and I wasn't contented to shrug and accept the labels the Tudor "winners" have slapped onto him. A lot of other people are more concerned with their own priorities to give a second thought to any dude who lived a long time ago and died in a war that doesn't affect the life they're living today.
>
> In the end, I think Richard is likely destined to be perpetually ignored or demonized -- like Rasputin, another man who was neither devil nor saint.
>
> ~Weds
>
>

I agree. Thank you.

A J


On Mon, May 27, 2013 at 6:59 PM, justcarol67 <justcarol67@...> wrote:

> **
>
>
>
> Karen wrote:
>
> > Ok, so the 'thesis' here is Shakespeare, More and 500 odd years of what
> a lot of people refer to as 'Tudor propaganda'.
>
> > The 'antithesis' is the work of modern (and some not so modern)
> revisionists, including various fictional works.
>
> > The 'synthesis' then is likely to be a further step, not a compromise
> nor some kind of arbitrary middle ground.
>
> Carol responds:
>
> I don't think that revisionists would accept these terms since their
> thesis would be that Richard *wasn't* the monster Richard depicted him as
> being, a point, by the way, that even moderate traditionalists like Pollard
> accept. But for the sake of argument, let's accept those terms and see what
> happens.
>
> Thesis 1 (Shakespeare): Richard was a hunchback.
>
> Antithesis 1(Markham et al.): Richard was in no way disabled or deformed.
>
> Synthesis 1: Richard was not deformed but may have had one shoulder higher
> than the other as the result of idiopathic scoliosis.
>
> Okay. That one works.
>
> Thesis 2: Richard had a withered arm from birth .
>
> Antithesis 2: Both arms were perfectly normal.
>
> Synthesis 2: Um, Richard's arm was normal at birth but withered by sorcery
> or premature old age affecting only one arm?
>
> I can't think of a reasonable compromise, and, in any case, we know that
> the antithesis is correct here.
>
> Thesis 3: Richard murdered Edward of Lancaster.
>
> Antithesis 3: Edward of Lancaster was killed in battle or fleeing from the
> battle, possibly by the Duke of Clarence's men.
>
> Synthesis 3: Edward of Lancaster was murdered by a group of men, possibly
> including Richard, George of Clarence, and Hastings.
>
> In this case, the contemporary accounts for both sides present the
> antithesis, which must be true if five sources from both sides of the
> conflict agree on it (even if they differ on the details). The (Tudor)
> synthesis begins in the Great Chronicle (possibly influenced by unreliable
> French sources) with unnamed servants of E4 murdering EoL and becomes
> Richard, George, and Hastings in Vergil, forty years after the event. Not
> even Shakespeare makes Richard the lone murderer. It's the three
> Plantagenet brothers working as a team. However much the story of Edward of
> Lancaster mouthing off to Edward (and paying the price with his death) may
> appeal to some people (I don't mean you, Karen, but I do have someone
> specific in mind), it is just that, a story, and one of the best examples
> of what Tey called Tonypandy in the making that I know of.
>
> Thesis 4: Richard killed the Duke of Somerset in the Battle of St. Albans
> and cut off his head (Henry VI Part II).
>
> Antithesis 4: Richard was two and a half and was at home in his nursery
> during the Battle of Saint Albans.
>
> Synthesis: No synthesis is possible. Richard didn't fight in that battle,
> much less kill anyone, nor was he present at Wakefield or Towton (Henry VI
> Patr III), both fought when he was nine.
>
> Richard Duke of Gloucester as depicted by Shakespeare in the Henry VI
> plays is so far from the historical Richard that we must ask ourselves
> whether we can believe anything at all of his continuation as a character
> in "Richard III."
>
> Thesis 5 (More): Richard plotted the death of the "Princes" with a "secret
> page" while sitting on the privy and had them killed by an ambitious knight
> previously unknown to Richard named Sir James Tyrrell.
>
> Antithesis 5a (Markham): Tyrrell killed the "Princes" for Henry Tudor, not
> for Richard.
>
> Antithesis 5b: Nobody killed the "Princes." At least one of them escaped
> to Burgundy and became Perkin Warbeck.
>
> Antithesis 5c: Buckingham killed the "Princes" for his own ends and let
> the blame fall on Richard.
>
> Synthesis: Nobody knows what happened. Not much of a synthesis, I realize,
> but until we know more about the bones in the urn, all we can do is examine
> the conflicting testimony in the light of Richard's character as revealed
> in other documents and draw our own conclusions.
>
> I'm afraid that the thesis-synthesis-antithesis method isn't going to work
> here since so much of Shakespeare and More can be rejected out of hand (and
> since Shakespeare was a dramatist, not a historian).
>
> We need to figure out what More was up to if we can and discard any parts
> of his work and Vergil's that are contradicted by earlier sources,
> especially primary ones, as well as any attempts at character assessment
> (psychology before the concept existed) by men who never even saw Richard.
> And we need to be very careful about anything we tentatively accept from
> those sources knowing how far from the mark the rest is.
>
> Mancini, Rous, and Croyland, as well as scattered letters and comments
> from other people, need to be read with a careful and critical eye and
> taken as fact only when confirmed by primary sources. (If a favorable
> source like Langton and an unfavorable source like Rous agree, the views
> expressed are probably accurate.) The only sources that we can accept as
> absolutely accurate and authentic are Richard's own letters and official
> documents and even those need to be read carefully, without bias or
> preconceptions, and bearing in mind any linguistic ambiguity resulting from
> translation from Latin to English or Early Modern English to Modern English.
>
> Our understanding of Richard does not require us to start from Tudor
> sources as our "thesis" with the revisionist views as "antithesis" and
> arrive at a "synthesis" somewhere between the two. Instead, we should start
> with contemporary documents, viewing them analytically and without
> preconceptions other than those which can be supported by other documents.
> The chroniclers, even Croyland and Mancini, assumed that Richard had aimed
> from at least the time of Edward IV's death to usurp the throne. To start
> with idea as our "thesis" requires us to try to *disprove* the "antithesis"
> (his assumption of the throne was both unanticipated and legal) since the
> only synthesis possible is the unsatisfactory one of an unanticipated
> usurpation.
>
> At any rate, we are all trying to arrive at the truth in our own way, but
> I don't think this particular method will work any more successfully for us
> (or, at any rate, for me) than it did for James Gairdner, trying to
> reconcile the documents accessible to him with Shakespeare's Machiavellian
> Richard.
>
> Carol
>
>
>

Sandra wrote:
> [snip] Someone killed the princes, but I feel sure it was not Richard. Someone with an eye on blackening his good name, maybe, and there were a number with such motives. [snip]

Carol responds:

On the whole, I agree with your post, but I wanted to point out that we don't know that anyone killed the "Princes" (technically, at that time and until Titulus Regius was repealed, Edward IV's illegitimate sons).

I don't know whether you've read Annette Carson's "Richard III: The Maligned King." If not, I strongly recommend it. Like Audrey Williamson before her (and I also recommend Williamson's "Mystery of the Princes"), she explores the possibility that they were not killed at all but were sent to Sir James Tyrell's estate, Gipping, and from there to Burgundy. There's more evidence to support that idea than you might suspect, especially if you assume (as Kendall did) that the bones in the urn belong to Richard's nephews. Quite a few articles (most of them cited in Annette's book) have been written indicating the flaws in the 1933 assessment of the bones by Tanner and Wright, in particular their starting from the premise that they *were* the bones of the "Princes," who were killed (they thought) exactly as Sir Thomas More said they were (though he himself admitted that he had heard other versions of the supposed murders and even that one or both had escaped). There are a number of other reasons to suspect that the bones are from an earlier date than 1483-85 (allowing for the possibility of Henry as murderer), including the fact that they were found not at the foot of a staircase (a site from which More said they had been moved) but ten feet deep in the ground under the foundations of a staircase.

At any rate, we not only don't know who the murderer was, we don't know that they were murdered at all. It's even possible that they died from the sweating sickness or some other natural cause and Richard kept their deaths quiet because he knew that he would be blamed (as Edward had been for the death of Henry VI). But, as the psychologists point out in the most recent Ricardian Bulletin, it's more in character for Richard to smuggle them to safety and keep quiet for their sake.

Carol

Weds, you are eloquent.....

On May 27, 2013, at 7:03 PM, "Ishita Bandyo" <bandyoi@...<mailto:bandyoi@...>> wrote:



Awesome post.
But I disagree that Richard would be perpetually ignored or demonized. Look at the interest he has generated and made some real impact on people. I am sure that here will be a day in our life time when R will find his rightful place in history .

Ishita Bandyo
Sent from my iPad

On May 27, 2013, at 5:10 PM, "wednesday_mc" <wednesday.mac@...<mailto:wednesday.mac%40gmail.com>> wrote:

> Pamela wrote:
>
> > I am too, except many academicians have built their careers on the Tudor Dynasty, authors have become wealthy on their Tudor novels, and it is a huge cabal of people trying to pull protection cover over their views, which will turned on its head if they truly start to dig.
>
> Weds writes:
> That's what I thought too, while reading earlier posts on this subject. It reminds me of the medieval/renaissance church's insistence that the church was perfect, there could be no alterations in doctrine or tradition, and to challenge that was to risk being accused of blasphemy. We all know what happened after that....
>
> But what sort of academician would it take to follow up their MA or PhD and published papers with a new paper saying, "Excuse me, but I've done more digging and changed my mind about..." when those changes challenge the status quo of Tudor vs. Plantagenet? It seems to me to do so would be to commit career suicide a la Rupert Sheldrake.
>
> Perhaps it's the armchair historians who haven't anything to risk (the Phillipa Langleys and Ashdown-Hills) who will ultimately realign some opinions? Perhaps it's like the old adage, "When the student is ready, the teacher will appear"?
>
> Personally, I only went looking for the "real" Richard because More read like backstairs gossip and his account "felt" so wrong that it made me set him aside and look elsewhere. So even More can be useful for some things. :\
>
> But my (Tudor) professor of many years ago told me that historians are basically event-driven, not character-driven. (This, from the man whose office was furnished in early Elizabeth I?) Because I was majoring in English and writing fictional, character-driven works (he assumed), I needed to realign my thinking if I was ever to analyze history with any sort of finesse. Oh, and I should also throw out Jung and Maslow, if you please. Psychology is speculation, Tey was fiction, Richard did it as proven by the contemporary sources, end of discussion.
>
> But it was the vulnerable *man* who reached out to me across 500 years, and there was something about him that I couldn't ignore, even as glimpsed through More. It felt like betrayal to throw him away in favor of elevating the events of his life above him -- and this was long before I'd learned of the multiple, tangled betrayals of his life. He hadn't lived in a sterile, heartless vacuum, yet I was being asked to write as a sterile, heartless student and accept that he really was a stereotypical villain who'd orchestrated every evil from the moment his brother died because he'd always coveted the crown.
>
> But no man is that simple -- except to some historians -- and therein lies the problem. Some treat the contemporary sources (inaccurate or not) as dogma, and seem also to be so very unattached to the people talked about in those sources that it's not just boring -- it's heartbreaking -- to read what they produce. But their work serves their purposes, if not their subject's life.
>
> If Richard's reputation is to be restored, I think it will always be through one person at a time rather than through the mass conversion of a future generation of historians. The first thing that has to happen is the man has to matter, or no one looks any further.
>
> Those of us who've taken a second look at Richard seem to have the imagination and curiosity to dig deeper than most people. I came to care about the living man more than for the dead king, and I wasn't contented to shrug and accept the labels the Tudor "winners" have slapped onto him. A lot of other people are more concerned with their own priorities to give a second thought to any dude who lived a long time ago and died in a war that doesn't affect the life they're living today.
>
> In the end, I think Richard is likely destined to be perpetually ignored or demonized -- like Rasputin, another man who was neither devil nor saint.
>
> ~Weds
>
>

Carol, you are also eloquent, and brilliant! Cheers to the "armchair historians", you make sense to me.

On May 27, 2013, at 7:05 PM, "A J Hibbard" <ajhibbard@...> wrote:

> I agree. Thank you.
>
> A J
>
>
> On Mon, May 27, 2013 at 6:59 PM, justcarol67 <justcarol67@...> wrote:
>
>> **
>>
>>
>>
>> Karen wrote:
>>
>>> Ok, so the 'thesis' here is Shakespeare, More and 500 odd years of what
>> a lot of people refer to as 'Tudor propaganda'.
>>
>>> The 'antithesis' is the work of modern (and some not so modern)
>> revisionists, including various fictional works.
>>
>>> The 'synthesis' then is likely to be a further step, not a compromise
>> nor some kind of arbitrary middle ground.
>>
>> Carol responds:
>>
>> I don't think that revisionists would accept these terms since their
>> thesis would be that Richard *wasn't* the monster Richard depicted him as
>> being, a point, by the way, that even moderate traditionalists like Pollard
>> accept. But for the sake of argument, let's accept those terms and see what
>> happens.
>>
>> Thesis 1 (Shakespeare): Richard was a hunchback.
>>
>> Antithesis 1(Markham et al.): Richard was in no way disabled or deformed.
>>
>> Synthesis 1: Richard was not deformed but may have had one shoulder higher
>> than the other as the result of idiopathic scoliosis.
>>
>> Okay. That one works.
>>
>> Thesis 2: Richard had a withered arm from birth .
>>
>> Antithesis 2: Both arms were perfectly normal.
>>
>> Synthesis 2: Um, Richard's arm was normal at birth but withered by sorcery
>> or premature old age affecting only one arm?
>>
>> I can't think of a reasonable compromise, and, in any case, we know that
>> the antithesis is correct here.
>>
>> Thesis 3: Richard murdered Edward of Lancaster.
>>
>> Antithesis 3: Edward of Lancaster was killed in battle or fleeing from the
>> battle, possibly by the Duke of Clarence's men.
>>
>> Synthesis 3: Edward of Lancaster was murdered by a group of men, possibly
>> including Richard, George of Clarence, and Hastings.
>>
>> In this case, the contemporary accounts for both sides present the
>> antithesis, which must be true if five sources from both sides of the
>> conflict agree on it (even if they differ on the details). The (Tudor)
>> synthesis begins in the Great Chronicle (possibly influenced by unreliable
>> French sources) with unnamed servants of E4 murdering EoL and becomes
>> Richard, George, and Hastings in Vergil, forty years after the event. Not
>> even Shakespeare makes Richard the lone murderer. It's the three
>> Plantagenet brothers working as a team. However much the story of Edward of
>> Lancaster mouthing off to Edward (and paying the price with his death) may
>> appeal to some people (I don't mean you, Karen, but I do have someone
>> specific in mind), it is just that, a story, and one of the best examples
>> of what Tey called Tonypandy in the making that I know of.
>>
>> Thesis 4: Richard killed the Duke of Somerset in the Battle of St. Albans
>> and cut off his head (Henry VI Part II).
>>
>> Antithesis 4: Richard was two and a half and was at home in his nursery
>> during the Battle of Saint Albans.
>>
>> Synthesis: No synthesis is possible. Richard didn't fight in that battle,
>> much less kill anyone, nor was he present at Wakefield or Towton (Henry VI
>> Patr III), both fought when he was nine.
>>
>> Richard Duke of Gloucester as depicted by Shakespeare in the Henry VI
>> plays is so far from the historical Richard that we must ask ourselves
>> whether we can believe anything at all of his continuation as a character
>> in "Richard III."
>>
>> Thesis 5 (More): Richard plotted the death of the "Princes" with a "secret
>> page" while sitting on the privy and had them killed by an ambitious knight
>> previously unknown to Richard named Sir James Tyrrell.
>>
>> Antithesis 5a (Markham): Tyrrell killed the "Princes" for Henry Tudor, not
>> for Richard.
>>
>> Antithesis 5b: Nobody killed the "Princes." At least one of them escaped
>> to Burgundy and became Perkin Warbeck.
>>
>> Antithesis 5c: Buckingham killed the "Princes" for his own ends and let
>> the blame fall on Richard.
>>
>> Synthesis: Nobody knows what happened. Not much of a synthesis, I realize,
>> but until we know more about the bones in the urn, all we can do is examine
>> the conflicting testimony in the light of Richard's character as revealed
>> in other documents and draw our own conclusions.
>>
>> I'm afraid that the thesis-synthesis-antithesis method isn't going to work
>> here since so much of Shakespeare and More can be rejected out of hand (and
>> since Shakespeare was a dramatist, not a historian).
>>
>> We need to figure out what More was up to if we can and discard any parts
>> of his work and Vergil's that are contradicted by earlier sources,
>> especially primary ones, as well as any attempts at character assessment
>> (psychology before the concept existed) by men who never even saw Richard.
>> And we need to be very careful about anything we tentatively accept from
>> those sources knowing how far from the mark the rest is.
>>
>> Mancini, Rous, and Croyland, as well as scattered letters and comments
>> from other people, need to be read with a careful and critical eye and
>> taken as fact only when confirmed by primary sources. (If a favorable
>> source like Langton and an unfavorable source like Rous agree, the views
>> expressed are probably accurate.) The only sources that we can accept as
>> absolutely accurate and authentic are Richard's own letters and official
>> documents and even those need to be read carefully, without bias or
>> preconceptions, and bearing in mind any linguistic ambiguity resulting from
>> translation from Latin to English or Early Modern English to Modern English.
>>
>> Our understanding of Richard does not require us to start from Tudor
>> sources as our "thesis" with the revisionist views as "antithesis" and
>> arrive at a "synthesis" somewhere between the two. Instead, we should start
>> with contemporary documents, viewing them analytically and without
>> preconceptions other than those which can be supported by other documents.
>> The chroniclers, even Croyland and Mancini, assumed that Richard had aimed
>> from at least the time of Edward IV's death to usurp the throne. To start
>> with idea as our "thesis" requires us to try to *disprove* the "antithesis"
>> (his assumption of the throne was both unanticipated and legal) since the
>> only synthesis possible is the unsatisfactory one of an unanticipated
>> usurpation.
>>
>> At any rate, we are all trying to arrive at the truth in our own way, but
>> I don't think this particular method will work any more successfully for us
>> (or, at any rate, for me) than it did for James Gairdner, trying to
>> reconcile the documents accessible to him with Shakespeare's Machiavellian
>> Richard.
>>
>> Carol
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>

Bravo Carol, very thorough analysis. :-)
Nicole
To:
From: justcarol67@...
Date: Mon, 27 May 2013 23:59:44 +0000
Subject: Re: Traditionalists, revisionists, & synthesists




























Karen wrote:



> Ok, so the 'thesis' here is Shakespeare, More and 500 odd years of what a lot of people refer to as 'Tudor propaganda'.



> The 'antithesis' is the work of modern (and some not so modern) revisionists, including various fictional works.



> The 'synthesis' then is likely to be a further step, not a compromise nor some kind of arbitrary middle ground.



Carol responds:



I don't think that revisionists would accept these terms since their thesis would be that Richard *wasn't* the monster Richard depicted him as being, a point, by the way, that even moderate traditionalists like Pollard accept. But for the sake of argument, let's accept those terms and see what happens.



Thesis 1 (Shakespeare): Richard was a hunchback.



Antithesis 1(Markham et al.): Richard was in no way disabled or deformed.



Synthesis 1: Richard was not deformed but may have had one shoulder higher than the other as the result of idiopathic scoliosis.



Okay. That one works.



Thesis 2: Richard had a withered arm from birth .



Antithesis 2: Both arms were perfectly normal.



Synthesis 2: Um, Richard's arm was normal at birth but withered by sorcery or premature old age affecting only one arm?



I can't think of a reasonable compromise, and, in any case, we know that the antithesis is correct here.



Thesis 3: Richard murdered Edward of Lancaster.



Antithesis 3: Edward of Lancaster was killed in battle or fleeing from the battle, possibly by the Duke of Clarence's men.



Synthesis 3: Edward of Lancaster was murdered by a group of men, possibly including Richard, George of Clarence, and Hastings.



In this case, the contemporary accounts for both sides present the antithesis, which must be true if five sources from both sides of the conflict agree on it (even if they differ on the details). The (Tudor) synthesis begins in the Great Chronicle (possibly influenced by unreliable French sources) with unnamed servants of E4 murdering EoL and becomes Richard, George, and Hastings in Vergil, forty years after the event. Not even Shakespeare makes Richard the lone murderer. It's the three Plantagenet brothers working as a team. However much the story of Edward of Lancaster mouthing off to Edward (and paying the price with his death) may appeal to some people (I don't mean you, Karen, but I do have someone specific in mind), it is just that, a story, and one of the best examples of what Tey called Tonypandy in the making that I know of.



Thesis 4: Richard killed the Duke of Somerset in the Battle of St. Albans and cut off his head (Henry VI Part II).



Antithesis 4: Richard was two and a half and was at home in his nursery during the Battle of Saint Albans.



Synthesis: No synthesis is possible. Richard didn't fight in that battle, much less kill anyone, nor was he present at Wakefield or Towton (Henry VI Patr III), both fought when he was nine.



Richard Duke of Gloucester as depicted by Shakespeare in the Henry VI plays is so far from the historical Richard that we must ask ourselves whether we can believe anything at all of his continuation as a character in "Richard III."



Thesis 5 (More): Richard plotted the death of the "Princes" with a "secret page" while sitting on the privy and had them killed by an ambitious knight previously unknown to Richard named Sir James Tyrrell.



Antithesis 5a (Markham): Tyrrell killed the "Princes" for Henry Tudor, not for Richard.



Antithesis 5b: Nobody killed the "Princes." At least one of them escaped to Burgundy and became Perkin Warbeck.



Antithesis 5c: Buckingham killed the "Princes" for his own ends and let the blame fall on Richard.



Synthesis: Nobody knows what happened. Not much of a synthesis, I realize, but until we know more about the bones in the urn, all we can do is examine the conflicting testimony in the light of Richard's character as revealed in other documents and draw our own conclusions.



I'm afraid that the thesis-synthesis-antithesis method isn't going to work here since so much of Shakespeare and More can be rejected out of hand (and since Shakespeare was a dramatist, not a historian).



We need to figure out what More was up to if we can and discard any parts of his work and Vergil's that are contradicted by earlier sources, especially primary ones, as well as any attempts at character assessment (psychology before the concept existed) by men who never even saw Richard. And we need to be very careful about anything we tentatively accept from those sources knowing how far from the mark the rest is.



Mancini, Rous, and Croyland, as well as scattered letters and comments from other people, need to be read with a careful and critical eye and taken as fact only when confirmed by primary sources. (If a favorable source like Langton and an unfavorable source like Rous agree, the views expressed are probably accurate.) The only sources that we can accept as absolutely accurate and authentic are Richard's own letters and official documents and even those need to be read carefully, without bias or preconceptions, and bearing in mind any linguistic ambiguity resulting from translation from Latin to English or Early Modern English to Modern English.



Our understanding of Richard does not require us to start from Tudor sources as our "thesis" with the revisionist views as "antithesis" and arrive at a "synthesis" somewhere between the two. Instead, we should start with contemporary documents, viewing them analytically and without preconceptions other than those which can be supported by other documents. The chroniclers, even Croyland and Mancini, assumed that Richard had aimed from at least the time of Edward IV's death to usurp the throne. To start with idea as our "thesis" requires us to try to *disprove* the "antithesis" (his assumption of the throne was both unanticipated and legal) since the only synthesis possible is the unsatisfactory one of an unanticipated usurpation.



At any rate, we are all trying to arrive at the truth in our own way, but I don't think this particular method will work any more successfully for us (or, at any rate, for me) than it did for James Gairdner, trying to reconcile the documents accessible to him with Shakespeare's Machiavellian Richard.



Carol

Great post, Carol!

Ishita Bandyo
www.ishitabandyo.com
www.facebook.com/ishitabandyofinearts
www.ishitabandyoarts.blogspot.com

On May 27, 2013, at 7:59 PM, "justcarol67" <justcarol67@...> wrote:

>
> Karen wrote:
>
> > Ok, so the 'thesis' here is Shakespeare, More and 500 odd years of what a lot of people refer to as 'Tudor propaganda'.
>
> > The 'antithesis' is the work of modern (and some not so modern) revisionists, including various fictional works.
>
> > The 'synthesis' then is likely to be a further step, not a compromise nor some kind of arbitrary middle ground.
>
> Carol responds:
>
> I don't think that revisionists would accept these terms since their thesis would be that Richard *wasn't* the monster Richard depicted him as being, a point, by the way, that even moderate traditionalists like Pollard accept. But for the sake of argument, let's accept those terms and see what happens.
>
> Thesis 1 (Shakespeare): Richard was a hunchback.
>
> Antithesis 1(Markham et al.): Richard was in no way disabled or deformed.
>
> Synthesis 1: Richard was not deformed but may have had one shoulder higher than the other as the result of idiopathic scoliosis.
>
> Okay. That one works.
>
> Thesis 2: Richard had a withered arm from birth .
>
> Antithesis 2: Both arms were perfectly normal.
>
> Synthesis 2: Um, Richard's arm was normal at birth but withered by sorcery or premature old age affecting only one arm?
>
> I can't think of a reasonable compromise, and, in any case, we know that the antithesis is correct here.
>
> Thesis 3: Richard murdered Edward of Lancaster.
>
> Antithesis 3: Edward of Lancaster was killed in battle or fleeing from the battle, possibly by the Duke of Clarence's men.
>
> Synthesis 3: Edward of Lancaster was murdered by a group of men, possibly including Richard, George of Clarence, and Hastings.
>
> In this case, the contemporary accounts for both sides present the antithesis, which must be true if five sources from both sides of the conflict agree on it (even if they differ on the details). The (Tudor) synthesis begins in the Great Chronicle (possibly influenced by unreliable French sources) with unnamed servants of E4 murdering EoL and becomes Richard, George, and Hastings in Vergil, forty years after the event. Not even Shakespeare makes Richard the lone murderer. It's the three Plantagenet brothers working as a team. However much the story of Edward of Lancaster mouthing off to Edward (and paying the price with his death) may appeal to some people (I don't mean you, Karen, but I do have someone specific in mind), it is just that, a story, and one of the best examples of what Tey called Tonypandy in the making that I know of.
>
> Thesis 4: Richard killed the Duke of Somerset in the Battle of St. Albans and cut off his head (Henry VI Part II).
>
> Antithesis 4: Richard was two and a half and was at home in his nursery during the Battle of Saint Albans.
>
> Synthesis: No synthesis is possible. Richard didn't fight in that battle, much less kill anyone, nor was he present at Wakefield or Towton (Henry VI Patr III), both fought when he was nine.
>
> Richard Duke of Gloucester as depicted by Shakespeare in the Henry VI plays is so far from the historical Richard that we must ask ourselves whether we can believe anything at all of his continuation as a character in "Richard III."
>
> Thesis 5 (More): Richard plotted the death of the "Princes" with a "secret page" while sitting on the privy and had them killed by an ambitious knight previously unknown to Richard named Sir James Tyrrell.
>
> Antithesis 5a (Markham): Tyrrell killed the "Princes" for Henry Tudor, not for Richard.
>
> Antithesis 5b: Nobody killed the "Princes." At least one of them escaped to Burgundy and became Perkin Warbeck.
>
> Antithesis 5c: Buckingham killed the "Princes" for his own ends and let the blame fall on Richard.
>
> Synthesis: Nobody knows what happened. Not much of a synthesis, I realize, but until we know more about the bones in the urn, all we can do is examine the conflicting testimony in the light of Richard's character as revealed in other documents and draw our own conclusions.
>
> I'm afraid that the thesis-synthesis-antithesis method isn't going to work here since so much of Shakespeare and More can be rejected out of hand (and since Shakespeare was a dramatist, not a historian).
>
> We need to figure out what More was up to if we can and discard any parts of his work and Vergil's that are contradicted by earlier sources, especially primary ones, as well as any attempts at character assessment (psychology before the concept existed) by men who never even saw Richard. And we need to be very careful about anything we tentatively accept from those sources knowing how far from the mark the rest is.
>
> Mancini, Rous, and Croyland, as well as scattered letters and comments from other people, need to be read with a careful and critical eye and taken as fact only when confirmed by primary sources. (If a favorable source like Langton and an unfavorable source like Rous agree, the views expressed are probably accurate.) The only sources that we can accept as absolutely accurate and authentic are Richard's own letters and official documents and even those need to be read carefully, without bias or preconceptions, and bearing in mind any linguistic ambiguity resulting from translation from Latin to English or Early Modern English to Modern English.
>
> Our understanding of Richard does not require us to start from Tudor sources as our "thesis" with the revisionist views as "antithesis" and arrive at a "synthesis" somewhere between the two. Instead, we should start with contemporary documents, viewing them analytically and without preconceptions other than those which can be supported by other documents. The chroniclers, even Croyland and Mancini, assumed that Richard had aimed from at least the time of Edward IV's death to usurp the throne. To start with idea as our "thesis" requires us to try to *disprove* the "antithesis" (his assumption of the throne was both unanticipated and legal) since the only synthesis possible is the unsatisfactory one of an unanticipated usurpation.
>
> At any rate, we are all trying to arrive at the truth in our own way, but I don't think this particular method will work any more successfully for us (or, at any rate, for me) than it did for James Gairdner, trying to reconcile the documents accessible to him with Shakespeare's Machiavellian Richard.
>
> Carol
>
>

--- In , Ishita Bandyo <bandyoi@...> wrote:
>
> "I'm still wondering why there's so much resistance to the idea of 'revisionism' finding its way into academic study of history. I'm truly astonished that more people aren't behind that!"
>
> I am wondering about same think. All we get in Skidmore's " Richard was 4'8" tall version...... Human beings generally has a tendency to stick with status quo. The other alternative is uncomfortable and would require them to think outside the box. And I also think the historians do not want to rock the boat so much and jeopardize their career. If you are doing your phd under Hicks, you wouldn't want to extol Richard's good qualities.
> At least there is a lot of interest and questions regarding Richard and WotR and hopefully younger historians would step out with new analyses and Reinterpretation the primary sources.
> Carol's translation of the Latin texts is a very good start, IMO!

