Hilary Mantel - Wolf Hall Daunt Debate, part three

[selfvirt]

I personally don't agree 100% with her ideas about either Cromwell or More. It is true that anyone taking public office in those days had to tolerate treating people brutally, which makes it harder for modern people to judge them.

I don't think the book could be anything other than a work of fiction and Mantel takes sides to be sure, but as somebody with a Catholic education, I only felt reading this book broadened my mind. It's also colossally informative and entertaining!

[ab37z]

Er..next time I place my comment perhaps I should read all the previous ones.

[ab37z]

In my local library Hilary Mantel's novel is filed under fiction.

[DaniMajor]

What she says about More is riidiculus

[Elliemental09]

Why? Just because she`s dared to criticise the great saint, she must be being ridiculous!

[DaniMajor]

No that´s not the point. More was no saint, anyone who studies the Reformation and Counter Reformation and the Tudor Period knows that. What happens with Mantel is that she inverts completly More´s character as well as Thomas Cromwell character. For example, she doesn´t understand the context and Thomas More actions must be set on a context, the context of his time. The other scandalous example is his relationship with his family. (cont)

[DaniMajor]

Not even R. Marius one of the most critic More´s biographers says that More hated his family. And Mantel´s suggestion that More felt more than paternal love for his daugther is truly disgusting. Mantel needed an villian. And the person who opposed T.Cromwell was T. More. To understand More we must understand why is that Imitation of Christ by Á Kempis is his favourite book, why is that he constructed a school within his household, we must understood that he wanted to be a monk.

[DaniMajor]

And most of all, to have a notion of the complexity of More´s time and character we must understand mean for those people. An american historian once said that: Our biggest enemy is terrorism "Theirs was the Reformation. You can't overestimate how traumatic the changes in the church would have been." You might get close if you imagined that Monica Lewinsky had been a radical Islamist and Bill Clinton married her and made everyone convert.

[DaniMajor]

Well, HM is not able to understand this. I study T.More. He was no saint, oh not even close. But for an historian that doesn´t matter. It is nothing a title from the church what matter is what he done and his character. I would have nothing agaisnt her if she d´admit that her book is a work of FICTION. But she doesn´t.

[DaniMajor]

Apparently she´s absolutely convinced of her version of the facts. It´s insulting not only for More, but for the REAL historians who study him. But that´s what happens when writers try to writer about History. Look at Dan Brown and the Da Vince Code