Vulgar language in fantasy

[Tonguez]

Just as an aside I once had an English Professor who claimed that Shakespear never used profanities in any of plays. I've not tested the claim but it is interesting considering his audience

It is also of interest that in the Canterbury Tales the Wife of Bath freely uses the word queynte which some consider the etymological precursor of C~t ('vagina')

For, certeyn, olde dotard, by youre leve.
Ye shul have queynte right ynogh at eve.​

 

[Jeysie]

Just as an aside I once had an English Professor who claimed that Shakespear never used profanities in any of plays. I've not tested the claim but it is interesting considering his audience.

I don't recall off-hand if there's any *explicit* profanity... but I do remember The Bard used a fair share of innuendos and double entendres.

Peace & Luv, Liz

 

[shilsen]

Just as an aside I once had an English Professor who claimed that Shakespear never used profanities in any of plays. I've not tested the claim but it is interesting considering his audience

As someone who's been teaching Shakespeare at the college level for the last eight years, I can say that the professor was either lying, misinformed, or had a very strange definition of profanities. Shakespeare's plays have all sorts of swearing in them, though it's often easy to miss if one isn't well-informed about English Renaissance language.

As Jeysie noted above, Shakespeare also has an incredible gift for very foul innuendo and metaphor. Which, personally, I love, and it seems so did the audiences in his time. Old Bill's primary aim when writing plays was putting bums on seats, and audiences always get a good laugh out of a little crudity. Sure, some of the audience may have really liked the "To be or not to be..." speech, but a whole lot more were probably rolling in the aisles when Ophelia complained that Hamlet was too "sharp" and he retorted, "It will cost you a groaning to take off my edge."

 

[Tonguez]

Yes my professor did say there was a lot of induendo of the bawdy type but her point I think was that despite the bawdiness there was no explicit 'vulgar word' use.
Hamlet was one of the examples cited, something to do with the country between a maidens legs iirc

 

[BadMojo]

Gritty language belongs with gritty plots. George R. R. Martin uses vulgar language perfectly, yet that is because the world of his novels is as dirty as the language.

Funny you should mention George R. R. Martin. If not for "vulgar" language, "A Song of Ice & Fire" would be missing one of the best bits in the entire series (between Tyrion and his father...don't want to get in to spoilers since it's really not that relevant).

Although not fantasy, the HBO/BBC series "Rome" is a perfect illustration of language that fits perfectly with the characters. If a character like Titus Pullo in Rome or Tyrion Lannister isn't using profanity, the character isn't going to ring true. I'm sorry, but I'd laugh my, uh...butt off if I heard Pullo say something like "For that price she better have intimate relations like Helen of Troy with her rear on fire"; I'm pretty sure that the original version of that line works better. Is a rough and tumble soldier supposed to speak like Lancelot?

I also find it hard to argue that a character like Conan would kill, steal, and whore around but would have some moral issue with profanity? I enjoy reading the Conan stories, but I also realize that Howard was heavily influenced by the moral quirks of the society he lived in. As is still the case in this country, violence is OK but no dirty words or you'll get your mouth washed out with soap.

 

[Klaus]

Note that Howard wrote his stories for mass market magazines, and had to work within the parameters of said market. If he wrote Conan today, he might do it for a more segmented market, and cut loose with the swearing.

 

[Morrus]

If you're assuming the novel is "translated" into English, why is "s---" or "f---" any more jarring than "house" or "windmill"? In both cases, it's purely an issue of the author "translating" a nonexistant language into terms the reader can understand.

Well, that's more "interpreting" than "translating".

I think context is everything. Sure, to us, "By the nine hells!" doesn't seem particularly strong - but in context, uttered by a character who lives in a fantasy world in which the nine hells are as real and verifiable as any other location, it holds much more meaning.

Its up to the author to convey that. A good author will leave the reader immersed in the context; "interpreting" use of the venacular into modern day usage seems lazy to me.

 

[PaulKemp]

The first sentence of my story, "Confession," published in Dragon 356, elicited a similar discussion on the Paizo boards. The first sentence went like this:

"I sloshed through sh** up to my ankles."

Some readers were (and are) offended by that sentence. Here's my thinking on the matter (this is more or less a cut and paste from my response on the Paizo boards):

One of the primary functions of the first sentence in a piece of short fiction is to grab the reader and set the tone for the story. In this case, the mild expletive did that work (at least as far as I'm concerned). Sure, I could have written, "I sloshed through excrement/sewage/feces/take your pick, up to my ankles" but that, IMO, would not have had the same impact. It has nothing whatever to do with an attempt to shock for its own sake or the lack of a thesaurus. The story is told in alternating first and third person limited point of view, so the sentence does the additional work of giving a glimpse into the mind and personality of the character who's narrating (and in this case, suggests something still more).

That some readers dislike and/or are offended by the word choice is unfortunate, but it's also just one of the things you deal with as a writer. My writing in general, and this story in particular, is not for everyone. I can live with that.

 

[Mallus]

Some readers were (and are) offended by that sentence.

I'm sorry, but someone upset by that sentence has no business reading.

 

[Mouseferatu]

Well, that's more "interpreting" than "translating".

Fair enough, but it doesn't change my actual point.

I think context is everything. Sure, to us, "By the nine hells!" doesn't seem particularly strong - but in context, uttered by a character who lives in a fantasy world in which the nine hells are as real and verifiable as any other location, it holds much more meaning.

Sure, if you're writing in such a setting. But...

A) Not every fantasy setting has such a verifiable "realm of damnation" to draw on, and

B) Even if they do, blaspheming is only one of the standard methods of cursing in most given languages.

You're still going to have people cursing through other means and methods. The use of biology in swearing is common to a great many languages, to a greater or lesser extent.

Its up to the author to convey that. A good author will leave the reader immersed in the context; "interpreting" use of the venacular into modern day usage seems lazy to me.

Whereas I still don't see how the use of the terms given above--which, for the record, aren't particularly modern anyway--is any different than the use of other linguistic terms. If a profanity conveys the proper meaning, and a story largely uses English to interpret the events therein, why should it be somehow changed, when 99.95% of the other words in the story have not been? It just feels utterly arbitrary to me.

I think Paul's example, above, makes the point as well as any. The use of the expletive establishes character and gets the point across in a way few, if any, other words could have done so succinctly. I don't understand how it could be considered either lazy or detracting from suspension of disbelief.