Carol responds:

Thanks, but please bear in mind that I'm very, very inexpert at these things and am only trying to call attention to the need for better translations and more attention to the Latin originals and their ambiguities. As far as I know, there's no complete translation of Rous's Anglia Historia (though we do have one for the Rous Roll).

I hope that Marie will join in the discussion of this translation as she did for Rous's "faciem curtam habiens," usually translated as "having a short face" but possibly meaning "having a distorted shape" in reference to the raised shoulder, the only distortion mentioned.

What drives me completely crazy is the way that the historians all echo one another and take the standard interpretations of these texts not only as the correct interpretation but as unquestioned fact.

I wish I *could* provide a brand-new translations of even one key source, but I'd need years and years of training in medieval Latin, not to mention that I'd need to be in England on a grant with unlimited funding and twenty or thirty years younger!

Carol

Like you and a lot of others here, I hope Richard does one day get his rightful, respected place in history. But for that to happen, I think we'd need a major motion picture as successful as the first Pirates of the Caribbean, or a television series like "The Tudors" in worldwide release to bring Dickon into mainstream pop culture to create and sustain his position -- and to rewrite some of the Tudor propaganda surrounding him.

Sort of like the Lord of the Rings trilogy popularizing Tolkien beyond even his popularity in the 60s. He didn't like it, and some historians won't like it if it happens to Richard, but they'd certainly make money if it happened.

~Weds

--- In , Ishita Bandyo <bandyoi@...> wrote:
>
> Awesome post.
> But I disagree that Richard would be perpetually ignored or demonized. Look at the interest he has generated and made some real impact on people. I am sure that here will be a day in our life time when R will find his rightful place in history .
>
> Ishita Bandyo

What a lovely post.
I worry that few will ever know just what sort of King Richard III really was, given the prolific Tudor propaganda. So few care to look further.

Michele
ml_thorsteinson@...


________________________________
From: wednesday_mc <wednesday.mac@...>
To:
Sent: Monday, May 27, 2013 4:10 PM
Subject: Re: Traditionalists, revisionists, & synthesists


 

Pamela wrote:

> I am too, except many academicians have built their careers on the Tudor Dynasty, authors have become wealthy on their Tudor novels, and it is a huge cabal of people trying to pull protection cover over their views, which will turned on its head if they truly start to dig.

Weds writes:
That's what I thought too, while reading earlier posts on this subject. It reminds me of the medieval/renaissance church's insistence that the church was perfect, there could be no alterations in doctrine or tradition, and to challenge that was to risk being accused of blasphemy. We all know what happened after that....

But what sort of academician would it take to follow up their MA or PhD and published papers with a new paper saying, "Excuse me, but I've done more digging and changed my mind about..." when those changes challenge the status quo of Tudor vs. Plantagenet? It seems to me to do so would be to commit career suicide a la Rupert Sheldrake.

Perhaps it's the armchair historians who haven't anything to risk (the Phillipa Langleys and Ashdown-Hills) who will ultimately realign some opinions? Perhaps it's like the old adage, "When the student is ready, the teacher will appear"?

Personally, I only went looking for the "real" Richard because More read like backstairs gossip and his account "felt" so wrong that it made me set him aside and look elsewhere. So even More can be useful for some things. :\

But my (Tudor) professor of many years ago told me that historians are basically event-driven, not character-driven. (This, from the man whose office was furnished in early Elizabeth I?) Because I was majoring in English and writing fictional, character-driven works (he assumed), I needed to realign my thinking if I was ever to analyze history with any sort of finesse. Oh, and I should also throw out Jung and Maslow, if you please. Psychology is speculation, Tey was fiction, Richard did it as proven by the contemporary sources, end of discussion.

But it was the vulnerable *man* who reached out to me across 500 years, and there was something about him that I couldn't ignore, even as glimpsed through More. It felt like betrayal to throw him away in favor of elevating the events of his life above him -- and this was long before I'd learned of the multiple, tangled betrayals of his life. He hadn't lived in a sterile, heartless vacuum, yet I was being asked to write as a sterile, heartless student and accept that he really was a stereotypical villain who'd orchestrated every evil from the moment his brother died because he'd always coveted the crown.

But no man is that simple -- except to some historians -- and therein lies the problem. Some treat the contemporary sources (inaccurate or not) as dogma, and seem also to be so very unattached to the people talked about in those sources that it's not just boring -- it's heartbreaking -- to read what they produce. But their work serves their purposes, if not their subject's life.

If Richard's reputation is to be restored, I think it will always be through one person at a time rather than through the mass conversion of a future generation of historians. The first thing that has to happen is the man has to matter, or no one looks any further.

Those of us who've taken a second look at Richard seem to have the imagination and curiosity to dig deeper than most people. I came to care about the living man more than for the dead king, and I wasn't contented to shrug and accept the labels the Tudor "winners" have slapped onto him. A lot of other people are more concerned with their own priorities to give a second thought to any dude who lived a long time ago and died in a war that doesn't affect the life they're living today.

In the end, I think Richard is likely destined to be perpetually ignored or demonized -- like Rasputin, another man who was neither devil nor saint.

~Weds

I recall that, at one point several years ago, a member of this list(I believe the old one closed, and I did not look for the new one until very recently) was working on some material for a possible film about the life and reign of Richard III. There was even a subsequent discussion as to who would play Richard(Clive Owen was the popular choice).
For years, I have checked, here and there, as to the progress of ANY film underway about Richard III, but it seems as if it was simply a dream that went nowhere.
 
I'd be thrilled if someone would simply do a film adaption of The Sunne In Splendour, but even moreso a film based strictly on the facts, as we understand them.

Michele
ml_thorsteinson@...


________________________________
From: Ishita Bandyo <bandyoi@...>
To: "" <>
Sent: Monday, May 27, 2013 7:02 PM
Subject: Re: Traditionalists, revisionists, & synthesists


 

Awesome post.
But I disagree that Richard would be perpetually ignored or demonized. Look at the interest he has generated and made some real impact on people. I am sure that here will be a day in our life time when R will find his rightful place in history .

Ishita Bandyo
Sent from my iPad

On May 27, 2013, at 5:10 PM, "wednesday_mc" <mailto:wednesday.mac%40gmail.com> wrote:

> Pamela wrote:
>
> > I am too, except many academicians have built their careers on the Tudor Dynasty, authors have become wealthy on their Tudor novels, and it is a huge cabal of people trying to pull protection cover over their views, which will turned on its head if they truly start to dig.
>
> Weds writes:
> That's what I thought too, while reading earlier posts on this subject. It reminds me of the medieval/renaissance church's insistence that the church was perfect, there could be no alterations in doctrine or tradition, and to challenge that was to risk being accused of blasphemy. We all know what happened after that....
>
> But what sort of academician would it take to follow up their MA or PhD and published papers with a new paper saying, "Excuse me, but I've done more digging and changed my mind about..." when those changes challenge the status quo of Tudor vs. Plantagenet? It seems to me to do so would be to commit career suicide a la Rupert Sheldrake.
>
> Perhaps it's the armchair historians who haven't anything to risk (the Phillipa Langleys and Ashdown-Hills) who will ultimately realign some opinions? Perhaps it's like the old adage, "When the student is ready, the teacher will appear"?
>
> Personally, I only went looking for the "real" Richard because More read like backstairs gossip and his account "felt" so wrong that it made me set him aside and look elsewhere. So even More can be useful for some things. :\
>
> But my (Tudor) professor of many years ago told me that historians are basically event-driven, not character-driven. (This, from the man whose office was furnished in early Elizabeth I?) Because I was majoring in English and writing fictional, character-driven works (he assumed), I needed to realign my thinking if I was ever to analyze history with any sort of finesse. Oh, and I should also throw out Jung and Maslow, if you please. Psychology is speculation, Tey was fiction, Richard did it as proven by the contemporary sources, end of discussion.
>
> But it was the vulnerable *man* who reached out to me across 500 years, and there was something about him that I couldn't ignore, even as glimpsed through More. It felt like betrayal to throw him away in favor of elevating the events of his life above him -- and this was long before I'd learned of the multiple, tangled betrayals of his life. He hadn't lived in a sterile, heartless vacuum, yet I was being asked to write as a sterile, heartless student and accept that he really was a stereotypical villain who'd orchestrated every evil from the moment his brother died because he'd always coveted the crown.
>
> But no man is that simple -- except to some historians -- and therein lies the problem. Some treat the contemporary sources (inaccurate or not) as dogma, and seem also to be so very unattached to the people talked about in those sources that it's not just boring -- it's heartbreaking -- to read what they produce. But their work serves their purposes, if not their subject's life.
>
> If Richard's reputation is to be restored, I think it will always be through one person at a time rather than through the mass conversion of a future generation of historians. The first thing that has to happen is the man has to matter, or no one looks any further.
>
> Those of us who've taken a second look at Richard seem to have the imagination and curiosity to dig deeper than most people. I came to care about the living man more than for the dead king, and I wasn't contented to shrug and accept the labels the Tudor "winners" have slapped onto him. A lot of other people are more concerned with their own priorities to give a second thought to any dude who lived a long time ago and died in a war that doesn't affect the life they're living today.
>
> In the end, I think Richard is likely destined to be perpetually ignored or demonized -- like Rasputin, another man who was neither devil nor saint.
>
> ~Weds
>
>

There seems to be a lot of argument against points that I haven't made, which I find fascinating! I'm wondering still if I've been able to make myself fully understood, or if this idea is seen, for some reason, as a threat to 'revisionist' views. It's quite the opposite.

The 'thesis' is the full body of work that relates to 'Richard the monster/serial killer'. Not individual points.

The 'antithesis' is the full body of work that relates to 'Good King Richard/who could do no wrong'. Not individual points.

So far, academic history of Richard and his reign seems to relate more to the 'thesis' than the 'antithesis'. What I'm suggesting is that, in the coming years, more and more ideas that come out of the 'antithesis' will find their way into the world of academic history. There will be no 'compromise' or 'middle ground' sought but, working with both the 'thesis' and what has (to some extent) superseded it (the 'antithesis)', there will be a fresh body of work that addresses both the problems of the 'thesis' and those of the 'antithesis'.

This isn't so much a 'method' that I'm proposing historians follow but what I think is the next phase of historical research and writing about Richard, his life, times and reign. It isn't consciously negotiated but what's likely to occur in the normal course of events.

Arguing against 'using' this method is fine. However, I'm not advocating it's 'use' but seeing it on the horizon.

Karen Clark

--- In , Ishita Bandyo <bandyoi@...> wrote:
>
> Great post, Carol!
>
> Ishita Bandyo
> www.ishitabandyo.com
> www.facebook.com/ishitabandyofinearts
> www.ishitabandyoarts.blogspot.com
>
> On May 27, 2013, at 7:59 PM, "justcarol67" <justcarol67@...> wrote:
>
> >
> > Karen wrote:
> >
> > > Ok, so the 'thesis' here is Shakespeare, More and 500 odd years of what a lot of people refer to as 'Tudor propaganda'.
> >
> > > The 'antithesis' is the work of modern (and some not so modern) revisionists, including various fictional works.
> >
> > > The 'synthesis' then is likely to be a further step, not a compromise nor some kind of arbitrary middle ground.
> >
> > Carol responds:
> >
> > I don't think that revisionists would accept these terms since their thesis would be that Richard *wasn't* the monster Richard depicted him as being, a point, by the way, that even moderate traditionalists like Pollard accept. But for the sake of argument, let's accept those terms and see what happens.
> >
> > Thesis 1 (Shakespeare): Richard was a hunchback.
> >
> > Antithesis 1(Markham et al.): Richard was in no way disabled or deformed.
> >
> > Synthesis 1: Richard was not deformed but may have had one shoulder higher than the other as the result of idiopathic scoliosis.
> >
> > Okay. That one works.
> >
> > Thesis 2: Richard had a withered arm from birth .
> >
> > Antithesis 2: Both arms were perfectly normal.
> >
> > Synthesis 2: Um, Richard's arm was normal at birth but withered by sorcery or premature old age affecting only one arm?
> >
> > I can't think of a reasonable compromise, and, in any case, we know that the antithesis is correct here.
> >
> > Thesis 3: Richard murdered Edward of Lancaster.
> >
> > Antithesis 3: Edward of Lancaster was killed in battle or fleeing from the battle, possibly by the Duke of Clarence's men.
> >
> > Synthesis 3: Edward of Lancaster was murdered by a group of men, possibly including Richard, George of Clarence, and Hastings.
> >
> > In this case, the contemporary accounts for both sides present the antithesis, which must be true if five sources from both sides of the conflict agree on it (even if they differ on the details). The (Tudor) synthesis begins in the Great Chronicle (possibly influenced by unreliable French sources) with unnamed servants of E4 murdering EoL and becomes Richard, George, and Hastings in Vergil, forty years after the event. Not even Shakespeare makes Richard the lone murderer. It's the three Plantagenet brothers working as a team. However much the story of Edward of Lancaster mouthing off to Edward (and paying the price with his death) may appeal to some people (I don't mean you, Karen, but I do have someone specific in mind), it is just that, a story, and one of the best examples of what Tey called Tonypandy in the making that I know of.
> >
> > Thesis 4: Richard killed the Duke of Somerset in the Battle of St. Albans and cut off his head (Henry VI Part II).
> >
> > Antithesis 4: Richard was two and a half and was at home in his nursery during the Battle of Saint Albans.
> >
> > Synthesis: No synthesis is possible. Richard didn't fight in that battle, much less kill anyone, nor was he present at Wakefield or Towton (Henry VI Patr III), both fought when he was nine.
> >
> > Richard Duke of Gloucester as depicted by Shakespeare in the Henry VI plays is so far from the historical Richard that we must ask ourselves whether we can believe anything at all of his continuation as a character in "Richard III."
> >
> > Thesis 5 (More): Richard plotted the death of the "Princes" with a "secret page" while sitting on the privy and had them killed by an ambitious knight previously unknown to Richard named Sir James Tyrrell.
> >
> > Antithesis 5a (Markham): Tyrrell killed the "Princes" for Henry Tudor, not for Richard.
> >
> > Antithesis 5b: Nobody killed the "Princes." At least one of them escaped to Burgundy and became Perkin Warbeck.
> >
> > Antithesis 5c: Buckingham killed the "Princes" for his own ends and let the blame fall on Richard.
> >
> > Synthesis: Nobody knows what happened. Not much of a synthesis, I realize, but until we know more about the bones in the urn, all we can do is examine the conflicting testimony in the light of Richard's character as revealed in other documents and draw our own conclusions.
> >
> > I'm afraid that the thesis-synthesis-antithesis method isn't going to work here since so much of Shakespeare and More can be rejected out of hand (and since Shakespeare was a dramatist, not a historian).
> >
> > We need to figure out what More was up to if we can and discard any parts of his work and Vergil's that are contradicted by earlier sources, especially primary ones, as well as any attempts at character assessment (psychology before the concept existed) by men who never even saw Richard. And we need to be very careful about anything we tentatively accept from those sources knowing how far from the mark the rest is.
> >
> > Mancini, Rous, and Croyland, as well as scattered letters and comments from other people, need to be read with a careful and critical eye and taken as fact only when confirmed by primary sources. (If a favorable source like Langton and an unfavorable source like Rous agree, the views expressed are probably accurate.) The only sources that we can accept as absolutely accurate and authentic are Richard's own letters and official documents and even those need to be read carefully, without bias or preconceptions, and bearing in mind any linguistic ambiguity resulting from translation from Latin to English or Early Modern English to Modern English.
> >
> > Our understanding of Richard does not require us to start from Tudor sources as our "thesis" with the revisionist views as "antithesis" and arrive at a "synthesis" somewhere between the two. Instead, we should start with contemporary documents, viewing them analytically and without preconceptions other than those which can be supported by other documents. The chroniclers, even Croyland and Mancini, assumed that Richard had aimed from at least the time of Edward IV's death to usurp the throne. To start with idea as our "thesis" requires us to try to *disprove* the "antithesis" (his assumption of the throne was both unanticipated and legal) since the only synthesis possible is the unsatisfactory one of an unanticipated usurpation.
> >
> > At any rate, we are all trying to arrive at the truth in our own way, but I don't think this particular method will work any more successfully for us (or, at any rate, for me) than it did for James Gairdner, trying to reconcile the documents accessible to him with Shakespeare's Machiavellian Richard.
> >
> > Carol
> >
> >
>
>
>
>

Carol, I intended to refer to one of the main historic charges against Richard, i.e. that he murdered the princes. My wording was unfortunate, because I actually do not suspect anyone of killing them, just that there were people with motives for doing it. I do know about the other probabilities, and in the books that will be published next year I have a theory of my own about where they went first. Yes, I have Richard removing them from the Tower after the Welles conspiracy, but from there they go somewhere not suggested so far (not that I know, anyway). Finally they go to Sheriff Hutton for a short time (along with the others I think Richard sent there) before making it safely to Margaret of Burgundy at the time of Bosworth. What she did with them or where she sent them is not referred to in these books. Richard's purpose is always simply to keep them safe and out of the public eye, not any ulterior, unpleasant motive. They are his nephews and he treats them as such. The books cover 1483 (Edward's death) to 1487 (Battle of Stoke Field and Elizabeth of York's coronation) and I hope to keep the series going, but that depends upon sales of the first three, of course. Fingers crossed on that one. If I continue with a fourth book, the princes will come back into the story, and my heroine has another husband and several more lovers to get through yet. She's rather susceptible to men. Anyway, I am favourable toward Richard throughout, so you won't find any nasty Tudor propaganda or traditionalist nonsense in my pages. Perish the thought!

Sandra

From: justcarol67
Sent: Tuesday, May 28, 2013 1:59 AM
To:
Subject: Re: Traditionalists, revisionists, & synthesists


Sandra wrote:
> [snip] Someone killed the princes, but I feel sure it was not Richard. Someone with an eye on blackening his good name, maybe, and there were a number with such motives. [snip]

Carol responds:

On the whole, I agree with your post, but I wanted to point out that we don't know that anyone killed the "Princes" (technically, at that time and until Titulus Regius was repealed, Edward IV's illegitimate sons).

I don't know whether you've read Annette Carson's "Richard III: The Maligned King." If not, I strongly recommend it. Like Audrey Williamson before her (and I also recommend Williamson's "Mystery of the Princes"), she explores the possibility that they were not killed at all but were sent to Sir James Tyrell's estate, Gipping, and from there to Burgundy. There's more evidence to support that idea than you might suspect, especially if you assume (as Kendall did) that the bones in the urn belong to Richard's nephews. Quite a few articles (most of them cited in Annette's book) have been written indicating the flaws in the 1933 assessment of the bones by Tanner and Wright, in particular their starting from the premise that they *were* the bones of the "Princes," who were killed (they thought) exactly as Sir Thomas More said they were (though he himself admitted that he had heard other versions of the supposed murders and even that one or both had escaped). There are a number of other reasons to suspect that the bones are from an earlier date than 1483-85 (allowing for the possibility of Henry as murderer), including the fact that they were found not at the foot of a staircase (a site from which More said they had been moved) but ten feet deep in the ground under the foundations of a staircase.

At any rate, we not only don't know who the murderer was, we don't know that they were murdered at all. It's even possible that they died from the sweating sickness or some other natural cause and Richard kept their deaths quiet because he knew that he would be blamed (as Edward had been for the death of Henry VI). But, as the psychologists point out in the most recent Ricardian Bulletin, it's more in character for Richard to smuggle them to safety and keep quiet for their sake.

Carol

Carol just to update you on the translation of the Anne/EOY thing. The first scrap we sent to my daughter she thought was straightforward and that it referred to the dresses, then when you sent the longer version she was no longer happy. It hinges on two things, the missing comma and the interpretation of the word 'color' which can also be used for beauty - they were two women of equal beauty. She has passed it to the Latin Dept of St Pauls Boy's School in London (Dean Colet's school) for a second opinion - they have a tradition of producing Oxbridge Latin professors. However, what she can say is that the Latin is immaculate classical Latin, not medieval Latin and that, as we know, the author had a real downer on the women. The fact that it is classical Latin, rather than medieval Latin could tell us something about the author?   


 

________________________________
From: justcarol67 <justcarol67@...>
To:
Sent: Tuesday, 28 May 2013, 2:32
Subject: Re: Traditionalists, revisionists, & synthesists

 



--- In , Ishita Bandyo <bandyoi@...> wrote:
>
> "I'm still wondering why there's so much resistance to the idea of 'revisionism' finding its way into academic study of history. I'm truly astonished that more people aren't behind that!"
>
> I am wondering about same think. All we get in Skidmore's " Richard was 4'8" tall version...... Human beings generally has a tendency to stick with status quo. The other alternative is uncomfortable and would require them to think outside the box. And I also think the historians do not want to rock the boat so much and jeopardize their career. If you are doing your phd under Hicks, you wouldn't want to extol Richard's good qualities.
> At least there is a lot of interest and questions regarding Richard and WotR and hopefully younger historians would step out with new analyses and Reinterpretation the primary sources.
> Carol's translation of the Latin texts is a very good start, IMO!

Carol responds:

Thanks, but please bear in mind that I'm very, very inexpert at these things and am only trying to call attention to the need for better translations and more attention to the Latin originals and their ambiguities. As far as I know, there's no complete translation of Rous's Anglia Historia (though we do have one for the Rous Roll).

I hope that Marie will join in the discussion of this translation as she did for Rous's "faciem curtam habiens," usually translated as "having a short face" but possibly meaning "having a distorted shape" in reference to the raised shoulder, the only distortion mentioned.

What drives me completely crazy is the way that the historians all echo one another and take the standard interpretations of these texts not only as the correct interpretation but as unquestioned fact.

I wish I *could* provide a brand-new translations of even one key source, but I'd need years and years of training in medieval Latin, not to mention that I'd need to be in England on a grant with unlimited funding and twenty or thirty years younger!

Carol

I echo that Karen; I see it as a gradual process rather than a big bang. Reassessment by revised research, not gaining the upper hand by Tudor bashing which is what some revisionists have tended to do in the past. We don't have to like the Tudors (I certainly dislike the majority of them) but resorting to a Richard v The Tudors doesn't really help anything. We can certainly explain their propeganda and emphasise the fragility of sources associated with them and others, but this will take time. And we can dig out other evidence, which I'm sure is there. But it will be gradual ..... H 

________________________________
From: reswallie_girl <Ragged_staff@...>
To:
Sent: Tuesday, 28 May 2013, 6:45
Subject: Re: Traditionalists, revisionists, & synthesists

 

There seems to be a lot of argument against points that I haven't made, which I find fascinating! I'm wondering still if I've been able to make myself fully understood, or if this idea is seen, for some reason, as a threat to 'revisionist' views. It's quite the opposite.

The 'thesis' is the full body of work that relates to 'Richard the monster/serial killer'. Not individual points.

The 'antithesis' is the full body of work that relates to 'Good King Richard/who could do no wrong'. Not individual points.

So far, academic history of Richard and his reign seems to relate more to the 'thesis' than the 'antithesis'. What I'm suggesting is that, in the coming years, more and more ideas that come out of the 'antithesis' will find their way into the world of academic history. There will be no 'compromise' or 'middle ground' sought but, working with both the 'thesis' and what has (to some extent) superseded it (the 'antithesis)', there will be a fresh body of work that addresses both the problems of the 'thesis' and those of the 'antithesis'.

This isn't so much a 'method' that I'm proposing historians follow but what I think is the next phase of historical research and writing about Richard, his life, times and reign. It isn't consciously negotiated but what's likely to occur in the normal course of events.

Arguing against 'using' this method is fine. However, I'm not advocating it's 'use' but seeing it on the horizon.

Karen Clark

--- In , Ishita Bandyo <bandyoi@...> wrote:
>
> Great post, Carol!
>
> Ishita Bandyo
> www.ishitabandyo.com
> www.facebook.com/ishitabandyofinearts
> www.ishitabandyoarts.blogspot.com
>
> On May 27, 2013, at 7:59 PM, "justcarol67" <justcarol67@...> wrote:
>
> >
> > Karen wrote:
> >
> > > Ok, so the 'thesis' here is Shakespeare, More and 500 odd years of what a lot of people refer to as 'Tudor propaganda'.
> >
> > > The 'antithesis' is the work of modern (and some not so modern) revisionists, including various fictional works.
> >
> > > The 'synthesis' then is likely to be a further step, not a compromise nor some kind of arbitrary middle ground.
> >
> > Carol responds:
> >
> > I don't think that revisionists would accept these terms since their thesis would be that Richard *wasn't* the monster Richard depicted him as being, a point, by the way, that even moderate traditionalists like Pollard accept. But for the sake of argument, let's accept those terms and see what happens.
> >
> > Thesis 1 (Shakespeare): Richard was a hunchback.
> >
> > Antithesis 1(Markham et al.): Richard was in no way disabled or deformed.
> >
> > Synthesis 1: Richard was not deformed but may have had one shoulder higher than the other as the result of idiopathic scoliosis.
> >
> > Okay. That one works.
> >
> > Thesis 2: Richard had a withered arm from birth .
> >
> > Antithesis 2: Both arms were perfectly normal.
> >
> > Synthesis 2: Um, Richard's arm was normal at birth but withered by sorcery or premature old age affecting only one arm?
> >
> > I can't think of a reasonable compromise, and, in any case, we know that the antithesis is correct here.
> >
> > Thesis 3: Richard murdered Edward of Lancaster.
> >
> > Antithesis 3: Edward of Lancaster was killed in battle or fleeing from the battle, possibly by the Duke of Clarence's men.
> >
> > Synthesis 3: Edward of Lancaster was murdered by a group of men, possibly including Richard, George of Clarence, and Hastings.
> >
> > In this case, the contemporary accounts for both sides present the antithesis, which must be true if five sources from both sides of the conflict agree on it (even if they differ on the details). The (Tudor) synthesis begins in the Great Chronicle (possibly influenced by unreliable French sources) with unnamed servants of E4 murdering EoL and becomes Richard, George, and Hastings in Vergil, forty years after the event. Not even Shakespeare makes Richard the lone murderer. It's the three Plantagenet brothers working as a team. However much the story of Edward of Lancaster mouthing off to Edward (and paying the price with his death) may appeal to some people (I don't mean you, Karen, but I do have someone specific in mind), it is just that, a story, and one of the best examples of what Tey called Tonypandy in the making that I know of.
> >
> > Thesis 4: Richard killed the Duke of Somerset in the Battle of St. Albans and cut off his head (Henry VI Part II).
> >
> > Antithesis 4: Richard was two and a half and was at home in his nursery during the Battle of Saint Albans.
> >
> > Synthesis: No synthesis is possible. Richard didn't fight in that battle, much less kill anyone, nor was he present at Wakefield or Towton (Henry VI Patr III), both fought when he was nine.
> >
> > Richard Duke of Gloucester as depicted by Shakespeare in the Henry VI plays is so far from the historical Richard that we must ask ourselves whether we can believe anything at all of his continuation as a character in "Richard III."
> >
> > Thesis 5 (More): Richard plotted the death of the "Princes" with a "secret page" while sitting on the privy and had them killed by an ambitious knight previously unknown to Richard named Sir James Tyrrell.
> >
> > Antithesis 5a (Markham): Tyrrell killed the "Princes" for Henry Tudor, not for Richard.
> >
> > Antithesis 5b: Nobody killed the "Princes." At least one of them escaped to Burgundy and became Perkin Warbeck.
> >
> > Antithesis 5c: Buckingham killed the "Princes" for his own ends and let the blame fall on Richard.
> >
> > Synthesis: Nobody knows what happened. Not much of a synthesis, I realize, but until we know more about the bones in the urn, all we can do is examine the conflicting testimony in the light of Richard's character as revealed in other documents and draw our own conclusions.
> >
> > I'm afraid that the thesis-synthesis-antithesis method isn't going to work here since so much of Shakespeare and More can be rejected out of hand (and since Shakespeare was a dramatist, not a historian).
> >
> > We need to figure out what More was up to if we can and discard any parts of his work and Vergil's that are contradicted by earlier sources, especially primary ones, as well as any attempts at character assessment (psychology before the concept existed) by men who never even saw Richard. And we need to be very careful about anything we tentatively accept from those sources knowing how far from the mark the rest is.
> >
> > Mancini, Rous, and Croyland, as well as scattered letters and comments from other people, need to be read with a careful and critical eye and taken as fact only when confirmed by primary sources. (If a favorable source like Langton and an unfavorable source like Rous agree, the views expressed are probably accurate.) The only sources that we can accept as absolutely accurate and authentic are Richard's own letters and official documents and even those need to be read carefully, without bias or preconceptions, and bearing in mind any linguistic ambiguity resulting from translation from Latin to English or Early Modern English to Modern English.
> >
> > Our understanding of Richard does not require us to start from Tudor sources as our "thesis" with the revisionist views as "antithesis" and arrive at a "synthesis" somewhere between the two. Instead, we should start with contemporary documents, viewing them analytically and without preconceptions other than those which can be supported by other documents. The chroniclers, even Croyland and Mancini, assumed that Richard had aimed from at least the time of Edward IV's death to usurp the throne. To start with idea as our "thesis" requires us to try to *disprove* the "antithesis" (his assumption of the throne was both unanticipated and legal) since the only synthesis possible is the unsatisfactory one of an unanticipated usurpation.
> >
> > At any rate, we are all trying to arrive at the truth in our own way, but I don't think this particular method will work any more successfully for us (or, at any rate, for me) than it did for James Gairdner, trying to reconcile the documents accessible to him with Shakespeare's Machiavellian Richard.
> >
> > Carol
> >
> >
>
>
>
>

--- In , Hilary Jones <hjnatdat@...> wrote:
>
> Carol just to update you on the translation of the Anne/EOY thing. The first scrap we sent to my daughter she thought was straightforward and that it referred to the dresses, then when you sent the longer version she was no longer happy. It hinges on two things, the missing comma and the interpretation of the word 'color' which can also be used for beauty - they were two women of equal beauty. She has passed it to the Latin Dept of St Pauls Boy's School in London (Dean Colet's school) for a second opinion - they have a tradition of producing Oxbridge Latin professors. However, what she can say is that the Latin is immaculate classical Latin, not medieval Latin and that, as we know, the author had a real downer on the women. The fact that it is classical Latin, rather than medieval Latin could tell us something about the author?   

