From: guth@unixg.ubc.ca (Geoff Guth)
Subject: Re: Accents (was Re: COVINGTON CROSS)
Organization: University of British Columbia, Vancouver, B.C., Canada
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 1992 22:06:10 GMT

In article <4ebWUNW00WBKM1TYxz@andrew.cmu.edu> Bill Thomas <bt16+@andrew.cmu.edu> writes:
>>|>worse than the daughter's supposedly real English accent? did most of
>>|>the cast, in fact, graduate from the Kevin Costner School of Lousy
>>|>English Accents? A good half of them didn't sound English at all -
>> 
>>And what of it?  If we are talking about historical realism, what makes you
>>think that British Received Pronunciation (a.k.a BBC English, Public School
>>English) is any more aauuthentic as a representation of fourteenth century 
>>accents than Great American English.  If you want authenticity in accents, 
>
>OK, I didn't see the show. (The description in the tv program guide --
>"a knight struggles to raise his children" -- was just too far gone for
>me.) But this accent question, especially the reference to Kevin
>Costner, is really absurd.
>
>Help me out a little here, you medieval historians, but in a show about
>14th century English knights, the majority of characters would have
>primarily spoken NORMAN FRENCH. The knights would have been the
>descendants of William the Conqueror's Norman cronies, who swarmed into
>England after Hastings, built castles to defend themselves against the
>general populace, and continued their marauding, horse-riding Norman
>ways.

I'm not sure what language was *spoken* by the minor nobility in the 14th
century.  But I believe the 14th century is when the first parliamentary
statutes are found that are written in English (look in the Statutes of the 
Realms)  My research only took me back to Richard II, who is late 14th
century.  This is another probelm.  Coditions at the beginning of the century
are quite different from those at the end.

There is aso quite a bit of English music that survives from the 14th
century.  The fact that someone thought it important enough to write down
may be telling as well.

I understand that this is circumstantial evidence, but it seems to me that
the most likely situation was that the nobility, at least the minor
nobility would have used English for day-to-day use, and French for
formal occasions.

Of course the English of the 14th century was quite different from 
both American and modern English accents, so the question of which
accent to use really is irrelevant from a historical point of view.
I suppose, however, that most people would associate "historical drama"
with a british accent, perhaps because so many fine Shakespearean actors
have come from Great Britain.

>Which brings us back to Robin Hood and Kevin Costner. In most Robin Hood
>legends, Robin is a member of the pre-William nobility (so his father
>would not have had a castle, by the way -- a Norman "innovation"), who
>became a sort of anti-Norman guerrilla. This explains why the "steal
>from the rich, give to the poor" idea caught on. Anyway, Robin would
>have spoken some form of early English, but it would have been
>unintelligible to us. So, Costner's accent was as historically accurate
>as anyone's in the film -- which is to say, NO ONE's accent was even
>close to being right. Actually, the single most inaccurate accent in the
>film was that of Alan Rickman. NO WAY would the Sheriff of Nottingham
>have spoken anything other than French. Of course, Rickman is generally
>credited as the only one who spoke with a correct accent. Hooray for
>Hollywood! 

Not to mention the fact that good King Richard I would have come about 
100 years too late to save the day! :)
>
>
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>Bill Thomas
>Carnegie Mellon University
>

Geoff.

-- 

|Geoff Guth                          |Si hoc signum legere potes, operis boni |
|Richard Britnell de Salisbury (sca) |     in rebus latinis alacribus et      |
|guth@unixg.ubc.ca                   |        fructuosis potiri potes!        |
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