Writing Like a Fan: Fan Fiction and Medievalism in Paul C. Doherty’s Canterbury Mysteries

Abstract

In “Dreaming the Middle Ages,” Umberto Eco examines the shelves in an American bookstore. He lists several titles he believes constitute a “neomedieval wave” in popular culture. He then characterizes “Ten Little Middle Ages” that demonstrate various ahistoric, “ medieval” portrayals found in popular culture. The book titles he lists, such as The Sword is Forged, The Lure of the Basilisk, and Dragonquest, clearly belong in the bookstore’s Science Fiction and Fantasy section. If Eco had searched the Mystery section of the store, he would have found a similar “neomedieval wave.” One of the most prolific authors in this subgenre is Paul C. Doherty, who read history at Oxford where he wrote his D.Phil. thesis, “Isabella, Queen of England, 1296–1330,” in 1978. In a career spanning thirty years, Doherty has published more than one hundred historical mystery novels, most of them set in the Middle Ages. Doherty’s Canterbury series (1994–2012), based on Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, relates most closely to the neomedieval category that Eco labels traditional, “or of occult philosophy”: a world “swarming with Knights Templars [sic], Rosicrucians, [and] alchemists.” The seven novels in Doherty’s series fit Eco’s category of occult philosophy by connecting each mystery to the actions of a supernatural cabal or secret society. Despite the use of supernatural events and conspiracy theories in his plots, Doherty attempts to “portray accurate ‘pictures, or windows of medieval life’” in his books. He believes that “a good historical mystery offers an experience of a different world to the one in which the reader lives, one which, in many ways, is alien to them. It introduces people to a new world.” In the introductions included in the recent Kindle releases of his back catalogue, Doherty expands