Carol responds:

Thanks, Hilary. Interesting that it's classical Latin, not medieval, and that it's "immaculate." The problem with Latin to English translations, though, is that the languages are so different (English is analytic--that is, it depends a great deal on word order and to a lesser degree on word endings, Latin synthetic and almost wholly dependent on word endings for grammatical meaning). From what I've seen, Latin phrases (take, for example, Rous's "curtam habens faciem") can be ambiguous, with several markedly different possible translations. However, after the reaction to my last attempt to question a translation, I'm no longer enthusiastic about pursuing the subject, important though I still think it is.

Interesting that Chris Skidmore also thinks we need some new translations. I'd say we particularly need a readily accessible and inexpensive translation of Mancini and one of Rous. Vergil, except when he's dealing directly with Henry Tudor (and even then, we have to watch for bias and exaggeration) is primarily important in showing how far from the mark Tudor interpretations had become and, apparently, how willing people in general were to think the worst of Richard once Tudor propaganda had done its work.

Had Richard won at Bosworth, they would probably have accepted *Richard's* propaganda instead and viewed Henry Tudor as an illegitimate would-be usurper who intended to rob England of its claim to the French throne and oppress its people. The difference is that Richard's propaganda, though exaggerated, had its basis in fact.

Sorry--straying from the topic again! My main concern is still the tendency of historians to take the chronicles, especially Croyland and Mancini, as fact. That's the reason we need an accurate translation. If we're going to counter the chronicles and show their inadequacies, we need to start by making sure we know what they actually say, noting any amgiguities, and not respond indirectly to translations. C. A. J. Armstrong's use of "usurpation" to translate "occupatione" is the worst but not the only example of the way a translator's assumptions can influence his translation--and, in this instance, turn the "usurpation" into a fact by making it the title of the book, which anyone who uses that source has to cite as a reference.

Carol

I do agree. I wonder if St Pauls knows anyone who'd like to make their name by doing some for us? Failing that she could ask Mary Beard (her old tutor and now quite famous) whether she knows a scholar who's prepared to have a go and who really doesn't have a vested income in what it said - that's the problem with professional historians having a go.



________________________________
From: justcarol67 <justcarol67@...>
To:
Sent: Tuesday, 28 May 2013, 16:26
Subject: Re: Traditionalists, revisionists, & synthesists

 



--- In , Hilary Jones <hjnatdat@...> wrote:
>
> Carol just to update you on the translation of the Anne/EOY thing. The first scrap we sent to my daughter she thought was straightforward and that it referred to the dresses, then when you sent the longer version she was no longer happy. It hinges on two things, the missing comma and the interpretation of the word 'color' which can also be used for beauty - they were two women of equal beauty. She has passed it to the Latin Dept of St Pauls Boy's School in London (Dean Colet's school) for a second opinion - they have a tradition of producing Oxbridge Latin professors. However, what she can say is that the Latin is immaculate classical Latin, not medieval Latin and that, as we know, the author had a real downer on the women. The fact that it is classical Latin, rather than medieval Latin could tell us something about the author?   

Carol responds:

Thanks, Hilary. Interesting that it's classical Latin, not medieval, and that it's "immaculate." The problem with Latin to English translations, though, is that the languages are so different (English is analytic--that is, it depends a great deal on word order and to a lesser degree on word endings, Latin synthetic and almost wholly dependent on word endings for grammatical meaning). From what I've seen, Latin phrases (take, for example, Rous's "curtam habens faciem") can be ambiguous, with several markedly different possible translations. However, after the reaction to my last attempt to question a translation, I'm no longer enthusiastic about pursuing the subject, important though I still think it is.

Interesting that Chris Skidmore also thinks we need some new translations. I'd say we particularly need a readily accessible and inexpensive translation of Mancini and one of Rous. Vergil, except when he's dealing directly with Henry Tudor (and even then, we have to watch for bias and exaggeration) is primarily important in showing how far from the mark Tudor interpretations had become and, apparently, how willing people in general were to think the worst of Richard once Tudor propaganda had done its work.

Had Richard won at Bosworth, they would probably have accepted *Richard's* propaganda instead and viewed Henry Tudor as an illegitimate would-be usurper who intended to rob England of its claim to the French throne and oppress its people. The difference is that Richard's propaganda, though exaggerated, had its basis in fact.

Sorry--straying from the topic again! My main concern is still the tendency of historians to take the chronicles, especially Croyland and Mancini, as fact. That's the reason we need an accurate translation. If we're going to counter the chronicles and show their inadequacies, we need to start by making sure we know what they actually say, noting any amgiguities, and not respond indirectly to translations. C. A. J. Armstrong's use of "usurpation" to translate "occupatione" is the worst but not the only example of the way a translator's assumptions can influence his translation--and, in this instance, turn the "usurpation" into a fact by making it the title of the book, which anyone who uses that source has to cite as a reference.

Carol

Please don't shut up absolutely agree wih you. Goodness knows what might be found in some of the records that Robert Morton couldn't get his hands on.

--- In , Hilary Jones <hjnatdat@...> wrote:
>
> I agree very much with you penultimate paragraph concerning the lack of attachment to people mentioned in traditional sources. It's as though they're not real, that they're the characters in a play (and it's usually a play of at most thirty characters). No wonder Shakespeare found his job easy. You could totally forget that round them writhed a country of nearly two million other souls who come through so vibrantly when you read their wills, their quitclaims, their quarrels. And that they had an impact on the lives of the thirty characters. If we reach out to them there's a chance we might find some more rather than regurgitating the same old sources and grappling with the finer points of Latin. (As I write the translation of Croyland's 1484 Christmas festivities is currently doing the rounds of Cambridge and London over the interpretation of one word - and you could say that's where some scholars like to be, never reaching a conclusion, put cynically
> it keeps them in a job).
>  
> Your point about the Church's insistance on being perfect is very well timed. I've just spend time ploughing through pardons that the Pope is giving to priests in England living with 'virgins' (some for twenty-five years). How different is the truth to the illusion! How readily we believe one thing like the perfection of the Church because we've always been taught to believe it - and unfortunately so it is for many with Richard, they've been taught to believe it.
>  
> But I live in hope. And with that I'll shut up. H 
>
> ________________________________
> From: wednesday_mc <wednesday.mac@...>
> To:
> Sent: Monday, 27 May 2013, 22:10
> Subject: Re: Traditionalists, revisionists, & synthesists
>
>
>  
>
> Pamela wrote:
>
> > I am too, except many academicians have built their careers on the Tudor Dynasty, authors have become wealthy on their Tudor novels, and it is a huge cabal of people trying to pull protection cover over their views, which will turned on its head if they truly start to dig.
>
> Weds writes:
> That's what I thought too, while reading earlier posts on this subject. It reminds me of the medieval/renaissance church's insistence that the church was perfect, there could be no alterations in doctrine or tradition, and to challenge that was to risk being accused of blasphemy. We all know what happened after that....
>
> But what sort of academician would it take to follow up their MA or PhD and published papers with a new paper saying, "Excuse me, but I've done more digging and changed my mind about..." when those changes challenge the status quo of Tudor vs. Plantagenet? It seems to me to do so would be to commit career suicide a la Rupert Sheldrake.
>
> Perhaps it's the armchair historians who haven't anything to risk (the Phillipa Langleys and Ashdown-Hills) who will ultimately realign some opinions? Perhaps it's like the old adage, "When the student is ready, the teacher will appear"?
>
> Personally, I only went looking for the "real" Richard because More read like backstairs gossip and his account "felt" so wrong that it made me set him aside and look elsewhere. So even More can be useful for some things. :\
>
> But my (Tudor) professor of many years ago told me that historians are basically event-driven, not character-driven. (This, from the man whose office was furnished in early Elizabeth I?) Because I was majoring in English and writing fictional, character-driven works (he assumed), I needed to realign my thinking if I was ever to analyze history with any sort of finesse. Oh, and I should also throw out Jung and Maslow, if you please. Psychology is speculation, Tey was fiction, Richard did it as proven by the contemporary sources, end of discussion.
>
> But it was the vulnerable *man* who reached out to me across 500 years, and there was something about him that I couldn't ignore, even as glimpsed through More. It felt like betrayal to throw him away in favor of elevating the events of his life above him -- and this was long before I'd learned of the multiple, tangled betrayals of his life. He hadn't lived in a sterile, heartless vacuum, yet I was being asked to write as a sterile, heartless student and accept that he really was a stereotypical villain who'd orchestrated every evil from the moment his brother died because he'd always coveted the crown.
>
> But no man is that simple -- except to some historians -- and therein lies the problem. Some treat the contemporary sources (inaccurate or not) as dogma, and seem also to be so very unattached to the people talked about in those sources that it's not just boring -- it's heartbreaking -- to read what they produce. But their work serves their purposes, if not their subject's life.
>
> If Richard's reputation is to be restored, I think it will always be through one person at a time rather than through the mass conversion of a future generation of historians. The first thing that has to happen is the man has to matter, or no one looks any further.
>
> Those of us who've taken a second look at Richard seem to have the imagination and curiosity to dig deeper than most people. I came to care about the living man more than for the dead king, and I wasn't contented to shrug and accept the labels the Tudor "winners" have slapped onto him. A lot of other people are more concerned with their own priorities to give a second thought to any dude who lived a long time ago and died in a war that doesn't affect the life they're living today.
>
> In the end, I think Richard is likely destined to be perpetually ignored or demonized -- like Rasputin, another man who was neither devil nor saint.
>
> ~Weds
>
>
>
>
>
>

It is too neat a theory to compartmentalize Richard's detractors and supporters into a Traditionalists versus Revisionists debate with the outcome neatly summarized as a "synthesis of opinion" which it certainly will not be as there is far too much still to be done.

This rides roughshod over the belief that each and every piece of evidence has to be re-evaluated and analysed on its own merits in the face of new evidence provided from the discovery of Richard's remains and the expectation of further discoveries, i.e., scientific and otherwise in regard to the condition of the remains, health, diet and the possibility of evidence not yet come to light. However, the sources themselves are the only place to begin to investigate and re-evaluate and it will take a new and fresh perspective from someone with unclouded judgment and/or preconceived ideas.

In addition, historians, writers and the media who accept Shakespeare, More etc. appear to operate in a bubble where time stopped at the point when they formulated their stance and point of view and therefore disagree with any evidence that threatens or pushes that stance off its axis. The result is further entrenchment of views, which is what we have seen recently from many anti Richard and pro Tudor propagandist peddlers such as Starkey and others. Whilst they are defending a rearguard action there is also ongoing debate questioning the authorship of Shakespeare, which questions the validity of their argument altogether as if not Shakespeare, then who and why? The same questions could be asked of More and others.
Elaine

--- In , "reswallie_girl" <Ragged_staff@...> wrote:
>
> There seems to be a lot of argument against points that I haven't made, which I find fascinating! I'm wondering still if I've been able to make myself fully understood, or if this idea is seen, for some reason, as a threat to 'revisionist' views. It's quite the opposite.
>
> The 'thesis' is the full body of work that relates to 'Richard the monster/serial killer'. Not individual points.
>
> The 'antithesis' is the full body of work that relates to 'Good King Richard/who could do no wrong'. Not individual points.
>
> So far, academic history of Richard and his reign seems to relate more to the 'thesis' than the 'antithesis'. What I'm suggesting is that, in the coming years, more and more ideas that come out of the 'antithesis' will find their way into the world of academic history. There will be no 'compromise' or 'middle ground' sought but, working with both the 'thesis' and what has (to some extent) superseded it (the 'antithesis)', there will be a fresh body of work that addresses both the problems of the 'thesis' and those of the 'antithesis'.
>
> This isn't so much a 'method' that I'm proposing historians follow but what I think is the next phase of historical research and writing about Richard, his life, times and reign. It isn't consciously negotiated but what's likely to occur in the normal course of events.
>
> Arguing against 'using' this method is fine. However, I'm not advocating it's 'use' but seeing it on the horizon.
>
> Karen Clark
>
> --- In , Ishita Bandyo <bandyoi@> wrote:
> >
> > Great post, Carol!
> >
> > Ishita Bandyo
> > www.ishitabandyo.com
> > www.facebook.com/ishitabandyofinearts
> > www.ishitabandyoarts.blogspot.com
> >
> > On May 27, 2013, at 7:59 PM, "justcarol67" <justcarol67@> wrote:
> >
> > >
> > > Karen wrote:
> > >
> > > > Ok, so the 'thesis' here is Shakespeare, More and 500 odd years of what a lot of people refer to as 'Tudor propaganda'.
> > >
> > > > The 'antithesis' is the work of modern (and some not so modern) revisionists, including various fictional works.
> > >
> > > > The 'synthesis' then is likely to be a further step, not a compromise nor some kind of arbitrary middle ground.
> > >
> > > Carol responds:
> > >
> > > I don't think that revisionists would accept these terms since their thesis would be that Richard *wasn't* the monster Richard depicted him as being, a point, by the way, that even moderate traditionalists like Pollard accept. But for the sake of argument, let's accept those terms and see what happens.
> > >
> > > Thesis 1 (Shakespeare): Richard was a hunchback.
> > >
> > > Antithesis 1(Markham et al.): Richard was in no way disabled or deformed.
> > >
> > > Synthesis 1: Richard was not deformed but may have had one shoulder higher than the other as the result of idiopathic scoliosis.
> > >
> > > Okay. That one works.
> > >
> > > Thesis 2: Richard had a withered arm from birth .
> > >
> > > Antithesis 2: Both arms were perfectly normal.
> > >
> > > Synthesis 2: Um, Richard's arm was normal at birth but withered by sorcery or premature old age affecting only one arm?
> > >
> > > I can't think of a reasonable compromise, and, in any case, we know that the antithesis is correct here.
> > >
> > > Thesis 3: Richard murdered Edward of Lancaster.
> > >
> > > Antithesis 3: Edward of Lancaster was killed in battle or fleeing from the battle, possibly by the Duke of Clarence's men.
> > >
> > > Synthesis 3: Edward of Lancaster was murdered by a group of men, possibly including Richard, George of Clarence, and Hastings.
> > >
> > > In this case, the contemporary accounts for both sides present the antithesis, which must be true if five sources from both sides of the conflict agree on it (even if they differ on the details). The (Tudor) synthesis begins in the Great Chronicle (possibly influenced by unreliable French sources) with unnamed servants of E4 murdering EoL and becomes Richard, George, and Hastings in Vergil, forty years after the event. Not even Shakespeare makes Richard the lone murderer. It's the three Plantagenet brothers working as a team. However much the story of Edward of Lancaster mouthing off to Edward (and paying the price with his death) may appeal to some people (I don't mean you, Karen, but I do have someone specific in mind), it is just that, a story, and one of the best examples of what Tey called Tonypandy in the making that I know of.
> > >
> > > Thesis 4: Richard killed the Duke of Somerset in the Battle of St. Albans and cut off his head (Henry VI Part II).
> > >
> > > Antithesis 4: Richard was two and a half and was at home in his nursery during the Battle of Saint Albans.
> > >
> > > Synthesis: No synthesis is possible. Richard didn't fight in that battle, much less kill anyone, nor was he present at Wakefield or Towton (Henry VI Patr III), both fought when he was nine.
> > >
> > > Richard Duke of Gloucester as depicted by Shakespeare in the Henry VI plays is so far from the historical Richard that we must ask ourselves whether we can believe anything at all of his continuation as a character in "Richard III."
> > >
> > > Thesis 5 (More): Richard plotted the death of the "Princes" with a "secret page" while sitting on the privy and had them killed by an ambitious knight previously unknown to Richard named Sir James Tyrrell.
> > >
> > > Antithesis 5a (Markham): Tyrrell killed the "Princes" for Henry Tudor, not for Richard.
> > >
> > > Antithesis 5b: Nobody killed the "Princes." At least one of them escaped to Burgundy and became Perkin Warbeck.
> > >
> > > Antithesis 5c: Buckingham killed the "Princes" for his own ends and let the blame fall on Richard.
> > >
> > > Synthesis: Nobody knows what happened. Not much of a synthesis, I realize, but until we know more about the bones in the urn, all we can do is examine the conflicting testimony in the light of Richard's character as revealed in other documents and draw our own conclusions.
> > >
> > > I'm afraid that the thesis-synthesis-antithesis method isn't going to work here since so much of Shakespeare and More can be rejected out of hand (and since Shakespeare was a dramatist, not a historian).
> > >
> > > We need to figure out what More was up to if we can and discard any parts of his work and Vergil's that are contradicted by earlier sources, especially primary ones, as well as any attempts at character assessment (psychology before the concept existed) by men who never even saw Richard. And we need to be very careful about anything we tentatively accept from those sources knowing how far from the mark the rest is.
> > >
> > > Mancini, Rous, and Croyland, as well as scattered letters and comments from other people, need to be read with a careful and critical eye and taken as fact only when confirmed by primary sources. (If a favorable source like Langton and an unfavorable source like Rous agree, the views expressed are probably accurate.) The only sources that we can accept as absolutely accurate and authentic are Richard's own letters and official documents and even those need to be read carefully, without bias or preconceptions, and bearing in mind any linguistic ambiguity resulting from translation from Latin to English or Early Modern English to Modern English.
> > >
> > > Our understanding of Richard does not require us to start from Tudor sources as our "thesis" with the revisionist views as "antithesis" and arrive at a "synthesis" somewhere between the two. Instead, we should start with contemporary documents, viewing them analytically and without preconceptions other than those which can be supported by other documents. The chroniclers, even Croyland and Mancini, assumed that Richard had aimed from at least the time of Edward IV's death to usurp the throne. To start with idea as our "thesis" requires us to try to *disprove* the "antithesis" (his assumption of the throne was both unanticipated and legal) since the only synthesis possible is the unsatisfactory one of an unanticipated usurpation.
> > >
> > > At any rate, we are all trying to arrive at the truth in our own way, but I don't think this particular method will work any more successfully for us (or, at any rate, for me) than it did for James Gairdner, trying to reconcile the documents accessible to him with Shakespeare's Machiavellian Richard.
> > >
> > > Carol
> > >
> > >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>

My script is with producers at the moment, and going the rounds, but
finding the funding is very hard. Clive Owen has never crossed my mind,
though I have my Richard chosen, an actor who is physically right, with
the right colouring, who can play him from 16 to 32 without CGI or
excessive makeup, and who, most importantly, has the talent to do the
emotional highs and lows of the challenging role. But I am not telling
who he is as I don't play the casting game here!
He is also not someone I think could play anything, or walk on water, as
some casting suggestions:-)

At present we may be able to get funding to do a political thriller, a
dramatised documentary called "The Year of Three Kings - how Richard III
came to the throne" concentrating on 1483.
My producer seems to think that some money men will love it when they
see the script. Then he can say, 'well if you want to see the whole
story here it is', and hand over the rest.

'Richard' by Paul Trevor Bale, is mapped out as a five part mini
series, Richard's whole life, on the scale of Game of Thrones, which is
how we are trying to sell it, as GOT is hugely successful.

Unfortunately The White Queen is about to burst onto BBC screens, which
does no favours to the truth, the author's 'research' being very sloppy
and lazy. Richard and Edward murder Henry VI together will give you an
idea of how it goes. Anyone who has read the books, I chucked the Anne
Neville one across the room at one point, then threw it out, will be
aware of how closely Philippa Gregory adheres to the traditional line. A
review of another of her books said "with its crass dialogue and
dubious, join-the-dots plotting, this is a love story with the subtlety
of an axe".

Makes me angry, as the excuse of the traditional line being more
dramatic is nonsense, as Richard's story told as it happened, is just as
dramatic, if not more so, than Shakespeare.
If you have any money going spare Michele I know a way of putting it to
use for the cause!:-)
Paul

On 28/05/2013 01:32, Michele Thorsteinson wrote:
> I recall that, at one point several years ago, a member of this list(I believe the old one closed, and I did not look for the new one until very recently) was working on some material for a possible film about the life and reign of Richard III. There was even a subsequent discussion as to who would play Richard(Clive Owen was the popular choice).
> For years, I have checked, here and there, as to the progress of ANY film underway about Richard III, but it seems as if it was simply a dream that went nowhere.
>
> I'd be thrilled if someone would simply do a film adaption of The Sunne In Splendour, but even moreso a film based strictly on the facts, as we understand them.
>
> Michele
> ml_thorsteinson@...
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: Ishita Bandyo <bandyoi@...>
> To: "" <>
> Sent: Monday, May 27, 2013 7:02 PM
> Subject: Re: Traditionalists, revisionists, & synthesists
>
>
>
>
> Awesome post.
> But I disagree that Richard would be perpetually ignored or demonized. Look at the interest he has generated and made some real impact on people. I am sure that here will be a day in our life time when R will find his rightful place in history .
>
> Ishita Bandyo
> Sent from my iPad
>
> On May 27, 2013, at 5:10 PM, "wednesday_mc" <mailto:wednesday.mac%40gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Pamela wrote:
>>
>>> I am too, except many academicians have built their careers on the Tudor Dynasty, authors have become wealthy on their Tudor novels, and it is a huge cabal of people trying to pull protection cover over their views, which will turned on its head if they truly start to dig.
>> Weds writes:
>> That's what I thought too, while reading earlier posts on this subject. It reminds me of the medieval/renaissance church's insistence that the church was perfect, there could be no alterations in doctrine or tradition, and to challenge that was to risk being accused of blasphemy. We all know what happened after that....
>>
>> But what sort of academician would it take to follow up their MA or PhD and published papers with a new paper saying, "Excuse me, but I've done more digging and changed my mind about..." when those changes challenge the status quo of Tudor vs. Plantagenet? It seems to me to do so would be to commit career suicide a la Rupert Sheldrake.
>>
>> Perhaps it's the armchair historians who haven't anything to risk (the Phillipa Langleys and Ashdown-Hills) who will ultimately realign some opinions? Perhaps it's like the old adage, "When the student is ready, the teacher will appear"?
>>
>> Personally, I only went looking for the "real" Richard because More read like backstairs gossip and his account "felt" so wrong that it made me set him aside and look elsewhere. So even More can be useful for some things. :\
>>
>> But my (Tudor) professor of many years ago told me that historians are basically event-driven, not character-driven. (This, from the man whose office was furnished in early Elizabeth I?) Because I was majoring in English and writing fictional, character-driven works (he assumed), I needed to realign my thinking if I was ever to analyze history with any sort of finesse. Oh, and I should also throw out Jung and Maslow, if you please. Psychology is speculation, Tey was fiction, Richard did it as proven by the contemporary sources, end of discussion.
>>
>> But it was the vulnerable *man* who reached out to me across 500 years, and there was something about him that I couldn't ignore, even as glimpsed through More. It felt like betrayal to throw him away in favor of elevating the events of his life above him -- and this was long before I'd learned of the multiple, tangled betrayals of his life. He hadn't lived in a sterile, heartless vacuum, yet I was being asked to write as a sterile, heartless student and accept that he really was a stereotypical villain who'd orchestrated every evil from the moment his brother died because he'd always coveted the crown.
>>
>> But no man is that simple -- except to some historians -- and therein lies the problem. Some treat the contemporary sources (inaccurate or not) as dogma, and seem also to be so very unattached to the people talked about in those sources that it's not just boring -- it's heartbreaking -- to read what they produce. But their work serves their purposes, if not their subject's life.
>>
>> If Richard's reputation is to be restored, I think it will always be through one person at a time rather than through the mass conversion of a future generation of historians. The first thing that has to happen is the man has to matter, or no one looks any further.
>>
>> Those of us who've taken a second look at Richard seem to have the imagination and curiosity to dig deeper than most people. I came to care about the living man more than for the dead king, and I wasn't contented to shrug and accept the labels the Tudor "winners" have slapped onto him. A lot of other people are more concerned with their own priorities to give a second thought to any dude who lived a long time ago and died in a war that doesn't affect the life they're living today.
>>
>> In the end, I think Richard is likely destined to be perpetually ignored or demonized -- like Rasputin, another man who was neither devil nor saint.
>>
>> ~Weds
>>
>>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>


--
Richard Liveth Yet!

Paul, I wish you the best of luck with your work. What a difficult task to create a script, and then to find funding, casting, and last, forced to go Mano-A-Mano with such dreck!

On May 28, 2013, at 2:15 PM, "Paul Trevor Bale" <paul.bale@...<mailto:paul.bale@...>> wrote:



My script is with producers at the moment, and going the rounds, but
finding the funding is very hard. Clive Owen has never crossed my mind,
though I have my Richard chosen, an actor who is physically right, with
the right colouring, who can play him from 16 to 32 without CGI or
excessive makeup, and who, most importantly, has the talent to do the
emotional highs and lows of the challenging role. But I am not telling
who he is as I don't play the casting game here!
He is also not someone I think could play anything, or walk on water, as
some casting suggestions:-)

At present we may be able to get funding to do a political thriller, a
dramatised documentary called "The Year of Three Kings - how Richard III
came to the throne" concentrating on 1483.
My producer seems to think that some money men will love it when they
see the script. Then he can say, 'well if you want to see the whole
story here it is', and hand over the rest.

'Richard' by Paul Trevor Bale, is mapped out as a five part mini
series, Richard's whole life, on the scale of Game of Thrones, which is
how we are trying to sell it, as GOT is hugely successful.

Unfortunately The White Queen is about to burst onto BBC screens, which
does no favours to the truth, the author's 'research' being very sloppy
and lazy. Richard and Edward murder Henry VI together will give you an
idea of how it goes. Anyone who has read the books, I chucked the Anne
Neville one across the room at one point, then threw it out, will be
aware of how closely Philippa Gregory adheres to the traditional line. A
review of another of her books said "with its crass dialogue and
dubious, join-the-dots plotting, this is a love story with the subtlety
of an axe".

Makes me angry, as the excuse of the traditional line being more
dramatic is nonsense, as Richard's story told as it happened, is just as
dramatic, if not more so, than Shakespeare.
If you have any money going spare Michele I know a way of putting it to
use for the cause!:-)
Paul

On 28/05/2013 01:32, Michele Thorsteinson wrote:
> I recall that, at one point several years ago, a member of this list(I believe the old one closed, and I did not look for the new one until very recently) was working on some material for a possible film about the life and reign of Richard III. There was even a subsequent discussion as to who would play Richard(Clive Owen was the popular choice).
> For years, I have checked, here and there, as to the progress of ANY film underway about Richard III, but it seems as if it was simply a dream that went nowhere.
>
> I'd be thrilled if someone would simply do a film adaption of The Sunne In Splendour, but even moreso a film based strictly on the facts, as we understand them.
>
> Michele
> ml_thorsteinson@...<mailto:ml_thorsteinson%40yahoo.com>
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: Ishita Bandyo <bandyoi@...<mailto:bandyoi%40yahoo.com>>
> To: "<mailto:%40yahoogroups.com>" <<mailto:%40yahoogroups.com>>
> Sent: Monday, May 27, 2013 7:02 PM
> Subject: Re: Traditionalists, revisionists, & synthesists
>
>
>
>
> Awesome post.
> But I disagree that Richard would be perpetually ignored or demonized. Look at the interest he has generated and made some real impact on people. I am sure that here will be a day in our life time when R will find his rightful place in history .
>
> Ishita Bandyo
> Sent from my iPad
>
> On May 27, 2013, at 5:10 PM, "wednesday_mc" <mailto:wednesday.mac%40gmail.com<http://40gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>> Pamela wrote:
>>
>>> I am too, except many academicians have built their careers on the Tudor Dynasty, authors have become wealthy on their Tudor novels, and it is a huge cabal of people trying to pull protection cover over their views, which will turned on its head if they truly start to dig.
>> Weds writes:
>> That's what I thought too, while reading earlier posts on this subject. It reminds me of the medieval/renaissance church's insistence that the church was perfect, there could be no alterations in doctrine or tradition, and to challenge that was to risk being accused of blasphemy. We all know what happened after that....
>>
>> But what sort of academician would it take to follow up their MA or PhD and published papers with a new paper saying, "Excuse me, but I've done more digging and changed my mind about..." when those changes challenge the status quo of Tudor vs. Plantagenet? It seems to me to do so would be to commit career suicide a la Rupert Sheldrake.
>>
>> Perhaps it's the armchair historians who haven't anything to risk (the Phillipa Langleys and Ashdown-Hills) who will ultimately realign some opinions? Perhaps it's like the old adage, "When the student is ready, the teacher will appear"?
>>
>> Personally, I only went looking for the "real" Richard because More read like backstairs gossip and his account "felt" so wrong that it made me set him aside and look elsewhere. So even More can be useful for some things. :\
>>
>> But my (Tudor) professor of many years ago told me that historians are basically event-driven, not character-driven. (This, from the man whose office was furnished in early Elizabeth I?) Because I was majoring in English and writing fictional, character-driven works (he assumed), I needed to realign my thinking if I was ever to analyze history with any sort of finesse. Oh, and I should also throw out Jung and Maslow, if you please. Psychology is speculation, Tey was fiction, Richard did it as proven by the contemporary sources, end of discussion.
>>
>> But it was the vulnerable *man* who reached out to me across 500 years, and there was something about him that I couldn't ignore, even as glimpsed through More. It felt like betrayal to throw him away in favor of elevating the events of his life above him -- and this was long before I'd learned of the multiple, tangled betrayals of his life. He hadn't lived in a sterile, heartless vacuum, yet I was being asked to write as a sterile, heartless student and accept that he really was a stereotypical villain who'd orchestrated every evil from the moment his brother died because he'd always coveted the crown.
>>
>> But no man is that simple -- except to some historians -- and therein lies the problem. Some treat the contemporary sources (inaccurate or not) as dogma, and seem also to be so very unattached to the people talked about in those sources that it's not just boring -- it's heartbreaking -- to read what they produce. But their work serves their purposes, if not their subject's life.
>>
>> If Richard's reputation is to be restored, I think it will always be through one person at a time rather than through the mass conversion of a future generation of historians. The first thing that has to happen is the man has to matter, or no one looks any further.
>>
>> Those of us who've taken a second look at Richard seem to have the imagination and curiosity to dig deeper than most people. I came to care about the living man more than for the dead king, and I wasn't contented to shrug and accept the labels the Tudor "winners" have slapped onto him. A lot of other people are more concerned with their own priorities to give a second thought to any dude who lived a long time ago and died in a war that doesn't affect the life they're living today.
>>
>> In the end, I think Richard is likely destined to be perpetually ignored or demonized -- like Rasputin, another man who was neither devil nor saint.
>>
>> ~Weds
>>
>>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>

--
Richard Liveth Yet!

