Well, not Redwall, obviously, and as previously stated, but it put me in mind of a peculiarity of terminology that’s come up.

 

So, not the book yet, despite repeated promises. Something’s been bugging me, so to speak…

 

For those that aren’t aware of it, the Redwall series, which to my debit I have not read, concerns the adventures of, I think, a mouse, some sort of small rodent anyway, in a medieval-looking fantasy setting, with castles, swords and all the trimmings. Most of what I know of the details I’ve got just now from Wikipedia(1) or from the covers of the books, for there was a time when the fantasy shelves of any given bookshop were positively crawling with mice, badgers, foxes, stoats and other vermin under Mr Jacques’ banner.

 

The name for all of this is, of course, anthropomorphism. In fact the word has given up two meanings, the psychological and the literal. In the former, usually invoked as a killing insult on the duelling fields of behavioural science, one ends up reading human motives into an animal’s actions. In the latter, more pertinent to this entry, it refers to animals of a human shape, usually bipedal and with opposable thumbs, and usually also partaking of some manner of human culture. For examples besides Redwall see, for example, Stan Sakai’s excellent Usagi Yojimbo, which is basically Kurosawa done with rabbits.(2)

 

There is no reason why an anthropomorphic setting should not yield true epic fantasy. Redwall may well do so, as I haven’t had the chance to discover for myself. Certainly the fact that protagonists of a given story are lemurs, weasels and jerboas should not preclude the fact, nor should it invite stuffy would-be authors to look down their noses at the business. Frankly, a book peopled by herons and owls is probably more original fantasy fare than one peopled by dragons and elves. Of course a book peopled by dragonflies and earwigs, well, there you’re surely onto a winner.

 

The problem one runs into is a purely linguistic one. How do you distinguish a story peopled by, well, people, from one that is a menagerie of small field mammals, or arthropods? How to distinguish Empire, being a book about human beings with insect influences, from a similar book where rove-beetles and houseflies strut about in doublet and hose and twang rapiers at each other? Because, and here’s the unsatisfactory bit, as soon as one says that the characters are not anthropomorphic, then you wonder, well what shape are they, exactly, if not that of a man? The mice have hogged the man-shape.(3)  Without getting down to the ugly level of crying out, “Look, they’re not bugs, ok?” the language becomes awkward.(4)

 

Certainly I had the problem that, because various nationalities of humanity in the book are named after various creepy-crawlies, some of the first test-readers just ran with the Redwall-style look and assumed they were bugs, which must have leant the whole deal a fairly nightmarish, Bosch-like look. I had to give the first chapter or so some fairly severe re-drafting to make it as clear as possible what phylum the bulk of my characters were from. Plus, there are also insects of a variety of sizes in the book, which is just asking for misunderstanding.

 

Perhaps, in an excess of daring, I should say that rather than having arthropod characters turned anthropomorphic, I have human characters turned arthropomorphic. It would neatly describe the matter whilst having the drawback that nobody would know what the hell I was talking about.

 

Anyway, digression over. On with the business.

 

 

(1): Citation needed

 

(2): Usagi Yojimbo meaning, rabbit (or hare?) bodyguard.

 

(3): So have the hogs.

 

(4): I suppose one could wrangle out the word Anthrosimilitudinous, on the basis that a man (5), while man-shaped, is not similar to a man in that he is a man indeed, and not a mere device (6),

 

(5) Or woman. I had a Communications Studies teacher, once, who’d fail you for leaving a male pronoun un-Eve’d, and to hell with the flow of the language. Halfway through the course she eloped with the male Communications Studies teacher. I suspect her of lacking the courage of her convictions.

 

(6) After Thurber, The Thirteen Clocks, for no real reason.