ZOMG REALIZATION x2

[elaby]

In terms of realizations these may not rank high on the life-altering list, BUT STILL.

1. Do you remember that time I posted asking the LJ hivemind about some ancient practice where people would, for revenge, dig up the dead loved one of someone they were angry at and prop the body at the offending party's door? It was, and still is, for extended metaphor purposes in a Philip Marlowe ficlet that I've come quite close to finishing. We weren't able to come up with anything, but several people thought Mesopotamia sounded reasonable.

caitirin, kind indulgent wife that she is, told me to put in whatever movie I wanted this evening, so naturally I put in Titus (fabulously trippy Julie Taymor adaptation of "Titus Andronicus"). AND AND AND.

Act V Scene I
AARON:
Oft have I digg'd up dead men from their graves,
And set them upright at their dear friends' doors,
Even when their sorrows almost were forgot

*FACE. PALM.* How did I not remember that?! It's TA for god's sake! I spent the most painful semester of my life underneath an avalanche of patriarchical Titus Andronicus scholarship! Nevertheless, I feel ridiculously satisfied to have finally figured out where I heard this.

2. Somewhere we were talking about Lestrade - it was in The Slasher's Annotated Sherlock Holmes, I think - and we came upon Lestrade's comment in SIXN that "You wouldn't think there was anyone living at this time of day who had such a hatred of Napoleon the First that he would break any image of him that he could see." I noted in my annotation that "at this time of day" sounded odd to me, and that since the only other usages of it I found were in the 1850s and '60s, maybe it was archaic. However, I was poking around Wikipedia learning about English dialects today, and on the page about the Norfolk dialect, I found this in the "phrases" section: at that time of day (in those days, e.g. beer only cost tuppence a pint at that time of day)

Perhaps Lestrade's family is from Norfolk?

Comments

#2

[(Anonymous)]

Wiki says Lestrade's language is archaic; like how he used splintered for smashed...I wonder if Conan Doyle did this on purpose...or did he subconsciously create a backstory?

Re: #2

[elaby.livejournal.com]

Dunno! It would be cool to think he created a backstory that he just never included in the stories. But maybe he just wanted to give Lestrade some vocabulary that wasn't considered current or urban.

[raechel]

FINALLY figuring something out that has plagued you is probably up there near the top of the list of most satisfying things ever

[elaby.livejournal.com]

It's so true! :D

[miss-next.livejournal.com]

That must have been immensely satisfying! :-)

Dialects (and indeed accents) in Britain often do preserve features that have become archaic in standard English. Charles sings Elizabethan lute songs in original pronunciation, as far as it can be worked out (and Charles is a serious scholar, so you know he'll have got it as accurate as possible), and he takes great delight in pointing out that all those strange-sounding vowels are still around in spoken English today. Not always standard English, but they're all around in different regional variants. So it's not at all surprising that a phrase current in standard English in the middle of the nineteenth century should still be around in one or more local dialects.

Lestrade is probably being portrayed as deliberately old-fashioned rather than from Norfolk, for the simple reason that most of Conan Doyle's readers would have had no idea what Norfolk dialect sounded like. The upper classes trained themselves out of any hint of a regional accent, and the lower classes still didn't travel much on the whole (though of course there were exceptions) and so were unlikely to be heard very much outside their native locality. Also, there wasn't television or radio to give the opportunity to hear a lot of different accents. (Indeed, it took a long time for regional accents to become accepted on the BBC; even when I was a little girl, everyone still pretty much sounded like Alvar Liddell, though if you were a comedian you were allowed to have a trace of a regional accent, presumably because it was considered amusing. Siiiiigh.) So I'm guessing Lestrade is meant to be a bit like my dad, who quite happily uses phrases that were well on their way out of fashion before he was even born, because he likes the sound of them. And why not, indeed? :-)

[elaby.livejournal.com]

That makes sense :) My impression is that ACD probably wanted to give Lestrade some vocabulary that would enhance his character while at the same time showing how more "advanced" and urban and generally "with it" Holmes is. Old-fashioned phrases were probably the way he went about it :)

That's really cool that Charles sings things in their original pronunciation! That's how I'd want to hear them if I went to a concert for something like that.

[janeturenne.livejournal.com]

Man, now you've got me speculating on what Lestrade's ancestors did. Merchant seamen? If they're living on the coast of England, and he's got a French name, maybe they spent their lives carrying goods back and forth across the channel? He does wear a peacoat that one time, and look suspiciously nautical in the illustration...

Lestrade speculation: a wonderful way to start the weekend ^_^

Yup

[karstcrystal.livejournal.com]

That's why in my book, You Buy Bones, Lestrade's backstory is his family are Channel Island (most of them smugglers with a grey moral code). He wears a peacoat in the first book and nearly drowns when he falls into the Thames on a raid against one of Moriarty's men. It also let me explain his speaking old-fashioned (look in STUD for more clues). And yes it was FUN!!!!