Oh, Paul, it was you!!!  OhMyGoodness, I hope to see this project come to fruition before I am also found under a parking lot...
 
Yes...I believe the discussion regarding Clive Owen came from others on the list, and not yourself. In fact, if I recall correctly, I proposed Nigel Terry, at which point everyone had a good cyber laugh at my expense.
 
I will most selfishly wish you luck on your project. It is such a rich, colourful story, with controversy, intrigue, and potential emotional wrenching...I cannot imagine why one wouldn't want to see this happen.
 
And, when has a historically researched film ever been made about this interesting era of English history? It is time.

Michele
ml_thorsteinson@...


________________________________
From: Paul Trevor Bale <paul.bale@...>
To:
Sent: Tuesday, May 28, 2013 2:15 PM
Subject: Re: Traditionalists, revisionists, & synthesists


 

My script is with producers at the moment, and going the rounds, but
finding the funding is very hard. Clive Owen has never crossed my mind,
though I have my Richard chosen, an actor who is physically right, with
the right colouring, who can play him from 16 to 32 without CGI or
excessive makeup, and who, most importantly, has the talent to do the
emotional highs and lows of the challenging role. But I am not telling
who he is as I don't play the casting game here!
He is also not someone I think could play anything, or walk on water, as
some casting suggestions:-)

At present we may be able to get funding to do a political thriller, a
dramatised documentary called "The Year of Three Kings - how Richard III
came to the throne" concentrating on 1483.
My producer seems to think that some money men will love it when they
see the script. Then he can say, 'well if you want to see the whole
story here it is', and hand over the rest.

'Richard' by Paul Trevor Bale, is mapped out as a five part mini
series, Richard's whole life, on the scale of Game of Thrones, which is
how we are trying to sell it, as GOT is hugely successful.

Unfortunately The White Queen is about to burst onto BBC screens, which
does no favours to the truth, the author's 'research' being very sloppy
and lazy. Richard and Edward murder Henry VI together will give you an
idea of how it goes. Anyone who has read the books, I chucked the Anne
Neville one across the room at one point, then threw it out, will be
aware of how closely Philippa Gregory adheres to the traditional line. A
review of another of her books said "with its crass dialogue and
dubious, join-the-dots plotting, this is a love story with the subtlety
of an axe".

Makes me angry, as the excuse of the traditional line being more
dramatic is nonsense, as Richard's story told as it happened, is just as
dramatic, if not more so, than Shakespeare.
If you have any money going spare Michele I know a way of putting it to
use for the cause!:-)
Paul

On 28/05/2013 01:32, Michele Thorsteinson wrote:
> I recall that, at one point several years ago, a member of this list(I believe the old one closed, and I did not look for the new one until very recently) was working on some material for a possible film about the life and reign of Richard III. There was even a subsequent discussion as to who would play Richard(Clive Owen was the popular choice).
> For years, I have checked, here and there, as to the progress of ANY film underway about Richard III, but it seems as if it was simply a dream that went nowhere.
>
> I'd be thrilled if someone would simply do a film adaption of The Sunne In Splendour, but even moreso a film based strictly on the facts, as we understand them.
>
> Michele
> mailto:ml_thorsteinson%40yahoo.com
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: Ishita Bandyo <mailto:bandyoi%40yahoo.com>
> To: "mailto:%40yahoogroups.com" <mailto:%40yahoogroups.com>
> Sent: Monday, May 27, 2013 7:02 PM
> Subject: Re: Traditionalists, revisionists, & synthesists
>
>
>
>
> Awesome post.
> But I disagree that Richard would be perpetually ignored or demonized. Look at the interest he has generated and made some real impact on people. I am sure that here will be a day in our life time when R will find his rightful place in history .
>
> Ishita Bandyo
> Sent from my iPad
>
> On May 27, 2013, at 5:10 PM, "wednesday_mc" <mailto:wednesday.mac%40gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Pamela wrote:
>>
>>> I am too, except many academicians have built their careers on the Tudor Dynasty, authors have become wealthy on their Tudor novels, and it is a huge cabal of people trying to pull protection cover over their views, which will turned on its head if they truly start to dig.
>> Weds writes:
>> That's what I thought too, while reading earlier posts on this subject. It reminds me of the medieval/renaissance church's insistence that the church was perfect, there could be no alterations in doctrine or tradition, and to challenge that was to risk being accused of blasphemy. We all know what happened after that....
>>
>> But what sort of academician would it take to follow up their MA or PhD and published papers with a new paper saying, "Excuse me, but I've done more digging and changed my mind about..." when those changes challenge the status quo of Tudor vs. Plantagenet? It seems to me to do so would be to commit career suicide a la Rupert Sheldrake.
>>
>> Perhaps it's the armchair historians who haven't anything to risk (the Phillipa Langleys and Ashdown-Hills) who will ultimately realign some opinions? Perhaps it's like the old adage, "When the student is ready, the teacher will appear"?
>>
>> Personally, I only went looking for the "real" Richard because More read like backstairs gossip and his account "felt" so wrong that it made me set him aside and look elsewhere. So even More can be useful for some things. :\
>>
>> But my (Tudor) professor of many years ago told me that historians are basically event-driven, not character-driven. (This, from the man whose office was furnished in early Elizabeth I?) Because I was majoring in English and writing fictional, character-driven works (he assumed), I needed to realign my thinking if I was ever to analyze history with any sort of finesse. Oh, and I should also throw out Jung and Maslow, if you please. Psychology is speculation, Tey was fiction, Richard did it as proven by the contemporary sources, end of discussion.
>>
>> But it was the vulnerable *man* who reached out to me across 500 years, and there was something about him that I couldn't ignore, even as glimpsed through More. It felt like betrayal to throw him away in favor of elevating the events of his life above him -- and this was long before I'd learned of the multiple, tangled betrayals of his life. He hadn't lived in a sterile, heartless vacuum, yet I was being asked to write as a sterile, heartless student and accept that he really was a stereotypical villain who'd orchestrated every evil from the moment his brother died because he'd always coveted the crown.
>>
>> But no man is that simple -- except to some historians -- and therein lies the problem. Some treat the contemporary sources (inaccurate or not) as dogma, and seem also to be so very unattached to the people talked about in those sources that it's not just boring -- it's heartbreaking -- to read what they produce. But their work serves their purposes, if not their subject's life.
>>
>> If Richard's reputation is to be restored, I think it will always be through one person at a time rather than through the mass conversion of a future generation of historians. The first thing that has to happen is the man has to matter, or no one looks any further.
>>
>> Those of us who've taken a second look at Richard seem to have the imagination and curiosity to dig deeper than most people. I came to care about the living man more than for the dead king, and I wasn't contented to shrug and accept the labels the Tudor "winners" have slapped onto him. A lot of other people are more concerned with their own priorities to give a second thought to any dude who lived a long time ago and died in a war that doesn't affect the life they're living today.
>>
>> In the end, I think Richard is likely destined to be perpetually ignored or demonized -- like Rasputin, another man who was neither devil nor saint.
>>
>> ~Weds
>>
>>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>

--
Richard Liveth Yet!

I wish you the very best of luck. Never give up. Let's trust that people will recognise The White Queen for what it is (the trailers make me cringe). They certainly did with 'World Without End'. H



________________________________
From: Paul Trevor Bale <paul.bale@...>
To:
Sent: Tuesday, 28 May 2013, 20:15
Subject: Re: Traditionalists, revisionists, & synthesists


 

My script is with producers at the moment, and going the rounds, but
finding the funding is very hard. Clive Owen has never crossed my mind,
though I have my Richard chosen, an actor who is physically right, with
the right colouring, who can play him from 16 to 32 without CGI or
excessive makeup, and who, most importantly, has the talent to do the
emotional highs and lows of the challenging role. But I am not telling
who he is as I don't play the casting game here!
He is also not someone I think could play anything, or walk on water, as
some casting suggestions:-)

At present we may be able to get funding to do a political thriller, a
dramatised documentary called "The Year of Three Kings - how Richard III
came to the throne" concentrating on 1483.
My producer seems to think that some money men will love it when they
see the script. Then he can say, 'well if you want to see the whole
story here it is', and hand over the rest.

'Richard' by Paul Trevor Bale, is mapped out as a five part mini
series, Richard's whole life, on the scale of Game of Thrones, which is
how we are trying to sell it, as GOT is hugely successful.

Unfortunately The White Queen is about to burst onto BBC screens, which
does no favours to the truth, the author's 'research' being very sloppy
and lazy. Richard and Edward murder Henry VI together will give you an
idea of how it goes. Anyone who has read the books, I chucked the Anne
Neville one across the room at one point, then threw it out, will be
aware of how closely Philippa Gregory adheres to the traditional line. A
review of another of her books said "with its crass dialogue and
dubious, join-the-dots plotting, this is a love story with the subtlety
of an axe".

Makes me angry, as the excuse of the traditional line being more
dramatic is nonsense, as Richard's story told as it happened, is just as
dramatic, if not more so, than Shakespeare.
If you have any money going spare Michele I know a way of putting it to
use for the cause!:-)
Paul

On 28/05/2013 01:32, Michele Thorsteinson wrote:
> I recall that, at one point several years ago, a member of this list(I believe the old one closed, and I did not look for the new one until very recently) was working on some material for a possible film about the life and reign of Richard III. There was even a subsequent discussion as to who would play Richard(Clive Owen was the popular choice).
> For years, I have checked, here and there, as to the progress of ANY film underway about Richard III, but it seems as if it was simply a dream that went nowhere.
>
> I'd be thrilled if someone would simply do a film adaption of The Sunne In Splendour, but even moreso a film based strictly on the facts, as we understand them.
>
> Michele
> mailto:ml_thorsteinson%40yahoo.com
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: Ishita Bandyo <mailto:bandyoi%40yahoo.com>
> To: "mailto:%40yahoogroups.com" <mailto:%40yahoogroups.com>
> Sent: Monday, May 27, 2013 7:02 PM
> Subject: Re: Traditionalists, revisionists, & synthesists
>
>
>
>
> Awesome post.
> But I disagree that Richard would be perpetually ignored or demonized. Look at the interest he has generated and made some real impact on people. I am sure that here will be a day in our life time when R will find his rightful place in history .
>
> Ishita Bandyo
> Sent from my iPad
>
> On May 27, 2013, at 5:10 PM, "wednesday_mc" <mailto:wednesday.mac%40gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Pamela wrote:
>>
>>> I am too, except many academicians have built their careers on the Tudor Dynasty, authors have become wealthy on their Tudor novels, and it is a huge cabal of people trying to pull protection cover over their views, which will turned on its head if they truly start to dig.
>> Weds writes:
>> That's what I thought too, while reading earlier posts on this subject. It reminds me of the medieval/renaissance church's insistence that the church was perfect, there could be no alterations in doctrine or tradition, and to challenge that was to risk being accused of blasphemy. We all know what happened after that....
>>
>> But what sort of academician would it take to follow up their MA or PhD and published papers with a new paper saying, "Excuse me, but I've done more digging and changed my mind about..." when those changes challenge the status quo of Tudor vs. Plantagenet? It seems to me to do so would be to commit career suicide a la Rupert Sheldrake.
>>
>> Perhaps it's the armchair historians who haven't anything to risk (the Phillipa Langleys and Ashdown-Hills) who will ultimately realign some opinions? Perhaps it's like the old adage, "When the student is ready, the teacher will appear"?
>>
>> Personally, I only went looking for the "real" Richard because More read like backstairs gossip and his account "felt" so wrong that it made me set him aside and look elsewhere. So even More can be useful for some things. :\
>>
>> But my (Tudor) professor of many years ago told me that historians are basically event-driven, not character-driven. (This, from the man whose office was furnished in early Elizabeth I?) Because I was majoring in English and writing fictional, character-driven works (he assumed), I needed to realign my thinking if I was ever to analyze history with any sort of finesse. Oh, and I should also throw out Jung and Maslow, if you please. Psychology is speculation, Tey was fiction, Richard did it as proven by the contemporary sources, end of discussion.
>>
>> But it was the vulnerable *man* who reached out to me across 500 years, and there was something about him that I couldn't ignore, even as glimpsed through More. It felt like betrayal to throw him away in favor of elevating the events of his life above him -- and this was long before I'd learned of the multiple, tangled betrayals of his life. He hadn't lived in a sterile, heartless vacuum, yet I was being asked to write as a sterile, heartless student and accept that he really was a stereotypical villain who'd orchestrated every evil from the moment his brother died because he'd always coveted the crown.
>>
>> But no man is that simple -- except to some historians -- and therein lies the problem. Some treat the contemporary sources (inaccurate or not) as dogma, and seem also to be so very unattached to the people talked about in those sources that it's not just boring -- it's heartbreaking -- to read what they produce. But their work serves their purposes, if not their subject's life.
>>
>> If Richard's reputation is to be restored, I think it will always be through one person at a time rather than through the mass conversion of a future generation of historians. The first thing that has to happen is the man has to matter, or no one looks any further.
>>
>> Those of us who've taken a second look at Richard seem to have the imagination and curiosity to dig deeper than most people. I came to care about the living man more than for the dead king, and I wasn't contented to shrug and accept the labels the Tudor "winners" have slapped onto him. A lot of other people are more concerned with their own priorities to give a second thought to any dude who lived a long time ago and died in a war that doesn't affect the life they're living today.
>>
>> In the end, I think Richard is likely destined to be perpetually ignored or demonized -- like Rasputin, another man who was neither devil nor saint.
>>
>> ~Weds
>>
>>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>

--
Richard Liveth Yet!

The passage has already been looked at by excellent Latinists, with expertise in medieval as well as classical Latin, such as Dr Lesley Boatwright and Livia Visser-Fuchs; the confusion is not due to lack of Latin skills amongst modern Ricardians. And it's by no means the only ambiguous passage in Crowland.
Marie

--- In , Hilary Jones <hjnatdat@...> wrote:
>
> I do agree. I wonder if St Pauls knows anyone who'd like to make their name by doing some for us? Failing that she could ask Mary Beard (her old tutor and now quite famous) whether she knows a scholar who's prepared to have a go and who really doesn't have a vested income in what it said - that's the problem with professional historians having a go.
>
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: justcarol67 <justcarol67@...>
> To:
> Sent: Tuesday, 28 May 2013, 16:26
> Subject: Re: Traditionalists, revisionists, & synthesists
>
>  
>
>
>
> --- In , Hilary Jones <hjnatdat@> wrote:
> >
> > Carol just to update you on the translation of the Anne/EOY thing. The first scrap we sent to my daughter she thought was straightforward and that it referred to the dresses, then when you sent the longer version she was no longer happy. It hinges on two things, the missing comma and the interpretation of the word 'color' which can also be used for beauty - they were two women of equal beauty. She has passed it to the Latin Dept of St Pauls Boy's School in London (Dean Colet's school) for a second opinion - they have a tradition of producing Oxbridge Latin professors. However, what she can say is that the Latin is immaculate classical Latin, not medieval Latin and that, as we know, the author had a real downer on the women. The fact that it is classical Latin, rather than medieval Latin could tell us something about the author?   
>
> Carol responds:
>
> Thanks, Hilary. Interesting that it's classical Latin, not medieval, and that it's "immaculate." The problem with Latin to English translations, though, is that the languages are so different (English is analytic--that is, it depends a great deal on word order and to a lesser degree on word endings, Latin synthetic and almost wholly dependent on word endings for grammatical meaning). From what I've seen, Latin phrases (take, for example, Rous's "curtam habens faciem") can be ambiguous, with several markedly different possible translations. However, after the reaction to my last attempt to question a translation, I'm no longer enthusiastic about pursuing the subject, important though I still think it is.
>
> Interesting that Chris Skidmore also thinks we need some new translations. I'd say we particularly need a readily accessible and inexpensive translation of Mancini and one of Rous. Vergil, except when he's dealing directly with Henry Tudor (and even then, we have to watch for bias and exaggeration) is primarily important in showing how far from the mark Tudor interpretations had become and, apparently, how willing people in general were to think the worst of Richard once Tudor propaganda had done its work.
>
> Had Richard won at Bosworth, they would probably have accepted *Richard's* propaganda instead and viewed Henry Tudor as an illegitimate would-be usurper who intended to rob England of its claim to the French throne and oppress its people. The difference is that Richard's propaganda, though exaggerated, had its basis in fact.
>
> Sorry--straying from the topic again! My main concern is still the tendency of historians to take the chronicles, especially Croyland and Mancini, as fact. That's the reason we need an accurate translation. If we're going to counter the chronicles and show their inadequacies, we need to start by making sure we know what they actually say, noting any amgiguities, and not respond indirectly to translations. C. A. J. Armstrong's use of "usurpation" to translate "occupatione" is the worst but not the only example of the way a translator's assumptions can influence his translation--and, in this instance, turn the "usurpation" into a fact by making it the title of the book, which anyone who uses that source has to cite as a reference.
>
> Carol
>
>
>
>
>
>

Dont forget UK members....tomorrow night on BBC2 9pm. The Winter King/Henry Vll documentary...looks promising...eileen

--- In , mariewalsh2003 <no_reply@...> wrote:
>
> The passage has already been looked at by excellent Latinists, with expertise in medieval as well as classical Latin, such as Dr Lesley Boatwright and Livia Visser-Fuchs; the confusion is not due to lack of Latin skills amongst modern Ricardians. And it's by no means the only ambiguous passage in Crowland.
> Marie
>
> --- In , Hilary Jones <hjnatdat@> wrote:
> >
> > I do agree. I wonder if St Pauls knows anyone who'd like to make their name by doing some for us? Failing that she could ask Mary Beard (her old tutor and now quite famous) whether she knows a scholar who's prepared to have a go and who really doesn't have a vested income in what it said - that's the problem with professional historians having a go.
> >
> >
> >
> > ________________________________
> > From: justcarol67 <justcarol67@>
> > To:
> > Sent: Tuesday, 28 May 2013, 16:26
> > Subject: Re: Traditionalists, revisionists, & synthesists
> >
> >  
> >
> >
> >
> > --- In , Hilary Jones <hjnatdat@> wrote:
> > >
> > > Carol just to update you on the translation of the Anne/EOY thing. The first scrap we sent to my daughter she thought was straightforward and that it referred to the dresses, then when you sent the longer version she was no longer happy. It hinges on two things, the missing comma and the interpretation of the word 'color' which can also be used for beauty - they were two women of equal beauty. She has passed it to the Latin Dept of St Pauls Boy's School in London (Dean Colet's school) for a second opinion - they have a tradition of producing Oxbridge Latin professors. However, what she can say is that the Latin is immaculate classical Latin, not medieval Latin and that, as we know, the author had a real downer on the women. The fact that it is classical Latin, rather than medieval Latin could tell us something about the author?   
> >
> > Carol responds:
> >
> > Thanks, Hilary. Interesting that it's classical Latin, not medieval, and that it's "immaculate." The problem with Latin to English translations, though, is that the languages are so different (English is analytic--that is, it depends a great deal on word order and to a lesser degree on word endings, Latin synthetic and almost wholly dependent on word endings for grammatical meaning). From what I've seen, Latin phrases (take, for example, Rous's "curtam habens faciem") can be ambiguous, with several markedly different possible translations. However, after the reaction to my last attempt to question a translation, I'm no longer enthusiastic about pursuing the subject, important though I still think it is.
> >
> > Interesting that Chris Skidmore also thinks we need some new translations. I'd say we particularly need a readily accessible and inexpensive translation of Mancini and one of Rous. Vergil, except when he's dealing directly with Henry Tudor (and even then, we have to watch for bias and exaggeration) is primarily important in showing how far from the mark Tudor interpretations had become and, apparently, how willing people in general were to think the worst of Richard once Tudor propaganda had done its work.
> >
> > Had Richard won at Bosworth, they would probably have accepted *Richard's* propaganda instead and viewed Henry Tudor as an illegitimate would-be usurper who intended to rob England of its claim to the French throne and oppress its people. The difference is that Richard's propaganda, though exaggerated, had its basis in fact.
> >
> > Sorry--straying from the topic again! My main concern is still the tendency of historians to take the chronicles, especially Croyland and Mancini, as fact. That's the reason we need an accurate translation. If we're going to counter the chronicles and show their inadequacies, we need to start by making sure we know what they actually say, noting any amgiguities, and not respond indirectly to translations. C. A. J. Armstrong's use of "usurpation" to translate "occupatione" is the worst but not the only example of the way a translator's assumptions can influence his translation--and, in this instance, turn the "usurpation" into a fact by making it the title of the book, which anyone who uses that source has to cite as a reference.
> >
> > Carol
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>

Hear, hear! I don't have a lot of time for the notion that truth is got at by the battle of people with opposing extreme views; all you get from that is a mindless compromise - lets give the revisionists points a, b & c, and the traditionalists points d, e & f. Truth is got at by digging in the archives, etc, and interpreting what is found without reference to any predetermined agenda.
Marie

--- In , "ellrosa1452" <kathryn198@...> wrote:
>
> It is too neat a theory to compartmentalize Richard's detractors and supporters into a Traditionalists versus Revisionists debate with the outcome neatly summarized as a "synthesis of opinion" which it certainly will not be as there is far too much still to be done.
>
> This rides roughshod over the belief that each and every piece of evidence has to be re-evaluated and analysed on its own merits in the face of new evidence provided from the discovery of Richard's remains and the expectation of further discoveries, i.e., scientific and otherwise in regard to the condition of the remains, health, diet and the possibility of evidence not yet come to light. However, the sources themselves are the only place to begin to investigate and re-evaluate and it will take a new and fresh perspective from someone with unclouded judgment and/or preconceived ideas.
>
> In addition, historians, writers and the media who accept Shakespeare, More etc. appear to operate in a bubble where time stopped at the point when they formulated their stance and point of view and therefore disagree with any evidence that threatens or pushes that stance off its axis. The result is further entrenchment of views, which is what we have seen recently from many anti Richard and pro Tudor propagandist peddlers such as Starkey and others. Whilst they are defending a rearguard action there is also ongoing debate questioning the authorship of Shakespeare, which questions the validity of their argument altogether as if not Shakespeare, then who and why? The same questions could be asked of More and others.
> Elaine
>
> --- In , "reswallie_girl" <Ragged_staff@> wrote:
> >
> > There seems to be a lot of argument against points that I haven't made, which I find fascinating! I'm wondering still if I've been able to make myself fully understood, or if this idea is seen, for some reason, as a threat to 'revisionist' views. It's quite the opposite.
> >
> > The 'thesis' is the full body of work that relates to 'Richard the monster/serial killer'. Not individual points.
> >
> > The 'antithesis' is the full body of work that relates to 'Good King Richard/who could do no wrong'. Not individual points.
> >
> > So far, academic history of Richard and his reign seems to relate more to the 'thesis' than the 'antithesis'. What I'm suggesting is that, in the coming years, more and more ideas that come out of the 'antithesis' will find their way into the world of academic history. There will be no 'compromise' or 'middle ground' sought but, working with both the 'thesis' and what has (to some extent) superseded it (the 'antithesis)', there will be a fresh body of work that addresses both the problems of the 'thesis' and those of the 'antithesis'.
> >
> > This isn't so much a 'method' that I'm proposing historians follow but what I think is the next phase of historical research and writing about Richard, his life, times and reign. It isn't consciously negotiated but what's likely to occur in the normal course of events.
> >
> > Arguing against 'using' this method is fine. However, I'm not advocating it's 'use' but seeing it on the horizon.
> >
> > Karen Clark
> >
> > --- In , Ishita Bandyo <bandyoi@> wrote:
> > >
> > > Great post, Carol!
> > >
> > > Ishita Bandyo
> > > www.ishitabandyo.com
> > > www.facebook.com/ishitabandyofinearts
> > > www.ishitabandyoarts.blogspot.com
> > >
> > > On May 27, 2013, at 7:59 PM, "justcarol67" <justcarol67@> wrote:
> > >
> > > >
> > > > Karen wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > Ok, so the 'thesis' here is Shakespeare, More and 500 odd years of what a lot of people refer to as 'Tudor propaganda'.
> > > >
> > > > > The 'antithesis' is the work of modern (and some not so modern) revisionists, including various fictional works.
> > > >
> > > > > The 'synthesis' then is likely to be a further step, not a compromise nor some kind of arbitrary middle ground.
> > > >
> > > > Carol responds:
> > > >
> > > > I don't think that revisionists would accept these terms since their thesis would be that Richard *wasn't* the monster Richard depicted him as being, a point, by the way, that even moderate traditionalists like Pollard accept. But for the sake of argument, let's accept those terms and see what happens.
> > > >
> > > > Thesis 1 (Shakespeare): Richard was a hunchback.
> > > >
> > > > Antithesis 1(Markham et al.): Richard was in no way disabled or deformed.
> > > >
> > > > Synthesis 1: Richard was not deformed but may have had one shoulder higher than the other as the result of idiopathic scoliosis.
> > > >
> > > > Okay. That one works.
> > > >
> > > > Thesis 2: Richard had a withered arm from birth .
> > > >
> > > > Antithesis 2: Both arms were perfectly normal.
> > > >
> > > > Synthesis 2: Um, Richard's arm was normal at birth but withered by sorcery or premature old age affecting only one arm?
> > > >
> > > > I can't think of a reasonable compromise, and, in any case, we know that the antithesis is correct here.
> > > >
> > > > Thesis 3: Richard murdered Edward of Lancaster.
> > > >
> > > > Antithesis 3: Edward of Lancaster was killed in battle or fleeing from the battle, possibly by the Duke of Clarence's men.
> > > >
> > > > Synthesis 3: Edward of Lancaster was murdered by a group of men, possibly including Richard, George of Clarence, and Hastings.
> > > >
> > > > In this case, the contemporary accounts for both sides present the antithesis, which must be true if five sources from both sides of the conflict agree on it (even if they differ on the details). The (Tudor) synthesis begins in the Great Chronicle (possibly influenced by unreliable French sources) with unnamed servants of E4 murdering EoL and becomes Richard, George, and Hastings in Vergil, forty years after the event. Not even Shakespeare makes Richard the lone murderer. It's the three Plantagenet brothers working as a team. However much the story of Edward of Lancaster mouthing off to Edward (and paying the price with his death) may appeal to some people (I don't mean you, Karen, but I do have someone specific in mind), it is just that, a story, and one of the best examples of what Tey called Tonypandy in the making that I know of.
> > > >
> > > > Thesis 4: Richard killed the Duke of Somerset in the Battle of St. Albans and cut off his head (Henry VI Part II).
> > > >
> > > > Antithesis 4: Richard was two and a half and was at home in his nursery during the Battle of Saint Albans.
> > > >
> > > > Synthesis: No synthesis is possible. Richard didn't fight in that battle, much less kill anyone, nor was he present at Wakefield or Towton (Henry VI Patr III), both fought when he was nine.
> > > >
> > > > Richard Duke of Gloucester as depicted by Shakespeare in the Henry VI plays is so far from the historical Richard that we must ask ourselves whether we can believe anything at all of his continuation as a character in "Richard III."
> > > >
> > > > Thesis 5 (More): Richard plotted the death of the "Princes" with a "secret page" while sitting on the privy and had them killed by an ambitious knight previously unknown to Richard named Sir James Tyrrell.
> > > >
> > > > Antithesis 5a (Markham): Tyrrell killed the "Princes" for Henry Tudor, not for Richard.
> > > >
> > > > Antithesis 5b: Nobody killed the "Princes." At least one of them escaped to Burgundy and became Perkin Warbeck.
> > > >
> > > > Antithesis 5c: Buckingham killed the "Princes" for his own ends and let the blame fall on Richard.
> > > >
> > > > Synthesis: Nobody knows what happened. Not much of a synthesis, I realize, but until we know more about the bones in the urn, all we can do is examine the conflicting testimony in the light of Richard's character as revealed in other documents and draw our own conclusions.
> > > >
> > > > I'm afraid that the thesis-synthesis-antithesis method isn't going to work here since so much of Shakespeare and More can be rejected out of hand (and since Shakespeare was a dramatist, not a historian).
> > > >
> > > > We need to figure out what More was up to if we can and discard any parts of his work and Vergil's that are contradicted by earlier sources, especially primary ones, as well as any attempts at character assessment (psychology before the concept existed) by men who never even saw Richard. And we need to be very careful about anything we tentatively accept from those sources knowing how far from the mark the rest is.
> > > >
> > > > Mancini, Rous, and Croyland, as well as scattered letters and comments from other people, need to be read with a careful and critical eye and taken as fact only when confirmed by primary sources. (If a favorable source like Langton and an unfavorable source like Rous agree, the views expressed are probably accurate.) The only sources that we can accept as absolutely accurate and authentic are Richard's own letters and official documents and even those need to be read carefully, without bias or preconceptions, and bearing in mind any linguistic ambiguity resulting from translation from Latin to English or Early Modern English to Modern English.
> > > >
> > > > Our understanding of Richard does not require us to start from Tudor sources as our "thesis" with the revisionist views as "antithesis" and arrive at a "synthesis" somewhere between the two. Instead, we should start with contemporary documents, viewing them analytically and without preconceptions other than those which can be supported by other documents. The chroniclers, even Croyland and Mancini, assumed that Richard had aimed from at least the time of Edward IV's death to usurp the throne. To start with idea as our "thesis" requires us to try to *disprove* the "antithesis" (his assumption of the throne was both unanticipated and legal) since the only synthesis possible is the unsatisfactory one of an unanticipated usurpation.
> > > >
> > > > At any rate, we are all trying to arrive at the truth in our own way, but I don't think this particular method will work any more successfully for us (or, at any rate, for me) than it did for James Gairdner, trying to reconcile the documents accessible to him with Shakespeare's Machiavellian Richard.
> > > >
> > > > Carol
> > > >
> > > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> >
>

Well said Marie.

--- In , mariewalsh2003 <no_reply@...> wrote:
>
> Hear, hear! I don't have a lot of time for the notion that truth is got at by the battle of people with opposing extreme views; all you get from that is a mindless compromise - lets give the revisionists points a, b & c, and the traditionalists points d, e & f. Truth is got at by digging in the archives, etc, and interpreting what is found without reference to any predetermined agenda.
> Marie
>
> --- In , "ellrosa1452" <kathryn198@> wrote:
> >
> > It is too neat a theory to compartmentalize Richard's detractors and supporters into a Traditionalists versus Revisionists debate with the outcome neatly summarized as a "synthesis of opinion" which it certainly will not be as there is far too much still to be done.
> >
> > This rides roughshod over the belief that each and every piece of evidence has to be re-evaluated and analysed on its own merits in the face of new evidence provided from the discovery of Richard's remains and the expectation of further discoveries, i.e., scientific and otherwise in regard to the condition of the remains, health, diet and the possibility of evidence not yet come to light. However, the sources themselves are the only place to begin to investigate and re-evaluate and it will take a new and fresh perspective from someone with unclouded judgment and/or preconceived ideas.
> >
> > In addition, historians, writers and the media who accept Shakespeare, More etc. appear to operate in a bubble where time stopped at the point when they formulated their stance and point of view and therefore disagree with any evidence that threatens or pushes that stance off its axis. The result is further entrenchment of views, which is what we have seen recently from many anti Richard and pro Tudor propagandist peddlers such as Starkey and others. Whilst they are defending a rearguard action there is also ongoing debate questioning the authorship of Shakespeare, which questions the validity of their argument altogether as if not Shakespeare, then who and why? The same questions could be asked of More and others.
> > Elaine
> >
> > --- In , "reswallie_girl" <Ragged_staff@> wrote:
> > >
> > > There seems to be a lot of argument against points that I haven't made, which I find fascinating! I'm wondering still if I've been able to make myself fully understood, or if this idea is seen, for some reason, as a threat to 'revisionist' views. It's quite the opposite.
> > >
> > > The 'thesis' is the full body of work that relates to 'Richard the monster/serial killer'. Not individual points.
> > >
> > > The 'antithesis' is the full body of work that relates to 'Good King Richard/who could do no wrong'. Not individual points.
> > >
> > > So far, academic history of Richard and his reign seems to relate more to the 'thesis' than the 'antithesis'. What I'm suggesting is that, in the coming years, more and more ideas that come out of the 'antithesis' will find their way into the world of academic history. There will be no 'compromise' or 'middle ground' sought but, working with both the 'thesis' and what has (to some extent) superseded it (the 'antithesis)', there will be a fresh body of work that addresses both the problems of the 'thesis' and those of the 'antithesis'.
> > >
> > > This isn't so much a 'method' that I'm proposing historians follow but what I think is the next phase of historical research and writing about Richard, his life, times and reign. It isn't consciously negotiated but what's likely to occur in the normal course of events.
> > >
> > > Arguing against 'using' this method is fine. However, I'm not advocating it's 'use' but seeing it on the horizon.
> > >
> > > Karen Clark
> > >
> > > --- In , Ishita Bandyo <bandyoi@> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > Great post, Carol!
> > > >
> > > > Ishita Bandyo
> > > > www.ishitabandyo.com
> > > > www.facebook.com/ishitabandyofinearts
> > > > www.ishitabandyoarts.blogspot.com
> > > >
> > > > On May 27, 2013, at 7:59 PM, "justcarol67" <justcarol67@> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > Karen wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > > > Ok, so the 'thesis' here is Shakespeare, More and 500 odd years of what a lot of people refer to as 'Tudor propaganda'.
> > > > >
> > > > > > The 'antithesis' is the work of modern (and some not so modern) revisionists, including various fictional works.
> > > > >
> > > > > > The 'synthesis' then is likely to be a further step, not a compromise nor some kind of arbitrary middle ground.
> > > > >
> > > > > Carol responds:
> > > > >
> > > > > I don't think that revisionists would accept these terms since their thesis would be that Richard *wasn't* the monster Richard depicted him as being, a point, by the way, that even moderate traditionalists like Pollard accept. But for the sake of argument, let's accept those terms and see what happens.
> > > > >
> > > > > Thesis 1 (Shakespeare): Richard was a hunchback.
> > > > >
> > > > > Antithesis 1(Markham et al.): Richard was in no way disabled or deformed.
> > > > >
> > > > > Synthesis 1: Richard was not deformed but may have had one shoulder higher than the other as the result of idiopathic scoliosis.
> > > > >
> > > > > Okay. That one works.
> > > > >
> > > > > Thesis 2: Richard had a withered arm from birth .
> > > > >
> > > > > Antithesis 2: Both arms were perfectly normal.
> > > > >
> > > > > Synthesis 2: Um, Richard's arm was normal at birth but withered by sorcery or premature old age affecting only one arm?
> > > > >
> > > > > I can't think of a reasonable compromise, and, in any case, we know that the antithesis is correct here.
> > > > >
> > > > > Thesis 3: Richard murdered Edward of Lancaster.
> > > > >
> > > > > Antithesis 3: Edward of Lancaster was killed in battle or fleeing from the battle, possibly by the Duke of Clarence's men.
> > > > >
> > > > > Synthesis 3: Edward of Lancaster was murdered by a group of men, possibly including Richard, George of Clarence, and Hastings.
> > > > >
> > > > > In this case, the contemporary accounts for both sides present the antithesis, which must be true if five sources from both sides of the conflict agree on it (even if they differ on the details). The (Tudor) synthesis begins in the Great Chronicle (possibly influenced by unreliable French sources) with unnamed servants of E4 murdering EoL and becomes Richard, George, and Hastings in Vergil, forty years after the event. Not even Shakespeare makes Richard the lone murderer. It's the three Plantagenet brothers working as a team. However much the story of Edward of Lancaster mouthing off to Edward (and paying the price with his death) may appeal to some people (I don't mean you, Karen, but I do have someone specific in mind), it is just that, a story, and one of the best examples of what Tey called Tonypandy in the making that I know of.
> > > > >
> > > > > Thesis 4: Richard killed the Duke of Somerset in the Battle of St. Albans and cut off his head (Henry VI Part II).
> > > > >
> > > > > Antithesis 4: Richard was two and a half and was at home in his nursery during the Battle of Saint Albans.
> > > > >
> > > > > Synthesis: No synthesis is possible. Richard didn't fight in that battle, much less kill anyone, nor was he present at Wakefield or Towton (Henry VI Patr III), both fought when he was nine.
> > > > >
> > > > > Richard Duke of Gloucester as depicted by Shakespeare in the Henry VI plays is so far from the historical Richard that we must ask ourselves whether we can believe anything at all of his continuation as a character in "Richard III."
> > > > >
> > > > > Thesis 5 (More): Richard plotted the death of the "Princes" with a "secret page" while sitting on the privy and had them killed by an ambitious knight previously unknown to Richard named Sir James Tyrrell.
> > > > >
> > > > > Antithesis 5a (Markham): Tyrrell killed the "Princes" for Henry Tudor, not for Richard.
> > > > >
> > > > > Antithesis 5b: Nobody killed the "Princes." At least one of them escaped to Burgundy and became Perkin Warbeck.
> > > > >
> > > > > Antithesis 5c: Buckingham killed the "Princes" for his own ends and let the blame fall on Richard.
> > > > >
> > > > > Synthesis: Nobody knows what happened. Not much of a synthesis, I realize, but until we know more about the bones in the urn, all we can do is examine the conflicting testimony in the light of Richard's character as revealed in other documents and draw our own conclusions.
> > > > >
> > > > > I'm afraid that the thesis-synthesis-antithesis method isn't going to work here since so much of Shakespeare and More can be rejected out of hand (and since Shakespeare was a dramatist, not a historian).
> > > > >
> > > > > We need to figure out what More was up to if we can and discard any parts of his work and Vergil's that are contradicted by earlier sources, especially primary ones, as well as any attempts at character assessment (psychology before the concept existed) by men who never even saw Richard. And we need to be very careful about anything we tentatively accept from those sources knowing how far from the mark the rest is.
> > > > >
> > > > > Mancini, Rous, and Croyland, as well as scattered letters and comments from other people, need to be read with a careful and critical eye and taken as fact only when confirmed by primary sources. (If a favorable source like Langton and an unfavorable source like Rous agree, the views expressed are probably accurate.) The only sources that we can accept as absolutely accurate and authentic are Richard's own letters and official documents and even those need to be read carefully, without bias or preconceptions, and bearing in mind any linguistic ambiguity resulting from translation from Latin to English or Early Modern English to Modern English.
> > > > >
> > > > > Our understanding of Richard does not require us to start from Tudor sources as our "thesis" with the revisionist views as "antithesis" and arrive at a "synthesis" somewhere between the two. Instead, we should start with contemporary documents, viewing them analytically and without preconceptions other than those which can be supported by other documents. The chroniclers, even Croyland and Mancini, assumed that Richard had aimed from at least the time of Edward IV's death to usurp the throne. To start with idea as our "thesis" requires us to try to *disprove* the "antithesis" (his assumption of the throne was both unanticipated and legal) since the only synthesis possible is the unsatisfactory one of an unanticipated usurpation.
> > > > >
> > > > > At any rate, we are all trying to arrive at the truth in our own way, but I don't think this particular method will work any more successfully for us (or, at any rate, for me) than it did for James Gairdner, trying to reconcile the documents accessible to him with Shakespeare's Machiavellian Richard.
> > > > >
> > > > > Carol
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > >
> >
>

From: EileenB
To:
Sent: Wednesday, May 29, 2013 10:20 PM
Subject: Re: Traditionalists, revisionists, &
synthesists


> Dont forget UK members....tomorrow night on BBC2 9pm. The Winter
> King/Henry Vll documentary...looks promising...eileen

Thanks. The Cromwell and Ann Boleyn ones have certainly been quite
impressive - but did you notice that they showed how historical "truth"
drifts? The one on Cromwell stated categorically, no doubt about it, that
he was Ann's enemy and helped bring about her death - yet in the one on Ann
herself the different scholars were in dispute as to whether he was Ann's
enemy or not and whether he had a hand in her death or not.

mariewalsh2003 wrote:
>
> The passage has already been looked at by excellent Latinists, with expertise in medieval as well as classical Latin, such as Dr Lesley Boatwright and Livia Visser-Fuchs; the confusion is not due to lack of Latin skills amongst modern Ricardians. And it's by no means the only ambiguous passage in Crowland.
> Marie

Carol responds:

Do you by any chance recall how Boatwright or Visser-Fuchs translated it? I don't have access to the old Ricardian articles, if that's where they discussed it.

As for the ambiguity, which we also encountered in the passage on "color and form" at Christmas, I wouldn't be surprised if it's deliberate in Croyland--and even more so in Rous.

If only these clerics had written in English! But, failing that, if only one of these scholars would produce an analysis of these sources pointing out the ambiguity and other failings in these sources--a "proceed with caution" sign for scholars and other writers who take the possibly faulty translations currently available and the writers themselves as infallible.

Carol

> > --- In , Hilary Jones <hjnatdat@> wrote:
> > >
> > > Carol just to update you on the translation of the Anne/EOY thing. The first scrap we sent to my daughter she thought was straightforward and that it referred to the dresses, then when you sent the longer version she was no longer happy. It hinges on two things, the missing comma and the interpretation of the word 'color' which can also be used for beauty - they were two women of equal beauty. She has passed it to the Latin Dept of St Pauls Boy's School in London (Dean Colet's school) for a second opinion - they have a tradition of producing Oxbridge Latin professors. However, what she can say is that the Latin is immaculate classical Latin, not medieval Latin and that, as we know, the author had a real downer on the women. The fact that it is classical Latin, rather than medieval Latin could tell us something about the author?   

Marie responds:
My understanding is that it only appears to be Classical Latin because all we have left of this part of the 3rd Continuation is a 17th-century copy in which the original medieval '-e' case endings have been "corrected" back to Classical Latin '-ae'. (The original MS was damaged by fire, and only the first section of it is still readable.)

From: justcarol67
To:
Sent: Thursday, May 30, 2013 1:04 AM
Subject: Re: Traditionalists, revisionists, &
synthesists


> As for the ambiguity, which we also encountered in the passage on "color
> and form" at Christmas, I wouldn't be surprised if it's deliberate in
> Croyland--and even more so in Rous.

Ooh, yes, a very good point. Shakspeare's plays are full of puns, so it was
a known comedy/art form a century after Richard - Rous and Croyland might
well have been indulging in a bit of spiteful wordplay.

A few more eyes never did any harm did they? Particularly eyes that have no interest whatsoever in Richard's guilt or innocence. That's another way of getting us away from the biased revisionist image.



________________________________
From: mariewalsh2003 <[email protected]>
To:
Sent: Wednesday, 29 May 2013, 22:14
Subject: Re: Traditionalists, revisionists, & synthesists

 

The passage has already been looked at by excellent Latinists, with expertise in medieval as well as classical Latin, such as Dr Lesley Boatwright and Livia Visser-Fuchs; the confusion is not due to lack of Latin skills amongst modern Ricardians. And it's by no means the only ambiguous passage in Crowland.
Marie

--- In , Hilary Jones <hjnatdat@...> wrote:
>
> I do agree. I wonder if St Pauls knows anyone who'd like to make their name by doing some for us? Failing that she could ask Mary Beard (her old tutor and now quite famous) whether she knows a scholar who's prepared to have a go and who really doesn't have a vested income in what it said - that's the problem with professional historians having a go.
>
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: justcarol67 <justcarol67@...>
> To:
> Sent: Tuesday, 28 May 2013, 16:26
> Subject: Re: Traditionalists, revisionists, & synthesists
>
>  
>
>
>
> --- In , Hilary Jones <hjnatdat@> wrote:
> >
> > Carol just to update you on the translation of the Anne/EOY thing. The first scrap we sent to my daughter she thoughtàwas straightforward and thatàit referred to the dresses, then when you sent the longer version she was no longer happy. It hingesàon two things, the missing comma and the interpretation of the word 'color' which can also be used for beauty - they were twoàwomenàof equal beauty.àShe hasàpassed it to the Latin Dept of St Pauls Boy's School in London (Dean Colet's school) for a second opinion - they have a tradition of producing Oxbridge Latin professors. However, what she can say is that the Latin is immaculate classical Latin, not medieval Latin and that, as we know, the author had a real downer on the women. The fact that it is classical Latin, rather than medieval Latin could tell us something about the author?ààà
>
> Carol responds:
>
> Thanks, Hilary. Interesting that it's classical Latin, not medieval, and that it's "immaculate." The problem with Latin to English translations, though, is that the languages are so different (English is analytic--that is, it depends a great deal on word order and to a lesser degree on word endings, Latin synthetic and almost wholly dependent on word endings for grammatical meaning). From what I've seen, Latin phrases (take, for example, Rous's "curtam habens faciem") can be ambiguous, with several markedly different possible translations. However, after the reaction to my last attempt to question a translation, I'm no longer enthusiastic about pursuing the subject, important though I still think it is.
>
> Interesting that Chris Skidmore also thinks we need some new translations. I'd say we particularly need a readily accessible and inexpensive translation of Mancini and one of Rous. Vergil, except when he's dealing directly with Henry Tudor (and even then, we have to watch for bias and exaggeration) is primarily important in showing how far from the mark Tudor interpretations had become and, apparently, how willing people in general were to think the worst of Richard once Tudor propaganda had done its work.
>
> Had Richard won at Bosworth, they would probably have accepted *Richard's* propaganda instead and viewed Henry Tudor as an illegitimate would-be usurper who intended to rob England of its claim to the French throne and oppress its people. The difference is that Richard's propaganda, though exaggerated, had its basis in fact.
>
> Sorry--straying from the topic again! My main concern is still the tendency of historians to take the chronicles, especially Croyland and Mancini, as fact. That's the reason we need an accurate translation. If we're going to counter the chronicles and show their inadequacies, we need to start by making sure we know what they actually say, noting any amgiguities, and not respond indirectly to translations. C. A. J. Armstrong's use of "usurpation" to translate "occupatione" is the worst but not the only example of the way a translator's assumptions can influence his translation--and, in this instance, turn the "usurpation" into a fact by making it the title of the book, which anyone who uses that source has to cite as a reference.
>
> Carol
>
>
>
>
>
>

Can I add something to that? We need to look at all sources, secondary as well. I'm a the moment looking at a secondary source which has been used in in good faith in recent books by two of our best authors. And it has been used to prop up quite a crucial argument. It is fundamentally flawed. They should have tested it but because it was from another 'scholar', they took it on trust. At the moment I'm not going to reveal what it is. But it is a good example of how flawed research can become viral and take on a life of its own. Next time we run to any Ricardian author (and that includes the biggies) I suggest we start applying that test, as we do on each other here. H.



________________________________
From: mariewalsh2003 <[email protected]>
To:
Sent: Wednesday, 29 May 2013, 22:21
Subject: Re: Traditionalists, revisionists, & synthesists

 

Hear, hear! I don't have a lot of time for the notion that truth is got at by the battle of people with opposing extreme views; all you get from that is a mindless compromise - lets give the revisionists points a, b & c, and the traditionalists points d, e & f. Truth is got at by digging in the archives, etc, and interpreting what is found without reference to any predetermined agenda.
Marie

--- In , "ellrosa1452" <kathryn198@...> wrote:
>
> It is too neat a theory to compartmentalize Richard's detractors and supporters into a Traditionalists versus Revisionists debate with the outcome neatly summarized as a "synthesis of opinion" which it certainly will not be as there is far too much still to be done.
>
> This rides roughshod over the belief that each and every piece of evidence has to be re-evaluated and analysed on its own merits in the face of new evidence provided from the discovery of Richard's remains and the expectation of further discoveries, i.e., scientific and otherwise in regard to the condition of the remains, health, diet and the possibility of evidence not yet come to light. However, the sources themselves are the only place to begin to investigate and re-evaluate and it will take a new and fresh perspective from someone with unclouded judgment and/or preconceived ideas.
>
> In addition, historians, writers and the media who accept Shakespeare, More etc. appear to operate in a bubble where time stopped at the point when they formulated their stance and point of view and therefore disagree with any evidence that threatens or pushes that stance off its axis. The result is further entrenchment of views, which is what we have seen recently from many anti Richard and pro Tudor propagandist peddlers such as Starkey and others. Whilst they are defending a rearguard action there is also ongoing debate questioning the authorship of Shakespeare, which questions the validity of their argument altogether as if not Shakespeare, then who and why? The same questions could be asked of More and others.
> Elaine
>
> --- In , "reswallie_girl" <Ragged_staff@> wrote:
> >
> > There seems to be a lot of argument against points that I haven't made, which I find fascinating! I'm wondering still if I've been able to make myself fully understood, or if this idea is seen, for some reason, as a threat to 'revisionist' views. It's quite the opposite.
> >
> > The 'thesis' is the full body of work that relates to 'Richard the monster/serial killer'. Not individual points.
> >
> > The 'antithesis' is the full body of work that relates to 'Good King Richard/who could do no wrong'. Not individual points.
> >
> > So far, academic history of Richard and his reign seems to relate more to the 'thesis' than the 'antithesis'. What I'm suggesting is that, in the coming years, more and more ideas that come out of the 'antithesis' will find their way into the world of academic history. There will be no 'compromise' or 'middle ground' sought but, working with both the 'thesis' and what has (to some extent) superseded it (the 'antithesis)', there will be a fresh body of work that addresses both the problems of the 'thesis' and those of the 'antithesis'.
> >
> > This isn't so much a 'method' that I'm proposing historians follow but what I think is the next phase of historical research and writing about Richard, his life, times and reign. It isn't consciously negotiated but what's likely to occur in the normal course of events.
> >
> > Arguing against 'using' this method is fine. However, I'm not advocating it's 'use' but seeing it on the horizon.
> >
> > Karen Clark
> >
> > --- In , Ishita Bandyo <bandyoi@> wrote:
> > >
> > > Great post, Carol!
> > >
> > > Ishita Bandyo
> > > www.ishitabandyo.com
> > > www.facebook.com/ishitabandyofinearts
> > > www.ishitabandyoarts.blogspot.com
> > >
> > > On May 27, 2013, at 7:59 PM, "justcarol67" <justcarol67@> wrote:
> > >
> > > >
> > > > Karen wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > Ok, so the 'thesis' here is Shakespeare, More and 500 odd years of what a lot of people refer to as 'Tudor propaganda'.
> > > >
> > > > > The 'antithesis' is the work of modern (and some not so modern) revisionists, including various fictional works.
> > > >
> > > > > The 'synthesis' then is likely to be a further step, not a compromise nor some kind of arbitrary middle ground.
> > > >
> > > > Carol responds:
> > > >
> > > > I don't think that revisionists would accept these terms since their thesis would be that Richard *wasn't* the monster Richard depicted him as being, a point, by the way, that even moderate traditionalists like Pollard accept. But for the sake of argument, let's accept those terms and see what happens.
> > > >
> > > > Thesis 1 (Shakespeare): Richard was a hunchback.
> > > >
> > > > Antithesis 1(Markham et al.): Richard was in no way disabled or deformed.
> > > >
> > > > Synthesis 1: Richard was not deformed but may have had one shoulder higher than the other as the result of idiopathic scoliosis.
> > > >
> > > > Okay. That one works.
> > > >
> > > > Thesis 2: Richard had a withered arm from birth .
> > > >
> > > > Antithesis 2: Both arms were perfectly normal.
> > > >
> > > > Synthesis 2: Um, Richard's arm was normal at birth but withered by sorcery or premature old age affecting only one arm?
> > > >
> > > > I can't think of a reasonable compromise, and, in any case, we know that the antithesis is correct here.
> > > >
> > > > Thesis 3: Richard murdered Edward of Lancaster.
> > > >
> > > > Antithesis 3: Edward of Lancaster was killed in battle or fleeing from the battle, possibly by the Duke of Clarence's men.
> > > >
> > > > Synthesis 3: Edward of Lancaster was murdered by a group of men, possibly including Richard, George of Clarence, and Hastings.
> > > >
> > > > In this case, the contemporary accounts for both sides present the antithesis, which must be true if five sources from both sides of the conflict agree on it (even if they differ on the details). The (Tudor) synthesis begins in the Great Chronicle (possibly influenced by unreliable French sources) with unnamed servants of E4 murdering EoL and becomes Richard, George, and Hastings in Vergil, forty years after the event. Not even Shakespeare makes Richard the lone murderer. It's the three Plantagenet brothers working as a team. However much the story of Edward of Lancaster mouthing off to Edward (and paying the price with his death) may appeal to some people (I don't mean you, Karen, but I do have someone specific in mind), it is just that, a story, and one of the best examples of what Tey called Tonypandy in the making that I know of.
> > > >
> > > > Thesis 4: Richard killed the Duke of Somerset in the Battle of St. Albans and cut off his head (Henry VI Part II).
> > > >
> > > > Antithesis 4: Richard was two and a half and was at home in his nursery during the Battle of Saint Albans.
> > > >
> > > > Synthesis: No synthesis is possible. Richard didn't fight in that battle, much less kill anyone, nor was he present at Wakefield or Towton (Henry VI Patr III), both fought when he was nine.
> > > >
> > > > Richard Duke of Gloucester as depicted by Shakespeare in the Henry VI plays is so far from the historical Richard that we must ask ourselves whether we can believe anything at all of his continuation as a character in "Richard III."
> > > >
> > > > Thesis 5 (More): Richard plotted the death of the "Princes" with a "secret page" while sitting on the privy and had them killed by an ambitious knight previously unknown to Richard named Sir James Tyrrell.
> > > >
> > > > Antithesis 5a (Markham): Tyrrell killed the "Princes" for Henry Tudor, not for Richard.
> > > >
> > > > Antithesis 5b: Nobody killed the "Princes." At least one of them escaped to Burgundy and became Perkin Warbeck.
> > > >
> > > > Antithesis 5c: Buckingham killed the "Princes" for his own ends and let the blame fall on Richard.
> > > >
> > > > Synthesis: Nobody knows what happened. Not much of a synthesis, I realize, but until we know more about the bones in the urn, all we can do is examine the conflicting testimony in the light of Richard's character as revealed in other documents and draw our own conclusions.
> > > >
> > > > I'm afraid that the thesis-synthesis-antithesis method isn't going to work here since so much of Shakespeare and More can be rejected out of hand (and since Shakespeare was a dramatist, not a historian).
> > > >
> > > > We need to figure out what More was up to if we can and discard any parts of his work and Vergil's that are contradicted by earlier sources, especially primary ones, as well as any attempts at character assessment (psychology before the concept existed) by men who never even saw Richard. And we need to be very careful about anything we tentatively accept from those sources knowing how far from the mark the rest is.
> > > >
> > > > Mancini, Rous, and Croyland, as well as scattered letters and comments from other people, need to be read with a careful and critical eye and taken as fact only when confirmed by primary sources. (If a favorable source like Langton and an unfavorable source like Rous agree, the views expressed are probably accurate.) The only sources that we can accept as absolutely accurate and authentic are Richard's own letters and official documents and even those need to be read carefully, without bias or preconceptions, and bearing in mind any linguistic ambiguity resulting from translation from Latin to English or Early Modern English to Modern English.
> > > >
> > > > Our understanding of Richard does not require us to start from Tudor sources as our "thesis" with the revisionist views as "antithesis" and arrive at a "synthesis" somewhere between the two. Instead, we should start with contemporary documents, viewing them analytically and without preconceptions other than those which can be supported by other documents. The chroniclers, even Croyland and Mancini, assumed that Richard had aimed from at least the time of Edward IV's death to usurp the throne. To start with idea as our "thesis" requires us to try to *disprove* the "antithesis" (his assumption of the throne was both unanticipated and legal) since the only synthesis possible is the unsatisfactory one of an unanticipated usurpation.
> > > >
> > > > At any rate, we are all trying to arrive at the truth in our own way, but I don't think this particular method will work any more successfully for us (or, at any rate, for me) than it did for James Gairdner, trying to reconcile the documents accessible to him with Shakespeare's Machiavellian Richard.
> > > >
> > > > Carol
> > > >
> > > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> >
>

But the one on Cromwell included a revisionist debate as to whether he was indeed a friend of Anne and his name had been blackened. That's if we were watching the same programme?



________________________________
From: Claire M Jordan <whitehound@...>
To:
Sent: Wednesday, 29 May 2013, 23:01
Subject: Re: Traditionalists, revisionists, & synthesists

 

From: EileenB
To:
Sent: Wednesday, May 29, 2013 10:20 PM
Subject: Re: Traditionalists, revisionists, &
synthesists

> Dont forget UK members....tomorrow night on BBC2 9pm. The Winter
> King/Henry Vll documentary...looks promising...eileen

Thanks. The Cromwell and Ann Boleyn ones have certainly been quite
impressive - but did you notice that they showed how historical "truth"
drifts? The one on Cromwell stated categorically, no doubt about it, that
he was Ann's enemy and helped bring about her death - yet in the one on Ann
herself the different scholars were in dispute as to whether he was Ann's
enemy or not and whether he had a hand in her death or not.

Will you eventually tell us? Yes, like journalistic rules WAS three sources, and verified at that. How we have slipped......

On May 30, 2013, at 4:37 AM, "Hilary Jones" <hjnatdat@...<mailto:hjnatdat@...>> wrote:



Can I add something to that? We need to look at all sources, secondary as well. I'm a the moment looking at a secondary source which has been used in in good faith in recent books by two of our best authors. And it has been used to prop up quite a crucial argument. It is fundamentally flawed. They should have tested it but because it was from another 'scholar', they took it on trust. At the moment I'm not going to reveal what it is. But it is a good example of how flawed research can become viral and take on a life of its own. Next time we run to any Ricardian author (and that includes the biggies) I suggest we start applying that test, as we do on each other here. H.

________________________________
From: mariewalsh2003 <[email protected]<mailto:no_reply%40yahoogroups.com>>
To: <mailto:%40yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, 29 May 2013, 22:21
Subject: Re: Traditionalists, revisionists, & synthesists



Hear, hear! I don't have a lot of time for the notion that truth is got at by the battle of people with opposing extreme views; all you get from that is a mindless compromise - lets give the revisionists points a, b & c, and the traditionalists points d, e & f. Truth is got at by digging in the archives, etc, and interpreting what is found without reference to any predetermined agenda.
Marie

--- In <mailto:%40yahoogroups.com>, "ellrosa1452" <kathryn198@...> wrote:
>
> It is too neat a theory to compartmentalize Richard's detractors and supporters into a Traditionalists versus Revisionists debate with the outcome neatly summarized as a "synthesis of opinion" which it certainly will not be as there is far too much still to be done.
>
> This rides roughshod over the belief that each and every piece of evidence has to be re-evaluated and analysed on its own merits in the face of new evidence provided from the discovery of Richard's remains and the expectation of further discoveries, i.e., scientific and otherwise in regard to the condition of the remains, health, diet and the possibility of evidence not yet come to light. However, the sources themselves are the only place to begin to investigate and re-evaluate and it will take a new and fresh perspective from someone with unclouded judgment and/or preconceived ideas.
>
> In addition, historians, writers and the media who accept Shakespeare, More etc. appear to operate in a bubble where time stopped at the point when they formulated their stance and point of view and therefore disagree with any evidence that threatens or pushes that stance off its axis. The result is further entrenchment of views, which is what we have seen recently from many anti Richard and pro Tudor propagandist peddlers such as Starkey and others. Whilst they are defending a rearguard action there is also ongoing debate questioning the authorship of Shakespeare, which questions the validity of their argument altogether as if not Shakespeare, then who and why? The same questions could be asked of More and others.
> Elaine
>
> --- In <mailto:%40yahoogroups.com>, "reswallie_girl" <Ragged_staff@> wrote:
> >
> > There seems to be a lot of argument against points that I haven't made, which I find fascinating! I'm wondering still if I've been able to make myself fully understood, or if this idea is seen, for some reason, as a threat to 'revisionist' views. It's quite the opposite.
> >
> > The 'thesis' is the full body of work that relates to 'Richard the monster/serial killer'. Not individual points.
> >
> > The 'antithesis' is the full body of work that relates to 'Good King Richard/who could do no wrong'. Not individual points.
> >
> > So far, academic history of Richard and his reign seems to relate more to the 'thesis' than the 'antithesis'. What I'm suggesting is that, in the coming years, more and more ideas that come out of the 'antithesis' will find their way into the world of academic history. There will be no 'compromise' or 'middle ground' sought but, working with both the 'thesis' and what has (to some extent) superseded it (the 'antithesis)', there will be a fresh body of work that addresses both the problems of the 'thesis' and those of the 'antithesis'.
> >
> > This isn't so much a 'method' that I'm proposing historians follow but what I think is the next phase of historical research and writing about Richard, his life, times and reign. It isn't consciously negotiated but what's likely to occur in the normal course of events.
> >
> > Arguing against 'using' this method is fine. However, I'm not advocating it's 'use' but seeing it on the horizon.
> >
> > Karen Clark
> >
> > --- In <mailto:%40yahoogroups.com>, Ishita Bandyo <bandyoi@> wrote:
> > >
> > > Great post, Carol!
> > >
> > > Ishita Bandyo
> > > www.ishitabandyo.com<http://www.ishitabandyo.com>
> > > www.facebook.com/ishitabandyofinearts<http://www.facebook.com/ishitabandyofinearts>
> > > www.ishitabandyoarts.blogspot.com<http://www.ishitabandyoarts.blogspot.com>
> > >
> > > On May 27, 2013, at 7:59 PM, "justcarol67" <justcarol67@> wrote:
> > >
> > > >
> > > > Karen wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > Ok, so the 'thesis' here is Shakespeare, More and 500 odd years of what a lot of people refer to as 'Tudor propaganda'.
> > > >
> > > > > The 'antithesis' is the work of modern (and some not so modern) revisionists, including various fictional works.
> > > >
> > > > > The 'synthesis' then is likely to be a further step, not a compromise nor some kind of arbitrary middle ground.
> > > >
> > > > Carol responds:
> > > >
> > > > I don't think that revisionists would accept these terms since their thesis would be that Richard *wasn't* the monster Richard depicted him as being, a point, by the way, that even moderate traditionalists like Pollard accept. But for the sake of argument, let's accept those terms and see what happens.
> > > >
> > > > Thesis 1 (Shakespeare): Richard was a hunchback.
> > > >
> > > > Antithesis 1(Markham et al.): Richard was in no way disabled or deformed.
> > > >
> > > > Synthesis 1: Richard was not deformed but may have had one shoulder higher than the other as the result of idiopathic scoliosis.
> > > >
> > > > Okay. That one works.
> > > >
> > > > Thesis 2: Richard had a withered arm from birth .
> > > >
> > > > Antithesis 2: Both arms were perfectly normal.
> > > >
> > > > Synthesis 2: Um, Richard's arm was normal at birth but withered by sorcery or premature old age affecting only one arm?
> > > >
> > > > I can't think of a reasonable compromise, and, in any case, we know that the antithesis is correct here.
> > > >
> > > > Thesis 3: Richard murdered Edward of Lancaster.
> > > >
> > > > Antithesis 3: Edward of Lancaster was killed in battle or fleeing from the battle, possibly by the Duke of Clarence's men.
> > > >
> > > > Synthesis 3: Edward of Lancaster was murdered by a group of men, possibly including Richard, George of Clarence, and Hastings.
> > > >
> > > > In this case, the contemporary accounts for both sides present the antithesis, which must be true if five sources from both sides of the conflict agree on it (even if they differ on the details). The (Tudor) synthesis begins in the Great Chronicle (possibly influenced by unreliable French sources) with unnamed servants of E4 murdering EoL and becomes Richard, George, and Hastings in Vergil, forty years after the event. Not even Shakespeare makes Richard the lone murderer. It's the three Plantagenet brothers working as a team. However much the story of Edward of Lancaster mouthing off to Edward (and paying the price with his death) may appeal to some people (I don't mean you, Karen, but I do have someone specific in mind), it is just that, a story, and one of the best examples of what Tey called Tonypandy in the making that I know of.
> > > >
> > > > Thesis 4: Richard killed the Duke of Somerset in the Battle of St. Albans and cut off his head (Henry VI Part II).
> > > >
> > > > Antithesis 4: Richard was two and a half and was at home in his nursery during the Battle of Saint Albans.
> > > >
> > > > Synthesis: No synthesis is possible. Richard didn't fight in that battle, much less kill anyone, nor was he present at Wakefield or Towton (Henry VI Patr III), both fought when he was nine.
> > > >
> > > > Richard Duke of Gloucester as depicted by Shakespeare in the Henry VI plays is so far from the historical Richard that we must ask ourselves whether we can believe anything at all of his continuation as a character in "Richard III."
> > > >
> > > > Thesis 5 (More): Richard plotted the death of the "Princes" with a "secret page" while sitting on the privy and had them killed by an ambitious knight previously unknown to Richard named Sir James Tyrrell.
> > > >
> > > > Antithesis 5a (Markham): Tyrrell killed the "Princes" for Henry Tudor, not for Richard.
> > > >
> > > > Antithesis 5b: Nobody killed the "Princes." At least one of them escaped to Burgundy and became Perkin Warbeck.
> > > >
> > > > Antithesis 5c: Buckingham killed the "Princes" for his own ends and let the blame fall on Richard.
> > > >
> > > > Synthesis: Nobody knows what happened. Not much of a synthesis, I realize, but until we know more about the bones in the urn, all we can do is examine the conflicting testimony in the light of Richard's character as revealed in other documents and draw our own conclusions.
> > > >
> > > > I'm afraid that the thesis-synthesis-antithesis method isn't going to work here since so much of Shakespeare and More can be rejected out of hand (and since Shakespeare was a dramatist, not a historian).
> > > >
> > > > We need to figure out what More was up to if we can and discard any parts of his work and Vergil's that are contradicted by earlier sources, especially primary ones, as well as any attempts at character assessment (psychology before the concept existed) by men who never even saw Richard. And we need to be very careful about anything we tentatively accept from those sources knowing how far from the mark the rest is.
> > > >
> > > > Mancini, Rous, and Croyland, as well as scattered letters and comments from other people, need to be read with a careful and critical eye and taken as fact only when confirmed by primary sources. (If a favorable source like Langton and an unfavorable source like Rous agree, the views expressed are probably accurate.) The only sources that we can accept as absolutely accurate and authentic are Richard's own letters and official documents and even those need to be read carefully, without bias or preconceptions, and bearing in mind any linguistic ambiguity resulting from translation from Latin to English or Early Modern English to Modern English.
> > > >
> > > > Our understanding of Richard does not require us to start from Tudor sources as our "thesis" with the revisionist views as "antithesis" and arrive at a "synthesis" somewhere between the two. Instead, we should start with contemporary documents, viewing them analytically and without preconceptions other than those which can be supported by other documents. The chroniclers, even Croyland and Mancini, assumed that Richard had aimed from at least the time of Edward IV's death to usurp the throne. To start with idea as our "thesis" requires us to try to *disprove* the "antithesis" (his assumption of the throne was both unanticipated and legal) since the only synthesis possible is the unsatisfactory one of an unanticipated usurpation.
> > > >
> > > > At any rate, we are all trying to arrive at the truth in our own way, but I don't think this particular method will work any more successfully for us (or, at any rate, for me) than it did for James Gairdner, trying to reconcile the documents accessible to him with Shakespeare's Machiavellian Richard.
> > > >
> > > > Carol
> > > >
> > > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> >
>

Sorry for the very flawed grammar, typing in the car and no coffee yet.

On May 30, 2013, at 5:43 AM, "Pamela Bain" <pbain@...> wrote:

> Will you eventually tell us? Yes, like journalistic rules WAS three sources, and verified at that. How we have slipped......
>
> On May 30, 2013, at 4:37 AM, "Hilary Jones" <hjnatdat@...<mailto:hjnatdat@...>> wrote:
>
>
>
> Can I add something to that? We need to look at all sources, secondary as well. I'm a the moment looking at a secondary source which has been used in in good faith in recent books by two of our best authors. And it has been used to prop up quite a crucial argument. It is fundamentally flawed. They should have tested it but because it was from another 'scholar', they took it on trust. At the moment I'm not going to reveal what it is. But it is a good example of how flawed research can become viral and take on a life of its own. Next time we run to any Ricardian author (and that includes the biggies) I suggest we start applying that test, as we do on each other here. H.
>
> ________________________________
> From: mariewalsh2003 <[email protected]<mailto:no_reply%40yahoogroups.com>>
> To: <mailto:%40yahoogroups.com>
> Sent: Wednesday, 29 May 2013, 22:21
> Subject: Re: Traditionalists, revisionists, & synthesists
>
>
>
> Hear, hear! I don't have a lot of time for the notion that truth is got at by the battle of people with opposing extreme views; all you get from that is a mindless compromise - lets give the revisionists points a, b & c, and the traditionalists points d, e & f. Truth is got at by digging in the archives, etc, and interpreting what is found without reference to any predetermined agenda.
> Marie
>
> --- In <mailto:%40yahoogroups.com>, "ellrosa1452" <kathryn198@...> wrote:
>>
>> It is too neat a theory to compartmentalize Richard's detractors and supporters into a Traditionalists versus Revisionists debate with the outcome neatly summarized as a "synthesis of opinion" which it certainly will not be as there is far too much still to be done.
>>
>> This rides roughshod over the belief that each and every piece of evidence has to be re-evaluated and analysed on its own merits in the face of new evidence provided from the discovery of Richard's remains and the expectation of further discoveries, i.e., scientific and otherwise in regard to the condition of the remains, health, diet and the possibility of evidence not yet come to light. However, the sources themselves are the only place to begin to investigate and re-evaluate and it will take a new and fresh perspective from someone with unclouded judgment and/or preconceived ideas.
>>
>> In addition, historians, writers and the media who accept Shakespeare, More etc. appear to operate in a bubble where time stopped at the point when they formulated their stance and point of view and therefore disagree with any evidence that threatens or pushes that stance off its axis. The result is further entrenchment of views, which is what we have seen recently from many anti Richard and pro Tudor propagandist peddlers such as Starkey and others. Whilst they are defending a rearguard action there is also ongoing debate questioning the authorship of Shakespeare, which questions the validity of their argument altogether as if not Shakespeare, then who and why? The same questions could be asked of More and others.
>> Elaine
>>
>> --- In <mailto:%40yahoogroups.com>, "reswallie_girl" <Ragged_staff@> wrote:
>>>
>>> There seems to be a lot of argument against points that I haven't made, which I find fascinating! I'm wondering still if I've been able to make myself fully understood, or if this idea is seen, for some reason, as a threat to 'revisionist' views. It's quite the opposite.
>>>
>>> The 'thesis' is the full body of work that relates to 'Richard the monster/serial killer'. Not individual points.
>>>
>>> The 'antithesis' is the full body of work that relates to 'Good King Richard/who could do no wrong'. Not individual points.
>>>
>>> So far, academic history of Richard and his reign seems to relate more to the 'thesis' than the 'antithesis'. What I'm suggesting is that, in the coming years, more and more ideas that come out of the 'antithesis' will find their way into the world of academic history. There will be no 'compromise' or 'middle ground' sought but, working with both the 'thesis' and what has (to some extent) superseded it (the 'antithesis)', there will be a fresh body of work that addresses both the problems of the 'thesis' and those of the 'antithesis'.
>>>
>>> This isn't so much a 'method' that I'm proposing historians follow but what I think is the next phase of historical research and writing about Richard, his life, times and reign. It isn't consciously negotiated but what's likely to occur in the normal course of events.
>>>
>>> Arguing against 'using' this method is fine. However, I'm not advocating it's 'use' but seeing it on the horizon.
>>>
>>> Karen Clark
>>>
>>> --- In <mailto:%40yahoogroups.com>, Ishita Bandyo <bandyoi@> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Great post, Carol!
>>>>
>>>> Ishita Bandyo
>>>> www.ishitabandyo.com<http://www.ishitabandyo.com>
>>>> www.facebook.com/ishitabandyofinearts<http://www.facebook.com/ishitabandyofinearts>
>>>> www.ishitabandyoarts.blogspot.com<http://www.ishitabandyoarts.blogspot.com>
>>>>
>>>> On May 27, 2013, at 7:59 PM, "justcarol67" <justcarol67@> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Karen wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Ok, so the 'thesis' here is Shakespeare, More and 500 odd years of what a lot of people refer to as 'Tudor propaganda'.
>>>>>
>>>>>> The 'antithesis' is the work of modern (and some not so modern) revisionists, including various fictional works.
>>>>>
>>>>>> The 'synthesis' then is likely to be a further step, not a compromise nor some kind of arbitrary middle ground.
>>>>>
>>>>> Carol responds:
>>>>>
>>>>> I don't think that revisionists would accept these terms since their thesis would be that Richard *wasn't* the monster Richard depicted him as being, a point, by the way, that even moderate traditionalists like Pollard accept. But for the sake of argument, let's accept those terms and see what happens.
>>>>>
>>>>> Thesis 1 (Shakespeare): Richard was a hunchback.
>>>>>
>>>>> Antithesis 1(Markham et al.): Richard was in no way disabled or deformed.
>>>>>
>>>>> Synthesis 1: Richard was not deformed but may have had one shoulder higher than the other as the result of idiopathic scoliosis.
>>>>>
>>>>> Okay. That one works.
>>>>>
>>>>> Thesis 2: Richard had a withered arm from birth .
>>>>>
>>>>> Antithesis 2: Both arms were perfectly normal.
>>>>>
>>>>> Synthesis 2: Um, Richard's arm was normal at birth but withered by sorcery or premature old age affecting only one arm?
>>>>>
>>>>> I can't think of a reasonable compromise, and, in any case, we know that the antithesis is correct here.
>>>>>
>>>>> Thesis 3: Richard murdered Edward of Lancaster.
>>>>>
>>>>> Antithesis 3: Edward of Lancaster was killed in battle or fleeing from the battle, possibly by the Duke of Clarence's men.
>>>>>
>>>>> Synthesis 3: Edward of Lancaster was murdered by a group of men, possibly including Richard, George of Clarence, and Hastings.
>>>>>
>>>>> In this case, the contemporary accounts for both sides present the antithesis, which must be true if five sources from both sides of the conflict agree on it (even if they differ on the details). The (Tudor) synthesis begins in the Great Chronicle (possibly influenced by unreliable French sources) with unnamed servants of E4 murdering EoL and becomes Richard, George, and Hastings in Vergil, forty years after the event. Not even Shakespeare makes Richard the lone murderer. It's the three Plantagenet brothers working as a team. However much the story of Edward of Lancaster mouthing off to Edward (and paying the price with his death) may appeal to some people (I don't mean you, Karen, but I do have someone specific in mind), it is just that, a story, and one of the best examples of what Tey called Tonypandy in the making that I know of.
>>>>>
>>>>> Thesis 4: Richard killed the Duke of Somerset in the Battle of St. Albans and cut off his head (Henry VI Part II).
>>>>>
>>>>> Antithesis 4: Richard was two and a half and was at home in his nursery during the Battle of Saint Albans.
>>>>>
>>>>> Synthesis: No synthesis is possible. Richard didn't fight in that battle, much less kill anyone, nor was he present at Wakefield or Towton (Henry VI Patr III), both fought when he was nine.
>>>>>
>>>>> Richard Duke of Gloucester as depicted by Shakespeare in the Henry VI plays is so far from the historical Richard that we must ask ourselves whether we can believe anything at all of his continuation as a character in "Richard III."
>>>>>
>>>>> Thesis 5 (More): Richard plotted the death of the "Princes" with a "secret page" while sitting on the privy and had them killed by an ambitious knight previously unknown to Richard named Sir James Tyrrell.
>>>>>
>>>>> Antithesis 5a (Markham): Tyrrell killed the "Princes" for Henry Tudor, not for Richard.
>>>>>
>>>>> Antithesis 5b: Nobody killed the "Princes." At least one of them escaped to Burgundy and became Perkin Warbeck.
>>>>>
>>>>> Antithesis 5c: Buckingham killed the "Princes" for his own ends and let the blame fall on Richard.
>>>>>
>>>>> Synthesis: Nobody knows what happened. Not much of a synthesis, I realize, but until we know more about the bones in the urn, all we can do is examine the conflicting testimony in the light of Richard's character as revealed in other documents and draw our own conclusions.
>>>>>
>>>>> I'm afraid that the thesis-synthesis-antithesis method isn't going to work here since so much of Shakespeare and More can be rejected out of hand (and since Shakespeare was a dramatist, not a historian).
>>>>>
>>>>> We need to figure out what More was up to if we can and discard any parts of his work and Vergil's that are contradicted by earlier sources, especially primary ones, as well as any attempts at character assessment (psychology before the concept existed) by men who never even saw Richard. And we need to be very careful about anything we tentatively accept from those sources knowing how far from the mark the rest is.
>>>>>
>>>>> Mancini, Rous, and Croyland, as well as scattered letters and comments from other people, need to be read with a careful and critical eye and taken as fact only when confirmed by primary sources. (If a favorable source like Langton and an unfavorable source like Rous agree, the views expressed are probably accurate.) The only sources that we can accept as absolutely accurate and authentic are Richard's own letters and official documents and even those need to be read carefully, without bias or preconceptions, and bearing in mind any linguistic ambiguity resulting from translation from Latin to English or Early Modern English to Modern English.
>>>>>
>>>>> Our understanding of Richard does not require us to start from Tudor sources as our "thesis" with the revisionist views as "antithesis" and arrive at a "synthesis" somewhere between the two. Instead, we should start with contemporary documents, viewing them analytically and without preconceptions other than those which can be supported by other documents. The chroniclers, even Croyland and Mancini, assumed that Richard had aimed from at least the time of Edward IV's death to usurp the throne. To start with idea as our "thesis" requires us to try to *disprove* the "antithesis" (his assumption of the throne was both unanticipated and legal) since the only synthesis possible is the unsatisfactory one of an unanticipated usurpation.
>>>>>
>>>>> At any rate, we are all trying to arrive at the truth in our own way, but I don't think this particular method will work any more successfully for us (or, at any rate, for me) than it did for James Gairdner, trying to reconcile the documents accessible to him with Shakespeare's Machiavellian Richard.
>>>>>
>>>>> Carol
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>

Oh yes of course - and I'm by no means trashing the scholar. It was a long time ago and I take my hat off to those who waded through books in libraries forty years' ago - I was one of them and it was dire. There is just so much more at our fingertips (literally) now. 



________________________________
From: Pamela Bain <pbain@...>
To: "<>" <>
Sent: Thursday, 30 May 2013, 11:43
Subject: Re: Traditionalists, revisionists, & synthesists


Will you eventually tell us? Yes, like journalistic rules WAS three sources, and verified at that. How we have slipped......

On May 30, 2013, at 4:37 AM, "Hilary Jones" <hjnatdat@...<mailto:hjnatdat@...>> wrote:



Can I add something to that? We need to look at all sources, secondary as well. I'm a the moment looking at a secondary source which has been used in in good faith in recent books by two of our best authors. And it has been used to prop up quite a crucial argument. It is fundamentally flawed. They should have tested it but because it was from another 'scholar', they took it on trust. At the moment I'm not going to reveal what it is. But it is a good example of how flawed research can become viral and take on a life of its own. Next time we run to any Ricardian author (and that includes the biggies) I suggest we start applying that test, as we do on each other here. H.

________________________________
From: mariewalsh2003 <[email protected]<mailto:no_reply%40yahoogroups.com>>
To: <mailto:%40yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, 29 May 2013, 22:21
Subject: Re: Traditionalists, revisionists, & synthesists



Hear, hear! I don't have a lot of time for the notion that truth is got at by the battle of people with opposing extreme views; all you get from that is a mindless compromise - lets give the revisionists points a, b & c, and the traditionalists points d, e & f. Truth is got at by digging in the archives, etc, and interpreting what is found without reference to any predetermined agenda.
Marie

--- In <mailto:%40yahoogroups.com>, "ellrosa1452" <kathryn198@...> wrote:
>
> It is too neat a theory to compartmentalize Richard's detractors and supporters into a Traditionalists versus Revisionists debate with the outcome neatly summarized as a "synthesis of opinion" which it certainly will not be as there is far too much still to be done.
>
> This rides roughshod over the belief that each and every piece of evidence has to be re-evaluated and analysed on its own merits in the face of new evidence provided from the discovery of Richard's remains and the expectation of further discoveries, i.e., scientific and otherwise in regard to the condition of the remains, health, diet and the possibility of evidence not yet come to light. However, the sources themselves are the only place to begin to investigate and re-evaluate and it will take a new and fresh perspective from someone with unclouded judgment and/or preconceived ideas.
>
> In addition, historians, writers and the media who accept Shakespeare, More etc. appear to operate in a bubble where time stopped at the point when they formulated their stance and point of view and therefore disagree with any evidence that threatens or pushes that stance off its axis. The result is further entrenchment of views, which is what we have seen recently from many anti Richard and pro Tudor propagandist peddlers such as Starkey and others. Whilst they are defending a rearguard action there is also ongoing debate questioning the authorship of Shakespeare, which questions the validity of their argument altogether as if not Shakespeare, then who and why? The same questions could be asked of More and others.
> Elaine
>
> --- In <mailto:%40yahoogroups.com>, "reswallie_girl" <Ragged_staff@> wrote:
> >
> > There seems to be a lot of argument against points that I haven't made, which I find fascinating! I'm wondering still if I've been able to make myself fully understood, or if this idea is seen, for some reason, as a threat to 'revisionist' views. It's quite the opposite.
> >
> > The 'thesis' is the full body of work that relates to 'Richard the monster/serial killer'. Not individual points.
> >
> > The 'antithesis' is the full body of work that relates to 'Good King Richard/who could do no wrong'. Not individual points.
> >
> > So far, academic history of Richard and his reign seems to relate more to the 'thesis' than the 'antithesis'. What I'm suggesting is that, in the coming years, more and more ideas that come out of the 'antithesis' will find their way into the world of academic history. There will be no 'compromise' or 'middle ground' sought but, working with both the 'thesis' and what has (to some extent) superseded it (the 'antithesis)', there will be a fresh body of work that addresses both the problems of the 'thesis' and those of the 'antithesis'.
> >
> > This isn't so much a 'method' that I'm proposing historians follow but what I think is the next phase of historical research and writing about Richard, his life, times and reign. It isn't consciously negotiated but what's likely to occur in the normal course of events.
> >
> > Arguing against 'using' this method is fine. However, I'm not advocating it's 'use' but seeing it on the horizon.
> >
> > Karen Clark
> >
> > --- In <mailto:%40yahoogroups.com>, Ishita Bandyo <bandyoi@> wrote:
> > >
> > > Great post, Carol!
> > >
> > > Ishita Bandyo
> > > www.ishitabandyo.com<http://www.ishitabandyo.com>
> > > www.facebook.com/ishitabandyofinearts<http://www.facebook.com/ishitabandyofinearts>
> > > www.ishitabandyoarts.blogspot.com<http://www.ishitabandyoarts.blogspot.com>
> > >
> > > On May 27, 2013, at 7:59 PM, "justcarol67" <justcarol67@> wrote:
> > >
> > > >
> > > > Karen wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > Ok, so the 'thesis' here is Shakespeare, More and 500 odd years of what a lot of people refer to as 'Tudor propaganda'.
> > > >
> > > > > The 'antithesis' is the work of modern (and some not so modern) revisionists, including various fictional works.
> > > >
> > > > > The 'synthesis' then is likely to be a further step, not a compromise nor some kind of arbitrary middle ground.
> > > >
> > > > Carol responds:
> > > >
> > > > I don't think that revisionists would accept these terms since their thesis would be that Richard *wasn't* the monster Richard depicted him as being, a point, by the way, that even moderate traditionalists like Pollard accept. But for the sake of argument, let's accept those terms and see what happens.
> > > >
> > > > Thesis 1 (Shakespeare): Richard was a hunchback.
> > > >
> > > > Antithesis 1(Markham et al.): Richard was in no way disabled or deformed.
> > > >
> > > > Synthesis 1: Richard was not deformed but may have had one shoulder higher than the other as the result of idiopathic scoliosis.
> > > >
> > > > Okay. That one works.
> > > >
> > > > Thesis 2: Richard had a withered arm from birth .
> > > >
> > > > Antithesis 2: Both arms were perfectly normal.
> > > >
> > > > Synthesis 2: Um, Richard's arm was normal at birth but withered by sorcery or premature old age affecting only one arm?
> > > >
> > > > I can't think of a reasonable compromise, and, in any case, we know that the antithesis is correct here.
> > > >
> > > > Thesis 3: Richard murdered Edward of Lancaster.
> > > >
> > > > Antithesis 3: Edward of Lancaster was killed in battle or fleeing from the battle, possibly by the Duke of Clarence's men.
> > > >
> > > > Synthesis 3: Edward of Lancaster was murdered by a group of men, possibly including Richard, George of Clarence, and Hastings.
> > > >
> > > > In this case, the contemporary accounts for both sides present the antithesis, which must be true if five sources from both sides of the conflict agree on it (even if they differ on the details). The (Tudor) synthesis begins in the Great Chronicle (possibly influenced by unreliable French sources) with unnamed servants of E4 murdering EoL and becomes Richard, George, and Hastings in Vergil, forty years after the event. Not even Shakespeare makes Richard the lone murderer. It's the three Plantagenet brothers working as a team. However much the story of Edward of Lancaster mouthing off to Edward (and paying the price with his death) may appeal to some people (I don't mean you, Karen, but I do have someone specific in mind), it is just that, a story, and one of the best examples of what Tey called Tonypandy in the making that I know of.
> > > >
> > > > Thesis 4: Richard killed the Duke of Somerset in the Battle of St. Albans and cut off his head (Henry VI Part II).
> > > >
> > > > Antithesis 4: Richard was two and a half and was at home in his nursery during the Battle of Saint Albans.
> > > >
> > > > Synthesis: No synthesis is possible. Richard didn't fight in that battle, much less kill anyone, nor was he present at Wakefield or Towton (Henry VI Patr III), both fought when he was nine.
> > > >
> > > > Richard Duke of Gloucester as depicted by Shakespeare in the Henry VI plays is so far from the historical Richard that we must ask ourselves whether we can believe anything at all of his continuation as a character in "Richard III."
> > > >
> > > > Thesis 5 (More): Richard plotted the death of the "Princes" with a "secret page" while sitting on the privy and had them killed by an ambitious knight previously unknown to Richard named Sir James Tyrrell.
> > > >
> > > > Antithesis 5a (Markham): Tyrrell killed the "Princes" for Henry Tudor, not for Richard.
> > > >
> > > > Antithesis 5b: Nobody killed the "Princes." At least one of them escaped to Burgundy and became Perkin Warbeck.
> > > >
> > > > Antithesis 5c: Buckingham killed the "Princes" for his own ends and let the blame fall on Richard.
> > > >
> > > > Synthesis: Nobody knows what happened. Not much of a synthesis, I realize, but until we know more about the bones in the urn, all we can do is examine the conflicting testimony in the light of Richard's character as revealed in other documents and draw our own conclusions.
> > > >
> > > > I'm afraid that the thesis-synthesis-antithesis method isn't going to work here since so much of Shakespeare and More can be rejected out of hand (and since Shakespeare was a dramatist, not a historian).
> > > >
> > > > We need to figure out what More was up to if we can and discard any parts of his work and Vergil's that are contradicted by earlier sources, especially primary ones, as well as any attempts at character assessment (psychology before the concept existed) by men who never even saw Richard. And we need to be very careful about anything we tentatively accept from those sources knowing how far from the mark the rest is.
> > > >
> > > > Mancini, Rous, and Croyland, as well as scattered letters and comments from other people, need to be read with a careful and critical eye and taken as fact only when confirmed by primary sources. (If a favorable source like Langton and an unfavorable source like Rous agree, the views expressed are probably accurate.) The only sources that we can accept as absolutely accurate and authentic are Richard's own letters and official documents and even those need to be read carefully, without bias or preconceptions, and bearing in mind any linguistic ambiguity resulting from translation from Latin to English or Early Modern English to Modern English.
> > > >
> > > > Our understanding of Richard does not require us to start from Tudor sources as our "thesis" with the revisionist views as "antithesis" and arrive at a "synthesis" somewhere between the two. Instead, we should start with contemporary documents, viewing them analytically and without preconceptions other than those which can be supported by other documents. The chroniclers, even Croyland and Mancini, assumed that Richard had aimed from at least the time of Edward IV's death to usurp the throne. To start with idea as our "thesis" requires us to try to *disprove* the "antithesis" (his assumption of the throne was both unanticipated and legal) since the only synthesis possible is the unsatisfactory one of an unanticipated usurpation.
> > > >
> > > > At any rate, we are all trying to arrive at the truth in our own way, but I don't think this particular method will work any more successfully for us (or, at any rate, for me) than it did for James Gairdner, trying to reconcile the documents accessible to him with Shakespeare's Machiavellian Richard.
> > > >
> > > > Carol
> > > >
> > > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> >
>











------------------------------------

Yahoo! Groups Links

I agree. A N Wilson's The Elizabethans had some excellent insights; he was particularly good on Ireland and religion, but it was spoilt near the beginning when he rolled out the old chestnut, that Clarence was murdered by Richard. Why bother to research a subject if you are going to accept as gospel and reiterate in you own book something that he could have easily looked into? A little research on that subject would have told him it was contentious, to say the least. As a result I have reservations and would think twice before trying another of his works. I hate to imagine what he did with his biography of Hitler!
Elaine

--- In , Hilary Jones <hjnatdat@...> wrote:
>
> Oh yes of course - and I'm by no means trashing the scholar. It was a long time ago and I take my hat off to those who waded through books in libraries forty years' ago - I was one of them and it was dire. There is just so much more at our fingertips (literally) now. 
>
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: Pamela Bain <pbain@...>
> To: "<>" <>
> Sent: Thursday, 30 May 2013, 11:43
> Subject: Re: Traditionalists, revisionists, & synthesists
>
>
> Will you eventually tell us? Yes, like journalistic rules WAS three sources, and verified at that. How we have slipped......
>
> On May 30, 2013, at 4:37 AM, "Hilary Jones" <hjnatdat@...<mailto:hjnatdat@...>> wrote:
>
>
>
> Can I add something to that? We need to look at all sources, secondary as well. I'm a the moment looking at a secondary source which has been used in in good faith in recent books by two of our best authors. And it has been used to prop up quite a crucial argument. It is fundamentally flawed. They should have tested it but because it was from another 'scholar', they took it on trust. At the moment I'm not going to reveal what it is. But it is a good example of how flawed research can become viral and take on a life of its own. Next time we run to any Ricardian author (and that includes the biggies) I suggest we start applying that test, as we do on each other here. H.
>
> ________________________________
> From: mariewalsh2003 <[email protected]<mailto:no_reply%40yahoogroups.com>>
> To: <mailto:%40yahoogroups.com>
> Sent: Wednesday, 29 May 2013, 22:21
> Subject: Re: Traditionalists, revisionists, & synthesists
>
>
>
> Hear, hear! I don't have a lot of time for the notion that truth is got at by the battle of people with opposing extreme views; all you get from that is a mindless compromise - lets give the revisionists points a, b & c, and the traditionalists points d, e & f. Truth is got at by digging in the archives, etc, and interpreting what is found without reference to any predetermined agenda.
> Marie
>
> --- In <mailto:%40yahoogroups.com>, "ellrosa1452" <kathryn198@> wrote:
> >
> > It is too neat a theory to compartmentalize Richard's detractors and supporters into a Traditionalists versus Revisionists debate with the outcome neatly summarized as a "synthesis of opinion" which it certainly will not be as there is far too much still to be done.
> >
> > This rides roughshod over the belief that each and every piece of evidence has to be re-evaluated and analysed on its own merits in the face of new evidence provided from the discovery of Richard's remains and the expectation of further discoveries, i.e., scientific and otherwise in regard to the condition of the remains, health, diet and the possibility of evidence not yet come to light. However, the sources themselves are the only place to begin to investigate and re-evaluate and it will take a new and fresh perspective from someone with unclouded judgment and/or preconceived ideas.
> >
> > In addition, historians, writers and the media who accept Shakespeare, More etc. appear to operate in a bubble where time stopped at the point when they formulated their stance and point of view and therefore disagree with any evidence that threatens or pushes that stance off its axis. The result is further entrenchment of views, which is what we have seen recently from many anti Richard and pro Tudor propagandist peddlers such as Starkey and others. Whilst they are defending a rearguard action there is also ongoing debate questioning the authorship of Shakespeare, which questions the validity of their argument altogether as if not Shakespeare, then who and why? The same questions could be asked of More and others.
> > Elaine
> >
> > --- In <mailto:%40yahoogroups.com>, "reswallie_girl" <Ragged_staff@> wrote:
> > >
> > > There seems to be a lot of argument against points that I haven't made, which I find fascinating! I'm wondering still if I've been able to make myself fully understood, or if this idea is seen, for some reason, as a threat to 'revisionist' views. It's quite the opposite.
> > >
> > > The 'thesis' is the full body of work that relates to 'Richard the monster/serial killer'. Not individual points.
> > >
> > > The 'antithesis' is the full body of work that relates to 'Good King Richard/who could do no wrong'. Not individual points.
> > >
> > > So far, academic history of Richard and his reign seems to relate more to the 'thesis' than the 'antithesis'. What I'm suggesting is that, in the coming years, more and more ideas that come out of the 'antithesis' will find their way into the world of academic history. There will be no 'compromise' or 'middle ground' sought but, working with both the 'thesis' and what has (to some extent) superseded it (the 'antithesis)', there will be a fresh body of work that addresses both the problems of the 'thesis' and those of the 'antithesis'.
> > >
> > > This isn't so much a 'method' that I'm proposing historians follow but what I think is the next phase of historical research and writing about Richard, his life, times and reign. It isn't consciously negotiated but what's likely to occur in the normal course of events.
> > >
> > > Arguing against 'using' this method is fine. However, I'm not advocating it's 'use' but seeing it on the horizon.
> > >
> > > Karen Clark
> > >
> > > --- In <mailto:%40yahoogroups.com>, Ishita Bandyo <bandyoi@> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > Great post, Carol!
> > > >
> > > > Ishita Bandyo
> > > > www.ishitabandyo.com<http://www.ishitabandyo.com>
> > > > www.facebook.com/ishitabandyofinearts<http://www.facebook.com/ishitabandyofinearts>
> > > > www.ishitabandyoarts.blogspot.com<http://www.ishitabandyoarts.blogspot.com>
> > > >
> > > > On May 27, 2013, at 7:59 PM, "justcarol67" <justcarol67@> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > Karen wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > > > Ok, so the 'thesis' here is Shakespeare, More and 500 odd years of what a lot of people refer to as 'Tudor propaganda'.
> > > > >
> > > > > > The 'antithesis' is the work of modern (and some not so modern) revisionists, including various fictional works.
> > > > >
> > > > > > The 'synthesis' then is likely to be a further step, not a compromise nor some kind of arbitrary middle ground.
> > > > >
> > > > > Carol responds:
> > > > >
> > > > > I don't think that revisionists would accept these terms since their thesis would be that Richard *wasn't* the monster Richard depicted him as being, a point, by the way, that even moderate traditionalists like Pollard accept. But for the sake of argument, let's accept those terms and see what happens.
> > > > >
> > > > > Thesis 1 (Shakespeare): Richard was a hunchback.
> > > > >
> > > > > Antithesis 1(Markham et al.): Richard was in no way disabled or deformed.
> > > > >
> > > > > Synthesis 1: Richard was not deformed but may have had one shoulder higher than the other as the result of idiopathic scoliosis.
> > > > >
> > > > > Okay. That one works.
> > > > >
> > > > > Thesis 2: Richard had a withered arm from birth .
> > > > >
> > > > > Antithesis 2: Both arms were perfectly normal.
> > > > >
> > > > > Synthesis 2: Um, Richard's arm was normal at birth but withered by sorcery or premature old age affecting only one arm?
> > > > >
> > > > > I can't think of a reasonable compromise, and, in any case, we know that the antithesis is correct here.
> > > > >
> > > > > Thesis 3: Richard murdered Edward of Lancaster.
> > > > >
> > > > > Antithesis 3: Edward of Lancaster was killed in battle or fleeing from the battle, possibly by the Duke of Clarence's men.
> > > > >
> > > > > Synthesis 3: Edward of Lancaster was murdered by a group of men, possibly including Richard, George of Clarence, and Hastings.
> > > > >
> > > > > In this case, the contemporary accounts for both sides present the antithesis, which must be true if five sources from both sides of the conflict agree on it (even if they differ on the details). The (Tudor) synthesis begins in the Great Chronicle (possibly influenced by unreliable French sources) with unnamed servants of E4 murdering EoL and becomes Richard, George, and Hastings in Vergil, forty years after the event. Not even Shakespeare makes Richard the lone murderer. It's the three Plantagenet brothers working as a team. However much the story of Edward of Lancaster mouthing off to Edward (and paying the price with his death) may appeal to some people (I don't mean you, Karen, but I do have someone specific in mind), it is just that, a story, and one of the best examples of what Tey called Tonypandy in the making that I know of.
> > > > >
> > > > > Thesis 4: Richard killed the Duke of Somerset in the Battle of St. Albans and cut off his head (Henry VI Part II).
> > > > >
> > > > > Antithesis 4: Richard was two and a half and was at home in his nursery during the Battle of Saint Albans.
> > > > >
> > > > > Synthesis: No synthesis is possible. Richard didn't fight in that battle, much less kill anyone, nor was he present at Wakefield or Towton (Henry VI Patr III), both fought when he was nine.
> > > > >
> > > > > Richard Duke of Gloucester as depicted by Shakespeare in the Henry VI plays is so far from the historical Richard that we must ask ourselves whether we can believe anything at all of his continuation as a character in "Richard III."
> > > > >
> > > > > Thesis 5 (More): Richard plotted the death of the "Princes" with a "secret page" while sitting on the privy and had them killed by an ambitious knight previously unknown to Richard named Sir James Tyrrell.
> > > > >
> > > > > Antithesis 5a (Markham): Tyrrell killed the "Princes" for Henry Tudor, not for Richard.
> > > > >
> > > > > Antithesis 5b: Nobody killed the "Princes." At least one of them escaped to Burgundy and became Perkin Warbeck.
> > > > >
> > > > > Antithesis 5c: Buckingham killed the "Princes" for his own ends and let the blame fall on Richard.
> > > > >
> > > > > Synthesis: Nobody knows what happened. Not much of a synthesis, I realize, but until we know more about the bones in the urn, all we can do is examine the conflicting testimony in the light of Richard's character as revealed in other documents and draw our own conclusions.
> > > > >
> > > > > I'm afraid that the thesis-synthesis-antithesis method isn't going to work here since so much of Shakespeare and More can be rejected out of hand (and since Shakespeare was a dramatist, not a historian).
> > > > >
> > > > > We need to figure out what More was up to if we can and discard any parts of his work and Vergil's that are contradicted by earlier sources, especially primary ones, as well as any attempts at character assessment (psychology before the concept existed) by men who never even saw Richard. And we need to be very careful about anything we tentatively accept from those sources knowing how far from the mark the rest is.
> > > > >
> > > > > Mancini, Rous, and Croyland, as well as scattered letters and comments from other people, need to be read with a careful and critical eye and taken as fact only when confirmed by primary sources. (If a favorable source like Langton and an unfavorable source like Rous agree, the views expressed are probably accurate.) The only sources that we can accept as absolutely accurate and authentic are Richard's own letters and official documents and even those need to be read carefully, without bias or preconceptions, and bearing in mind any linguistic ambiguity resulting from translation from Latin to English or Early Modern English to Modern English.
> > > > >
> > > > > Our understanding of Richard does not require us to start from Tudor sources as our "thesis" with the revisionist views as "antithesis" and arrive at a "synthesis" somewhere between the two. Instead, we should start with contemporary documents, viewing them analytically and without preconceptions other than those which can be supported by other documents. The chroniclers, even Croyland and Mancini, assumed that Richard had aimed from at least the time of Edward IV's death to usurp the throne. To start with idea as our "thesis" requires us to try to *disprove* the "antithesis" (his assumption of the throne was both unanticipated and legal) since the only synthesis possible is the unsatisfactory one of an unanticipated usurpation.
> > > > >
> > > > > At any rate, we are all trying to arrive at the truth in our own way, but I don't think this particular method will work any more successfully for us (or, at any rate, for me) than it did for James Gairdner, trying to reconcile the documents accessible to him with Shakespeare's Machiavellian Richard.
> > > > >
> > > > > Carol
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > >
> >
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
>

Marie wrote:

"My understanding is that it only appears to be Classical Latin because all
we have left of this part of the 3rd Continuation is a 17th-century copy in
which the original medieval '-e' case endings have been "corrected" back to
Classical Latin '-ae'. (The original MS was damaged by fire, and only the
first section of it is still readable.)"

Doug here:
Oh.
So, the original Crowland Chronicle was in written in Medieval Latin. A copy
was made in the 17th century, but that copy was "corrected", either by the
copyist or someone else so that the Latin used in the Chronicle conformed to
the standards of "Classical" Latin. Yeesh!
Were the "corrections" limited to "e" to "ae", do you know? Or do we have to
worry about what else may have been "corrected"?
Doug
(who really, really hopes it's not the last!)






------------------------------------

Yahoo! Groups Links

Worrying isn't it? H



________________________________
From: Douglas Eugene Stamate <destama@...>
To:
Sent: Wednesday, 29 May 2013, 17:39
Subject: Re: Traditionalists, revisionists, & synthesists

 


Marie wrote:

"My understanding is that it only appears to be Classical Latin because all
we have left of this part of the 3rd Continuation is a 17th-century copy in
which the original medieval '-e' case endings have been "corrected" back to
Classical Latin '-ae'. (The original MS was damaged by fire, and only the
first section of it is still readable.)"

Doug here:
Oh.
So, the original Crowland Chronicle was in written in Medieval Latin. A copy
was made in the 17th century, but that copy was "corrected", either by the
copyist or someone else so that the Latin used in the Chronicle conformed to
the standards of "Classical" Latin. Yeesh!
Were the "corrections" limited to "e" to "ae", do you know? Or do we have to
worry about what else may have been "corrected"?
Doug
(who really, really hopes it's not the last!)

------------------------------------

Yahoo! Groups Links

I think is a lost hope...... So much has been destroyed or damaged, and how hard to re-do a manuscript, even if one was a Latin scholar.

On May 30, 2013, at 10:38 AM, "Douglas Eugene Stamate" <destama@...<mailto:destama@...>> wrote:



Marie wrote:

"My understanding is that it only appears to be Classical Latin because all
we have left of this part of the 3rd Continuation is a 17th-century copy in
which the original medieval '-e' case endings have been "corrected" back to
Classical Latin '-ae'. (The original MS was damaged by fire, and only the
first section of it is still readable.)"

Doug here:
Oh.
So, the original Crowland Chronicle was in written in Medieval Latin. A copy
was made in the 17th century, but that copy was "corrected", either by the
copyist or someone else so that the Latin used in the Chronicle conformed to
the standards of "Classical" Latin. Yeesh!
Were the "corrections" limited to "e" to "ae", do you know? Or do we have to
worry about what else may have been "corrected"?
Doug
(who really, really hopes it's not the last!)

------------------------------------

Yahoo! Groups Links

From: Hilary Jones
To:
Sent: Thursday, May 30, 2013 10:21 AM
Subject: Re: Traditionalists, revisionists, &
synthesists


> A few more eyes never did any harm did they? Particularly eyes that have
> no interest whatsoever in Richard's guilt or innocence. That's another way
> of getting us away from the biased revisionist image.

Quite. It would be different if all the classical scholars who had looked
at these passages before were in agreement about what they mean, but when
some passages are so ambiguous, it's surely a good idea to get some fresh,
guaranteed unbiased opinions, to see which version experts with no axe to
grind think is more likely.

Btw, if the translation of "viribus debilis" as "having the strength of a
debilitated person" is right (I'm not saying it is or isn't, just "if"),
that means that both Rous and Croyland suggest that Richard was sick at
Bosworth. Are they two *independent* sources saying that Richard was unwell
at Bosworth, or could Rous have read Croyland or vice versa, in which case
they are potentially really only one source on this, and so a lot less
significant?

From: Hilary Jones
To:
Sent: Thursday, May 30, 2013 10:41 AM
Subject: Re: Traditionalists, revisionists, &
synthesists


> But the one on Cromwell included a revisionist debate as to whether he was
> indeed a friend of Anne and his name had been blackened. That's if we were
> watching the same programme?

It's possible I missed that bit, because somebody was talking in my ear
during part of the programme about Cromwell - but the Ann Boleyn programme
included an extensive debate about, as you say, whether Cromwell and Ann
were actually friends and allies, and I certainly didn't notice anything
similar in the Cromwell one.

Cast your memory back - was the revisionist bit you heard done by one person
presenting competing evidence, or by several disputing persons (as "debate"
rather implies) each arguing from one viewpont? If the latter, it was the
one in the Ann Boleyn programme the previous week. And certainly the blurb
for the Cromwell programme presented Cromwell's judicial murder of Ann as an
absolute indisputable fact, when in fact it's clear it's very disputable
indeed, just like Richard and the boys.

Not that anything is going to make Cromwell exactly attractive. The
presenter tried hard to make his being the first person to introduce laws
criminalising gays and insisting on destroying the Norfolks' family church
sound like demonstrations of piety, but it was clear he was at least
something of a control freak.

Carol earlier:
> > As for the ambiguity, which we also encountered in the passage on "color and form" at Christmas, I wouldn't be surprised if it's deliberate in Croyland--and even more so in Rous.

Claire responded:
> Ooh, yes, a very good point. Shakspeare's plays are full of puns, so it was a known comedy/art form a century after Richard - Rous and Croyland might well have been indulging in a bit of spiteful wordplay.
>
Carol responds:

More like spiteful ambiguity, I would say. I doubt that either of them had a sense of humor--at least I see no evidence that they did. More, on the other hand, had a wicked one.

Carol

I have cast my mind back. It was at the end of the Cromwell programme and the bald-headed historian, whose name escapes me, I do apologise, was putting the case for the alternative Cromwell. Unlike the other programme there were no 'debates'.



________________________________
From: Claire M Jordan <whitehound@...>
To:
Sent: Thursday, 30 May 2013, 11:21
Subject: Re: Traditionalists, revisionists, & synthesists

 

From: Hilary Jones
To:
Sent: Thursday, May 30, 2013 10:41 AM
Subject: Re: Traditionalists, revisionists, &
synthesists

> But the one on Cromwell included a revisionist debate as to whether he was
> indeed a friend of Anne and his name had been blackened. That's if we were
> watching the same programme?

It's possible I missed that bit, because somebody was talking in my ear
during part of the programme about Cromwell - but the Ann Boleyn programme
included an extensive debate about, as you say, whether Cromwell and Ann
were actually friends and allies, and I certainly didn't notice anything
similar in the Cromwell one.

Cast your memory back - was the revisionist bit you heard done by one person
presenting competing evidence, or by several disputing persons (as "debate"
rather implies) each arguing from one viewpont? If the latter, it was the
one in the Ann Boleyn programme the previous week. And certainly the blurb
for the Cromwell programme presented Cromwell's judicial murder of Ann as an
absolute indisputable fact, when in fact it's clear it's very disputable
indeed, just like Richard and the boys.

Not that anything is going to make Cromwell exactly attractive. The
presenter tried hard to make his being the first person to introduce laws
criminalising gays and insisting on destroying the Norfolks' family church
sound like demonstrations of piety, but it was clear he was at least
something of a control freak.

--- In , "ellrosa1452" <kathryn198@...> wrote:
>
> I agree. A N Wilson's The Elizabethans had some excellent insights; he was particularly good on Ireland and religion, but it was spoilt near the beginning when he rolled out the old chestnut, that Clarence was murdered by Richard. Why bother to research a subject if you are going to accept as gospel and reiterate in you own book something that he could have easily looked into? A little research on that subject would have told him it was contentious, to say the least. As a result I have reservations and would think twice before trying another of his works. I hate to imagine what he did with his biography of Hitler!
> Elaine

Carol responds:

Considering that not even More has Richard murdering Clarence (only possibly being secretly glad about his death)--no contemporary or near-contemporary chronicler even hints at his involvement, the temporary constable being Buckingham--I'd say that "contentious" is an understatement. It's the least controversial of Richard's supposed "crimes" and attributable to Shakespeare (unless Hall or Holinshed beat him to it--I don't have time to check).

At any rate, shame on A. N. Wilson for treating Shakespeare as a source--or taking any part of the Tudor legend for granted.

Carol

From: justcarol67
To:
Sent: Thursday, May 30, 2013 5:07 PM
Subject: Re: Traditionalists, revisionists, &
synthesists


> > Rous and Croyland might well have been indulging in a bit of spiteful
> > wordplay.

> More like spiteful ambiguity, I would say. I doubt that either of them had
> a sense of humor

Well, wordplay doesn't have to be humorous, or at least not in a *nice*
way - think of all the things journalists get away with in snide
headlines....

Claire wrote:
> Btw, if the translation of "viribus debilis" as "having the strength of a
> debilitated person" is right (I'm not saying it is or isn't, just "if"), that means that both Rous and Croyland suggest that Richard was sick at Bosworth. Are they two *independent* sources saying that Richard was unwell
> at Bosworth, or could Rous have read Croyland or vice versa, in which case
> they are potentially really only one source on this, and so a lot less
> significant?

Carol responds:

I think your friend is mistaken in regarding "debilis" as a noun. The parallel phrase is "corpore parvus," literally "in body small," so "viribus debilis" would be "in force/strength weak" (or, if "viribus" relates to his troops, "in forces weak, but since "small in body" relates to Richard, "weak in strength" probably does, too.

At any rate, if we go by parallel construction (a device that Croyland would almost certainly use), "debilis" has to be an adjective, so it can't mean "a debilated person," and "debilitated in strength or force" makes less sense than "weak in strength."

The absolute only reason I brought up this translation in the first place was to point out that it did not relate to Richard's masculinity, as Jo Appleby and to some extent Lin Foxhall implied.

Carol

From: Hilary Jones
To:
Sent: Thursday, May 30, 2013 5:15 PM
Subject: Re: Traditionalists, revisionists, &
synthesists


> I have cast my mind back. It was at the end of the Cromwell programme and
> the bald-headed historian, whose name escapes me, I do apologise, was
> putting the case for the alternative Cromwell. Unlike the other programme
> there were no 'debates'.

He made a lengthy and quite convincing case for Cromwell being a sincere
religious reformer (and said that the disenfranchised monks were at least
paid pensions, which I don't think I knew before), but I certainly didn't
notice his querying Cromwell's interaction with Ann Boleyn in that one. If
I missed it, apologies.

Btw, I noticed a few days ago that "Horrible Histories" claims that Henry
VIII was responsible for about 72 *thousand* executions. I don't know if
that includes what one might call mundane executions - murderers and cattle
thieves and so on - and of course he was on the throne for a lot longer than
Richard. Even so, I bet Richard's annual headcount wasn't anything like
that bad - yet Henry gets a fairly free ride because he was fat and
jolly-looking and he's on the playing cards, so his image is kind-of
domesticated.

Hmmm - maybe we need a new set of playing cards!

A J


On Thu, May 30, 2013 at 1:40 PM, Claire M Jordan
<whitehound@...>wrote:

> **
>
>
> From: Hilary Jones
> To:
> Sent: Thursday, May 30, 2013 5:15 PM
>
> Subject: Re: Traditionalists, revisionists, &
> synthesists
>
> > I have cast my mind back. It was at the end of the Cromwell programme
> and
> > the bald-headed historian, whose name escapes me, I do apologise, was
> > putting the case for the alternative Cromwell. Unlike the other
> programme
> > there were no 'debates'.
>
> He made a lengthy and quite convincing case for Cromwell being a sincere
> religious reformer (and said that the disenfranchised monks were at least
> paid pensions, which I don't think I knew before), but I certainly didn't
> notice his querying Cromwell's interaction with Ann Boleyn in that one. If
> I missed it, apologies.
>
> Btw, I noticed a few days ago that "Horrible Histories" claims that Henry
> VIII was responsible for about 72 *thousand* executions. I don't know if
> that includes what one might call mundane executions - murderers and
> cattle
> thieves and so on - and of course he was on the throne for a lot longer
> than
> Richard. Even so, I bet Richard's annual headcount wasn't anything like
> that bad - yet Henry gets a fairly free ride because he was fat and
> jolly-looking and he's on the playing cards, so his image is kind-of
> domesticated.
>
>
>

In what sense is either of these interpretations revisionist? This conundrum has nothing whatsoever to do with Richard's guilt or innocence. The only interest really is in whether it tells us anything about Anne Neville's appearance. The Pronay and Cox translation that we are questioning is in fact the revised translation in the edition sponsored by the RIII Soc!
I'll try and get a look at what Livia and Lesley had to say when I get a chance, but really it's a storm in a teacup, and also it is insulting and faintly ridiculous to suggest that these particular individuals would have been swayed by Ricardian bias. Lesley only looked at the problem, in fact, because John Ashdown-Hill and I asked her to when John was writing 'The Last Days'; we chose Lesley because, as well as being a very hard-headed historian with no time for romantic nonsense or wishful thinking, her Latin was so sound (she had a degree in Classics as well as a doctorate in medieval history and had been a Latin teacher).
Also, if one of your latinists pronounces one of these translations to be correct, and the other not, we're not really any further forward since excellent latinists have already - assuming my memory is not playing tricks on me - pronounced the passage to be ambiguous and the two consecutive published translations have each chosen a different path.
I doubt Mary Beard has "no vested interest". She made some very grumpy comments about the Leicester dig and its lack of historical relevance.
The only fruitful way forward, I think, is to ask ourselves which translation makes more general sense.
Marie


--- In , Hilary Jones <hjnatdat@...> wrote:
>
> A few more eyes never did any harm did they? Particularly eyes that have no interest whatsoever in Richard's guilt or innocence. That's another way of getting us away from the biased revisionist image.
>
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: mariewalsh2003 <[email protected]>
> To:
> Sent: Wednesday, 29 May 2013, 22:14
> Subject: Re: Traditionalists, revisionists, & synthesists
>
>  
>
> The passage has already been looked at by excellent Latinists, with expertise in medieval as well as classical Latin, such as Dr Lesley Boatwright and Livia Visser-Fuchs; the confusion is not due to lack of Latin skills amongst modern Ricardians. And it's by no means the only ambiguous passage in Crowland.
> Marie
>
> --- In , Hilary Jones <hjnatdat@> wrote:
> >
> > I do agree. I wonder if St Pauls knows anyone who'd like to make their name by doing some for us? Failing that she could ask Mary Beard (her old tutor and now quite famous) whether she knows a scholar who's prepared to have a go and who really doesn't have a vested income in what it said - that's the problem with professional historians having a go.
> >
> >
> >
> > ________________________________
> > From: justcarol67 <justcarol67@>
> > To:
> > Sent: Tuesday, 28 May 2013, 16:26
> > Subject: Re: Traditionalists, revisionists, & synthesists
> >
> >  
> >
> >
> >
> > --- In , Hilary Jones <hjnatdat@> wrote:
> > >
> > > Carol just to update you on the translation of the Anne/EOY thing. The first scrap we sent to my daughter she thought was straightforward and that it referred to the dresses, then when you sent the longer version she was no longer happy. It hinges on two things, the missing comma and the interpretation of the word 'color' which can also be used for beauty - they were two women of equal beauty. She has passed it to the Latin Dept of St Pauls Boy's School in London (Dean Colet's school) for a second opinion - they have a tradition of producing Oxbridge Latin professors. However, what she can say is that the Latin is immaculate classical Latin, not medieval Latin and that, as we know, the author had a real downer on the women. The fact that it is classical Latin, rather than medieval Latin could tell us something about the author?   
> >
> > Carol responds:
> >
> > Thanks, Hilary. Interesting that it's classical Latin, not medieval, and that it's "immaculate." The problem with Latin to English translations, though, is that the languages are so different (English is analytic--that is, it depends a great deal on word order and to a lesser degree on word endings, Latin synthetic and almost wholly dependent on word endings for grammatical meaning). From what I've seen, Latin phrases (take, for example, Rous's "curtam habens faciem") can be ambiguous, with several markedly different possible translations. However, after the reaction to my last attempt to question a translation, I'm no longer enthusiastic about pursuing the subject, important though I still think it is.
> >
> > Interesting that Chris Skidmore also thinks we need some new translations. I'd say we particularly need a readily accessible and inexpensive translation of Mancini and one of Rous. Vergil, except when he's dealing directly with Henry Tudor (and even then, we have to watch for bias and exaggeration) is primarily important in showing how far from the mark Tudor interpretations had become and, apparently, how willing people in general were to think the worst of Richard once Tudor propaganda had done its work.
> >
> > Had Richard won at Bosworth, they would probably have accepted *Richard's* propaganda instead and viewed Henry Tudor as an illegitimate would-be usurper who intended to rob England of its claim to the French throne and oppress its people. The difference is that Richard's propaganda, though exaggerated, had its basis in fact.
> >
> > Sorry--straying from the topic again! My main concern is still the tendency of historians to take the chronicles, especially Croyland and Mancini, as fact. That's the reason we need an accurate translation. If we're going to counter the chronicles and show their inadequacies, we need to start by making sure we know what they actually say, noting any amgiguities, and not respond indirectly to translations. C. A. J. Armstrong's use of "usurpation" to translate "occupatione" is the worst but not the only example of the way a translator's assumptions can influence his translation--and, in this instance, turn the "usurpation" into a fact by making it the title of the book, which anyone who uses that source has to cite as a reference.
> >
> > Carol
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>
>
>
>

--- In , "Douglas Eugene Stamate" <destama@...> wrote:
>
>
> Marie wrote:
>
> "My understanding is that it only appears to be Classical Latin because all
> we have left of this part of the 3rd Continuation is a 17th-century copy in
> which the original medieval '-e' case endings have been "corrected" back to
> Classical Latin '-ae'. (The original MS was damaged by fire, and only the
> first section of it is still readable.)"
>
> Doug here:
> Oh.
> So, the original Crowland Chronicle was in written in Medieval Latin. A copy
> was made in the 17th century, but that copy was "corrected", either by the
> copyist or someone else so that the Latin used in the Chronicle conformed to
> the standards of "Classical" Latin. Yeesh!
> Were the "corrections" limited to "e" to "ae", do you know? Or do we have to
> worry about what else may have been "corrected"?
> Doug
> (who really, really hopes it's not the last!)


I think the "corrections" were limited to ae > e, and possibly (I'd need to check) the use of 'c' in some positions where classical Latin would use 't'. In other respects the Latin used in Crowland is, so far as I remember, pretty much classical, which was normal for educated churchmen. Government documents, wills, etc, tend to use a more form of the language that more on the way to becoming Italian, with more prepositions, more modern word order, and also loan words from English or Norman French, etc; but churchmen liked to show off their Latin skills, messing about with the word order and dumping the main verb right at the end of a sentence that might in some cases be nearly a paragraph long and contain no end of subordinate clauses, each with its own verb; far too much of a challenge for me with my limited Latin skills, particularly given the lack of punctuation (there's not really a "missing comma" in the EofY passage, of course, because commas hadn't been invented).
Anyway, in that sense there's no one form of medieval Latin.
We probably don't have to worry about what may have been corrected, but I wouldn't be surprised if the meanings of some words had migrated a bit since classical times. I don't know of any instances, but it's the sort of thing that happens as languages change, and that's why someone familiar with medieval Latin might be a safer bet as a translator.
Marie

Hilary Jones wrote:
> >
> > A few more eyes never did any harm did they? Particularly eyes that have no interest whatsoever in Richard's guilt or innocence. That's another way of getting us away from the biased revisionist image.

Marie responded:
>
> In what sense is either of these interpretations revisionist? [snip]

Carol comments:

I think Hilary meant that good, scholarly translations of the sort you're talking about will help to change the faulty but persistent image of Ricardians as "biased revisionists" that most of us are trying to escape, not that the interpretations were revisionist. (Right, Hilary?)

Carol

My point was that revisionists have, rightly or wrongly, been accused of bias. When there are two sides of an argument, the practice is to let the unbiased arbitrate. If Mary Beard doesn't give a fig about Richard that shouldn't affect her translation. Which is just what we want.   



________________________________
From: mariewalsh2003 <[email protected]>
To:
Sent: Friday, 31 May 2013, 0:13
Subject: Re: Traditionalists, revisionists, & synthesists

 

In what sense is either of these interpretations revisionist? This conundrum has nothing whatsoever to do with Richard's guilt or innocence. The only interest really is in whether it tells us anything about Anne Neville's appearance. The Pronay and Cox translation that we are questioning is in fact the revised translation in the edition sponsored by the RIII Soc!
I'll try and get a look at what Livia and Lesley had to say when I get a chance, but really it's a storm in a teacup, and also it is insulting and faintly ridiculous to suggest that these particular individuals would have been swayed by Ricardian bias. Lesley only looked at the problem, in fact, because John Ashdown-Hill and I asked her to when John was writing 'The Last Days'; we chose Lesley because, as well as being a very hard-headed historian with no time for romantic nonsense or wishful thinking, her Latin was so sound (she had a degree in Classics as well as a doctorate in medieval history and had been a Latin teacher).
Also, if one of your latinists pronounces one of these translations to be correct, and the other not, we're not really any further forward since excellent latinists have already - assuming my memory is not playing tricks on me - pronounced the passage to be ambiguous and the two consecutive published translations have each chosen a different path.
I doubt Mary Beard has "no vested interest". She made some very grumpy comments about the Leicester dig and its lack of historical relevance.
The only fruitful way forward, I think, is to ask ourselves which translation makes more general sense.
Marie

--- In , Hilary Jones <hjnatdat@...> wrote:
>
> A few more eyes never did any harm did they? Particularly eyes that have no interest whatsoever in Richard's guilt or innocence. That's another way of getting us away from the biased revisionist image.
>
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: mariewalsh2003 <[email protected]>
> To:
> Sent: Wednesday, 29 May 2013, 22:14
> Subject: Re: Traditionalists, revisionists, & synthesists
>
>  
>
> The passage has already been looked at by excellent Latinists, with expertise in medieval as well as classical Latin, such as Dr Lesley Boatwright and Livia Visser-Fuchs; the confusion is not due to lack of Latin skills amongst modern Ricardians. And it's by no means the only ambiguous passage in Crowland.
> Marie
>
> --- In , Hilary Jones <hjnatdat@> wrote:
> >
> > I do agree. I wonder if St Pauls knows anyone who'd like to make their name by doing some for us? Failing that she could ask Mary Beard (her old tutor and now quite famous) whether she knows a scholar who's prepared to have a go and who really doesn't have a vested income in what it said - that's the problem with professional historians having a go.
> >
> >
> >
> > ________________________________
> > From: justcarol67 <justcarol67@>
> > To:
> > Sent: Tuesday, 28 May 2013, 16:26
> > Subject: Re: Traditionalists, revisionists, & synthesists
> >
> > à
> >
> >
> >
> > --- In , Hilary Jones <hjnatdat@> wrote:
> > >
> > > Carol just to update you on the translation of the Anne/EOY thing. The first scrap we sent to my daughter she thoughtÃ’â¬aàwas straightforward and thatÃ’â¬aàit referred to the dresses, then when you sent the longer version she was no longer happy. It hingesÃ’â¬aàon two things, the missing comma and the interpretation of the word 'color' which can also be used for beauty - they were twoÃ’â¬aàwomenÃ’â¬aàof equal beauty.Ã’â¬aàShe hasÃ’â¬aàpassed it to the Latin Dept of St Pauls Boy's School in London (Dean Colet's school) for a second opinion - they have a tradition of producing Oxbridge Latin professors. However, what she can say is that the Latin is immaculate classical Latin, not medieval Latin and that, as we know, the author had a real downer on the women. The fact that it is classical Latin, rather than medieval Latin could tell us something about
the author?Ã’â¬aàÒâ¬aàÒâ¬aà
> >
> > Carol responds:
> >
> > Thanks, Hilary. Interesting that it's classical Latin, not medieval, and that it's "immaculate." The problem with Latin to English translations, though, is that the languages are so different (English is analytic--that is, it depends a great deal on word order and to a lesser degree on word endings, Latin synthetic and almost wholly dependent on word endings for grammatical meaning). From what I've seen, Latin phrases (take, for example, Rous's "curtam habens faciem") can be ambiguous, with several markedly different possible translations. However, after the reaction to my last attempt to question a translation, I'm no longer enthusiastic about pursuing the subject, important though I still think it is.
> >
> > Interesting that Chris Skidmore also thinks we need some new translations. I'd say we particularly need a readily accessible and inexpensive translation of Mancini and one of Rous. Vergil, except when he's dealing directly with Henry Tudor (and even then, we have to watch for bias and exaggeration) is primarily important in showing how far from the mark Tudor interpretations had become and, apparently, how willing people in general were to think the worst of Richard once Tudor propaganda had done its work.
> >
> > Had Richard won at Bosworth, they would probably have accepted *Richard's* propaganda instead and viewed Henry Tudor as an illegitimate would-be usurper who intended to rob England of its claim to the French throne and oppress its people. The difference is that Richard's propaganda, though exaggerated, had its basis in fact.
> >
> > Sorry--straying from the topic again! My main concern is still the tendency of historians to take the chronicles, especially Croyland and Mancini, as fact. That's the reason we need an accurate translation. If we're going to counter the chronicles and show their inadequacies, we need to start by making sure we know what they actually say, noting any amgiguities, and not respond indirectly to translations. C. A. J. Armstrong's use of "usurpation" to translate "occupatione" is the worst but not the only example of the way a translator's assumptions can influence his translation--and, in this instance, turn the "usurpation" into a fact by making it the title of the book, which anyone who uses that source has to cite as a reference.
> >
> > Carol
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>
>
>
>

Yep Carol - spot on. Just found this after I'd replied to Marie.



________________________________
From: justcarol67 <justcarol67@...>
To:
Sent: Friday, 31 May 2013, 0:55
Subject: Re: Traditionalists, revisionists, & synthesists

 

Hilary Jones wrote:
> >
> > A few more eyes never did any harm did they? Particularly eyes that have no interest whatsoever in Richard's guilt or innocence. That's another way of getting us away from the biased revisionist image.

Marie responded:
>
> In what sense is either of these interpretations revisionist? [snip]

Carol comments:

I think Hilary meant that good, scholarly translations of the sort you're talking about will help to change the faulty but persistent image of Ricardians as "biased revisionists" that most of us are trying to escape, not that the interpretations were revisionist. (Right, Hilary?)

Carol

Marie wrote:

"I think the "corrections" were limited to ae > e, and possibly (I'd need to
check) the use of 'c' in some positions where classical Latin would use 't'.
In other respects the Latin used in Crowland is, so far as I remember,
pretty much classical, which was normal for educated churchmen. Government
documents, wills, etc, tend to use a more form of the language that more on
the way to becoming Italian, with more prepositions, more modern word order,
and also loan words from English or Norman French, etc; but churchmen liked
to show off their Latin skills, messing about with the word order and
dumping the main verb right at the end of a sentence that might in some
cases be nearly a paragraph long and contain no end of subordinate clauses,
each with its own verb; far too much of a challenge for me with my limited
Latin skills, particularly given the lack of punctuation (there's not really
a "missing comma" in the EofY passage, of course, because commas hadn't been
invented).
Anyway, in that sense there's no one form of medieval Latin.
We probably don't have to worry about what may have been corrected, but I
wouldn't be surprised if the meanings of some words had migrated a bit since
classical times. I don't know of any instances, but it's the sort of thing
that happens as languages change, and that's why someone familiar with
medieval Latin might be a safer bet as a translator."

Doug here:
Thank you, I was afraid some well-meaning 17th century copyist had "touched
up" the manuscript's Latin using Livy as his guide!
I hadn't thought about word meanings shifting about; so yes, a specialist in
medieval Latin would definitely be called for rather than a classicist.
Doug

--- In , Hilary Jones <hjnatdat@...> wrote:
>
> My point was that revisionists have, rightly or wrongly, been accused of bias. When there are two sides of an argument, the practice is to let the unbiased arbitrate. If Mary Beard doesn't give a fig about Richard that shouldn't affect her translation. Which is just what we want.   

Carol responds:

I guess I misunderstood you, then. Sorry about that! I'm afraid that I disagree, though. I don't think it's possible to be neutral about Richard if you've ever heard of him. You either agree with the traditionalists or think that the tradition needs to be reexamined to provide a fairer and more accurate picture. We've seen what happens when traditionalists like C.A.J. Armstrong translate Mancini (his translation of "occupatione" as "usurpation" says all that needs to be said) or Tanner and Wright examine the bones in the urn (they assumed the identity and the details of the "murder" based on More before even looking at the bones).

It may be impossible to get an accurate translation given the ambiguity of the original and the near-inevitable bias of the translators. I wonder if the answer is a team effort with alternate readings provided where the translators disagree. At any rate, I would certainly choose Livia Visser-Fuchs, an expert on Richard, over Mary Beard to translate any Richard-related materials. At any rate, she did later explain her ill-considered tweet about the find being no big deal for history if anyone wants to read it:

http://timesonline.typepad.com/dons_life/2013/02/richard-of-york-gave-battle-in-vain.html

I hope she didn't choose the headline ("Richard of York Gave Battle in Vain?"). Most likely, some reporter who doesn't know Richard from his father chose it trying to be cute, but it does fit Beard's "wickedly subversive" sense of humor. Maybe she should stick with writing about shoes.

Can't remember the other person whom Marie mentioned as working on the Croyland passage, which is why I didn't comment.

Carol

Em - Mary is Professor of Classics at Cambridge so I think she knows about more than shoes but she does have a down to earth sense of humour. The dress quote has gone to someone with a Masters in Sixteenth Century Latin as well as a straight Classics degree. There are lots of people who have heard of Richard but have no particular interest in him or the detail of his reign; just as I have, say, no particular interest in Stalin. How can you translate a source without bias if you are willing it to say something, or not to say something?



________________________________
From: justcarol67 <justcarol67@...>
To:
Sent: Friday, 31 May 2013, 18:43
Subject: Re: Traditionalists, revisionists, & synthesists

 



--- In , Hilary Jones <hjnatdat@...> wrote:
>
> My point was that revisionists have, rightly or wrongly, been accused of bias. When there are two sides of an argument, the practice is to let the unbiased arbitrate. If Mary Beard doesn't give a fig about Richard that shouldn't affect her translation. Which is just what we want.   

Carol responds:

I guess I misunderstood you, then. Sorry about that! I'm afraid that I disagree, though. I don't think it's possible to be neutral about Richard if you've ever heard of him. You either agree with the traditionalists or think that the tradition needs to be reexamined to provide a fairer and more accurate picture. We've seen what happens when traditionalists like C.A.J. Armstrong translate Mancini (his translation of "occupatione" as "usurpation" says all that needs to be said) or Tanner and Wright examine the bones in the urn (they assumed the identity and the details of the "murder" based on More before even looking at the bones).

It may be impossible to get an accurate translation given the ambiguity of the original and the near-inevitable bias of the translators. I wonder if the answer is a team effort with alternate readings provided where the translators disagree. At any rate, I would certainly choose Livia Visser-Fuchs, an expert on Richard, over Mary Beard to translate any Richard-related materials. At any rate, she did later explain her ill-considered tweet about the find being no big deal for history if anyone wants to read it:

http://timesonline.typepad.com/dons_life/2013/02/richard-of-york-gave-battle-in-vain.html

I hope she didn't choose the headline ("Richard of York Gave Battle in Vain?"). Most likely, some reporter who doesn't know Richard from his father chose it trying to be cute, but it does fit Beard's "wickedly subversive" sense of humor. Maybe she should stick with writing about shoes.

Can't remember the other person whom Marie mentioned as working on the Croyland passage, which is why I didn't comment.

Carol

From: Hilary Jones
To:
Sent: Friday, May 31, 2013 9:29 PM
Subject: Re: Traditionalists, revisionists, &
synthesists


> There are lots of people who have heard of Richard but have no particular
> interest in him or the detail of his reign; just as I have, say, no
> particular interest in Stalin.

Another reason why I asked an Italian - although mind you I did used to know
an Italian who was ardently anti-Yorkist, mainly on the grounds of their
financial dealings.

Hi,
Just to let everyone know I've uploaded into the Files section the commentaries by Livia V-F and the late lamented Lesley Boatwright MBE (since we seem, for some reason, to be engaged in some sort of public status war over our respective translators). They are in a folder named Christmas Dresses.
Just to recap: the old translation - the traditional translation - had it that Anne and Elizabeth changed their clothes a lot and wore gowns of similar colour and shape. Then in 1986 along came the new Pronay and Cox translation, published by Alan Sutton for the Richard III and Yorkist History Trust, and they had it that Anne and Elizabeth EXCHANGED gowns with each other because they - the two ladies - were of similar colouring and shape.
I am old enough to remember the impact. This got leapt on as if it was a simple correction, and has been incorporated into a generation of biographies and novels since then. It's tempting because it tells us Anne Neville looked much like Elizabeth of York, and we have good images of Elizabeth so suddenly we know what Anne looked like.
It's not, as I said before, a matter of a traditional(in the sense of hostile to Richard) translation vs. a "revisionist (in the sense of Ricardian) one. There's absolutely no doubt that Crowland was being critical and was illustrating his point that Richard had far too much attention lavished on Elizabeth.

But to return to the two interpretations: the questioning started early. Livia's formed part of an early review of the P & C edition. Trouble is, it seems it's not straightforward, ie Pronay and Cox's translation isn't incorrect in a schoolboy-error sense. It's seemingly just not QUITE as sensitive to the Latin idiom as the earlier translation, and also not so credible in a more general sense. Thus both Livia and Lesley plump for the traditional translation (ie that Anne and Elizabeth changed into several sets of matching clothes). I suspect Mary Beard will tend towards the traditional translation as well, but will also say it's not a simple question of absolute right and wrong.

Marie




--- In , Hilary Jones <hjnatdat@...> wrote:
>
> Em - Mary is Professor of Classics at Cambridge so I think she knows about more than shoes but she does have a down to earth sense of humour. The dress quote has gone to someone with a Masters in Sixteenth Century Latin as well as a straight Classics degree. There are lots of people who have heard of Richard but have no particular interest in him or the detail of his reign; just as I have, say, no particular interest in Stalin. How can you translate a source without bias if you are willing it to say something, or not to say something?
>
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: justcarol67 <justcarol67@...>
> To:
> Sent: Friday, 31 May 2013, 18:43
> Subject: Re: Traditionalists, revisionists, & synthesists
>
>  
>
>
>
> --- In , Hilary Jones <hjnatdat@> wrote:
> >
> > My point was that revisionists have, rightly or wrongly, been accused of bias. When there are two sides of an argument, the practice is to let the unbiased arbitrate. If Mary Beard doesn't give a fig about Richard that shouldn't affect her translation. Which is just what we want.   
>
> Carol responds:
>
> I guess I misunderstood you, then. Sorry about that! I'm afraid that I disagree, though. I don't think it's possible to be neutral about Richard if you've ever heard of him. You either agree with the traditionalists or think that the tradition needs to be reexamined to provide a fairer and more accurate picture. We've seen what happens when traditionalists like C.A.J. Armstrong translate Mancini (his translation of "occupatione" as "usurpation" says all that needs to be said) or Tanner and Wright examine the bones in the urn (they assumed the identity and the details of the "murder" based on More before even looking at the bones).
>
> It may be impossible to get an accurate translation given the ambiguity of the original and the near-inevitable bias of the translators. I wonder if the answer is a team effort with alternate readings provided where the translators disagree. At any rate, I would certainly choose Livia Visser-Fuchs, an expert on Richard, over Mary Beard to translate any Richard-related materials. At any rate, she did later explain her ill-considered tweet about the find being no big deal for history if anyone wants to read it:
>
> http://timesonline.typepad.com/dons_life/2013/02/richard-of-york-gave-battle-in-vain.html
>
> I hope she didn't choose the headline ("Richard of York Gave Battle in Vain?"). Most likely, some reporter who doesn't know Richard from his father chose it trying to be cute, but it does fit Beard's "wickedly subversive" sense of humor. Maybe she should stick with writing about shoes.
>
> Can't remember the other person whom Marie mentioned as working on the Croyland passage, which is why I didn't comment.
>
> Carol
>
>
>
>
>
>

mariewalsh2003 wrote:

> Hi,
> Just to let everyone know I've uploaded into the Files section the commentaries by Livia V-F and the late lamented Lesley Boatwright MBE (since we seem, for some reason, to be engaged in some sort of public status war over our respective translators). They are in a folder named Christmas Dresses.
>[snip]
> But to return to the two interpretations: the questioning started early. Livia's formed part of an early review of the P & C edition. Trouble is, it seems it's not straightforward, ie Pronay and Cox's translation isn't incorrect in a schoolboy-error sense. It's seemingly just not QUITE as sensitive to the Latin idiom as the earlier translation, and also not so credible in a more general sense. Thus both Livia and Lesley plump for the traditional translation (ie that Anne and Elizabeth changed into several sets of matching clothes). I suspect Mary Beard will tend towards the traditional translation as well, but will also say it's not a simple question of absolute right and wrong.

Carol responds:

Thanks, Marie. The problem with the new translation is that we now have yet another "fact" being passed around from author to author. Pretty soon, it will have the status of the bones in the River Soar, but, unfortunately, it will not be so easy to disprove.

Not that I care whether Elizabeth and Anne looked alike, but I do care that details of a faulty translation are accepted as fact. (Bad enough that the Chronicle itself is accepted as authoritative. The original translation, as Visser-Fuchs said, makes his [anti-Richard} intent clear, and that intent is undone if the paragraph is really about two women exchanging dresses. (Loved Lesley Boatwright's characterization of the chronicler as "a miserable old devil"!)

Carol

--- In , "justcarol67" <justcarol67@...> wrote:
>
>
> mariewalsh2003 wrote:
>
> > Hi,
> > Just to let everyone know I've uploaded into the Files section the commentaries by Livia V-F and the late lamented Lesley Boatwright MBE (since we seem, for some reason, to be engaged in some sort of public status war over our respective translators). They are in a folder named Christmas Dresses.
> >[snip]
> > But to return to the two interpretations: the questioning started early. Livia's formed part of an early review of the P & C edition. Trouble is, it seems it's not straightforward, ie Pronay and Cox's translation isn't incorrect in a schoolboy-error sense. It's seemingly just not QUITE as sensitive to the Latin idiom as the earlier translation, and also not so credible in a more general sense. Thus both Livia and Lesley plump for the traditional translation (ie that Anne and Elizabeth changed into several sets of matching clothes). I suspect Mary Beard will tend towards the traditional translation as well, but will also say it's not a simple question of absolute right and wrong.
>
> Carol responds:
>
> Thanks, Marie. The problem with the new translation is that we now have yet another "fact" being passed around from author to author. Pretty soon, it will have the status of the bones in the River Soar, but, unfortunately, it will not be so easy to disprove.


>
> Not that I care whether Elizabeth and Anne looked alike, but I do care that details of a faulty translation are accepted as fact. (Bad enough that the Chronicle itself is accepted as authoritative. The original translation, as Visser-Fuchs said, makes his [anti-Richard} intent clear, and that intent is undone if the paragraph is really about two women exchanging dresses. (Loved Lesley Boatwright's characterization of the chronicler as "a miserable old devil"!)
>
> Carol
>

Hi Carol,
I totally agree about the exchange of dresses having become a new "fact" for no good reason. We have these all the time, sadly (the incest is another), and sometimes I despair of the subject ever moving forward).
Yes, I see what you mean in that the P&C translation could be given an innocent interpretation (ie not involving Richard), but if you read it in context the chronicler makes it quite clear that he didn't think whatever he was talking about was innocent since he not only condemns the vanity but follows it straight up with: "The people spoke against this and ... it was said by many that the king was applying his mind in every way to contracting a marriage with Elizabeth...." So, if Crowland was talking about Anne and Elizabeth exchanging dresses, the inference would have to be that Richard MADE Anne lend some of her own state gowns to Elizabeth that Christmas, which is very sinister indeed.
Actually, you know what I reckon? First, we know only that Elizabeth Woodville delivered her daughters into Richard's care; we don't have any evidence at all that the ex-queen herself left sanctuary. So, if the girls come out as royal wards, so to speak, what happens to them? The normal scenario in the case of girls, or very young boys, is that they would be taken into the Queen's household. I therefore suggest that they were probably in Anne's own household, and the older ones may well have been numbered amongst her attendants. When Anne and Elizabeth wear gowns of the same colour and form this is not a case of Elizabeth having been singled out from a courtful of ladies. She was probably one of Anne's ladies-in-waiting at the state banquets. Also Crowland doesn't claim that the gowns in question were identical, or made of the same fabric, or equally richly ornamented. My image is of Anne and her ladies being a matching set, with Anne of course wearing a significantly richer version of the theme; what seems to be hinted at here is a large number of different sets of this sort into which the Queen and her ladies changed at intervals. I know this is not what Crowland implies, but I have given up the idea that this midlands abbey chronicle was actually written by a court clerk. There are just too many errors and misconceptions in so many of the descriptions that sound like eye-witness accounts, and also no candidate who has ever been suggested fits all the requirements. Annette and I thrashed this one out by email once and concluded that the chronicle was composed by the monks (or by A monk - the style is very consistent) using notes, or information, supplied by someone at court, and introducing their own misconceptions as they did so.
If Elizabeth had been a member of the Queen's household, that also makes better sense of her removal to Sheriff Hutton in the spring of 1485.
Marie

Marie wrote:
> I totally agree about the exchange of dresses having become a new "fact" for no good reason. We have these all the time, sadly (the incest is another), and sometimes I despair of the subject ever moving forward).
[snip]
> Actually, you know what I reckon? First, we know only that Elizabeth Woodville delivered her daughters into Richard's care; we don't have any evidence at all that the ex-queen herself left sanctuary. So, if the girls come out as royal wards, so to speak, what happens to them? The normal scenario in the case of girls, or very young boys, is that they would be taken into the Queen's household. I therefore suggest that they were probably in Anne's own household, and the older ones may well have been numbered amongst her attendants.[snip] My image is of Anne and her ladies being a matching set, with Anne of course wearing a significantly richer version of the theme; what seems to be hinted at here is a large number of different sets of this sort into which the Queen and her ladies changed at intervals. I know this is not what Crowland implies, but I have given up the idea that this midlands abbey chronicle was actually written by a court clerk. There are just too many errors and misconceptions in so many of the descriptions that sound like eye-witness accounts, and also no candidate who has ever been suggested fits all the requirements. Annette and I thrashed this one out by email once and concluded that the chronicle was composed by the monks (or by A monk - the style is very consistent) using notes, or information, supplied by someone at court, and introducing their own misconceptions as they did so. [snip]

Carol responds:

Interesting theory about Elizabeth being one of Anne's ladies and wearing clothes of a similar color but different fabric and style. That sounds like a very reasonable explanation for what the chronicler observed or was told. (All the fussing on the part of the clerics and populace is probably nonsense. Who besides celebrity-starved gossips would care?) Cecily isn't mentioned, so unless the chronicler is deliberately omitting her because her presence would ruin his insinuations, she may already have been married to Ralph Scrope at this point.

As for the chronicler being a monk, that would account for his numerous errors, some present in the reports from his sources (such as Richard's supposed intention to marry EoY) and some his own (such as drawing unwarranted inferences about Christmas gowns). Or he could have been a minor clerk dismissed by Richard who went off in a huff to join the monks, which would account for his animus against Richard in contrast to his tolerance of Edward's many flaws. But the often-repeated idea that he was Chancellor Russell or some other well-informed official just doesn't hold up. I've often suspected that his source of information was Morton, who had connections with Croyland. Or maybe it was Margaret Beaufort, a patron of the abbey, who made the insinuations about the gowns? Would the monks have had any direct contact with her?

Carol

From: mariewalsh2003
To:
Sent: Saturday, June 01, 2013 6:51 PM
Subject: Re: Traditionalists, revisionists, &
synthesists


> She was probably one of Anne's ladies-in-waiting at the state banquets.
> Also Crowland doesn't claim that the gowns in question were identical, or
> made of the same fabric, or equally richly ornamented. My image is of Anne
> and her ladies being a matching set, with Anne of course wearing a
> significantly richer version of the theme;

Like a matched set of bride-and-bridesmaids?

> Annette and I thrashed this one out by email once and concluded that the
> chronicle was composed by the monks (or by A monk - the style is very
> consistent) using notes, or information, supplied by someone at court, and
> introducing their own misconceptions as they did so.

Then it sounds like we should be looking for somebody at court who had a
close friend or relative who was a cleric in the Croyland area, and to whom
they might have written regular, gossipy letters. But of course, it might
not have been anybody whose name we know - it could have been one of the
servants, although they'd need to be literate.

Perhaps it was a brother cleric (because of the holier-than-thou
disapproving tone) - somebody the Croyland chrionicler had been at college
with and who was now a priest in London, say.

> If Elizabeth had been a member of the Queen's household, that also makes
> better sense of her removal to Sheriff Hutton in the spring of 1485.

She'd been made redundant owing to the death of her mistress, you mean?
That would make sense.

Marie, this makes a lot of sense! The clothes would be some same form( fashion) of the day, and color was probably made to match that if the queen. Elizabeth was perhaps singled out because she made a striking figure and being of marriageable age was more lend to gossip... ...

Ishita Bandyo
www.ishitabandyo.com
www.facebook.com/ishitabandyofinearts
www.ishitabandyoarts.blogspot.com

On Jun 1, 2013, at 1:51 PM, mariewalsh2003 <[email protected]> wrote:

>
>
> --- In , "justcarol67" <justcarol67@...> wrote:
> >
> >
> > mariewalsh2003 wrote:
> >
> > > Hi,
> > > Just to let everyone know I've uploaded into the Files section the commentaries by Livia V-F and the late lamented Lesley Boatwright MBE (since we seem, for some reason, to be engaged in some sort of public status war over our respective translators). They are in a folder named Christmas Dresses.
> > >[snip]
> > > But to return to the two interpretations: the questioning started early. Livia's formed part of an early review of the P & C edition. Trouble is, it seems it's not straightforward, ie Pronay and Cox's translation isn't incorrect in a schoolboy-error sense. It's seemingly just not QUITE as sensitive to the Latin idiom as the earlier translation, and also not so credible in a more general sense. Thus both Livia and Lesley plump for the traditional translation (ie that Anne and Elizabeth changed into several sets of matching clothes). I suspect Mary Beard will tend towards the traditional translation as well, but will also say it's not a simple question of absolute right and wrong.
> >
> > Carol responds:
> >
> > Thanks, Marie. The problem with the new translation is that we now have yet another "fact" being passed around from author to author. Pretty soon, it will have the status of the bones in the River Soar, but, unfortunately, it will not be so easy to disprove.
>
> >
> > Not that I care whether Elizabeth and Anne looked alike, but I do care that details of a faulty translation are accepted as fact. (Bad enough that the Chronicle itself is accepted as authoritative. The original translation, as Visser-Fuchs said, makes his [anti-Richard} intent clear, and that intent is undone if the paragraph is really about two women exchanging dresses. (Loved Lesley Boatwright's characterization of the chronicler as "a miserable old devil"!)
> >
> > Carol
> >
>
> Hi Carol,
> I totally agree about the exchange of dresses having become a new "fact" for no good reason. We have these all the time, sadly (the incest is another), and sometimes I despair of the subject ever moving forward).
> Yes, I see what you mean in that the P&C translation could be given an innocent interpretation (ie not involving Richard), but if you read it in context the chronicler makes it quite clear that he didn't think whatever he was talking about was innocent since he not only condemns the vanity but follows it straight up with: "The people spoke against this and ... it was said by many that the king was applying his mind in every way to contracting a marriage with Elizabeth...." So, if Crowland was talking about Anne and Elizabeth exchanging dresses, the inference would have to be that Richard MADE Anne lend some of her own state gowns to Elizabeth that Christmas, which is very sinister indeed.
> Actually, you know what I reckon? First, we know only that Elizabeth Woodville delivered her daughters into Richard's care; we don't have any evidence at all that the ex-queen herself left sanctuary. So, if the girls come out as royal wards, so to speak, what happens to them? The normal scenario in the case of girls, or very young boys, is that they would be taken into the Queen's household. I therefore suggest that they were probably in Anne's own household, and the older ones may well have been numbered amongst her attendants. When Anne and Elizabeth wear gowns of the same colour and form this is not a case of Elizabeth having been singled out from a courtful of ladies. She was probably one of Anne's ladies-in-waiting at the state banquets. Also Crowland doesn't claim that the gowns in question were identical, or made of the same fabric, or equally richly ornamented. My image is of Anne and her ladies being a matching set, with Anne of course wearing a significantly richer version of the theme; what seems to be hinted at here is a large number of different sets of this sort into which the Queen and her ladies changed at intervals. I know this is not what Crowland implies, but I have given up the idea that this midlands abbey chronicle was actually written by a court clerk. There are just too many errors and misconceptions in so many of the descriptions that sound like eye-witness accounts, and also no candidate who has ever been suggested fits all the requirements. Annette and I thrashed this one out by email once and concluded that the chronicle was composed by the monks (or by A monk - the style is very consistent) using notes, or information, supplied by someone at court, and introducing their own misconceptions as they did so.
> If Elizabeth had been a member of the Queen's household, that also makes better sense of her removal to Sheriff Hutton in the spring of 1485.
> Marie
>
>