At a guess, in Zeithain the author simply makes a concession to modern sensibilities
Makes sense. I found the informality off-putting, myself, to the point where I started wondering where I, who do not speak German, got off having an opinion about the language of a German novel. ;) But then I remembered that I wouldn't trust an English novelist to depict the 18th century accurately, and as you know wrt maps and borders, sometimes my familiarity with the 18th century outstrips my familiarity with the 21st!
In literature, you have Carlos asking (very urgently) Posa to call him Du in Schiller's Don Carlos (I don't know how much of this passage made it into translation, [personal profile] cahn at their first reunion in the play because he can't bear the distance of Sie/Ihr
Iiinteresting! I'm going to have to check this out. Because in my canon-compliant WIP, Fritz, who's basically single-handedly driving the relationship with Katte, invites Katte to "du/Fritz" him in private well before Katte's comfortable with it. It remains a point of mild tension in the story for a while. And this is specifically meant to signal the emotional turmoil 17/18-yo Fritz is in. (One reason Zeithain struck me as so "off" was that I'd been putting so much thought into how they address each other, and how to convey the desired message to a modern English-speaking audience, which is a non-trivial problem. Tolkien himself struggled with the question of how to signal formality or intimacy via pronouns in modern English, and mostly gave it up as a lost cause. The exceptions are interesting.)
Oh, another period question. In your opinion or from any direct evidence you have, when Prince or King Fritz is du/tu-ing a social inferior + close friend/practically husband, such as Fredersdorf or Katte, in conversation, is he necessarily also first-naming them, or could it go either way? I know intimate/formal pronouns and first/last names are sometimes coupled and sometimes decoupled, depending on the place and time, and am just wondering what our Fritz is likely doing.
Re: Fredersdorf
Makes sense. I found the informality off-putting, myself, to the point where I started wondering where I, who do not speak German, got off having an opinion about the language of a German novel. ;) But then I remembered that I wouldn't trust an English novelist to depict the 18th century accurately, and as you know wrt maps and borders, sometimes my familiarity with the 18th century outstrips my familiarity with the 21st!
In literature, you have Carlos asking (very urgently) Posa to call him Du in Schiller's Don Carlos (I don't know how much of this passage made it into translation, [personal profile] cahn at their first reunion in the play because he can't bear the distance of Sie/Ihr
Iiinteresting! I'm going to have to check this out. Because in my canon-compliant WIP, Fritz, who's basically single-handedly driving the relationship with Katte, invites Katte to "du/Fritz" him in private well before Katte's comfortable with it. It remains a point of mild tension in the story for a while. And this is specifically meant to signal the emotional turmoil 17/18-yo Fritz is in. (One reason Zeithain struck me as so "off" was that I'd been putting so much thought into how they address each other, and how to convey the desired message to a modern English-speaking audience, which is a non-trivial problem. Tolkien himself struggled with the question of how to signal formality or intimacy via pronouns in modern English, and mostly gave it up as a lost cause. The exceptions are interesting.)
Oh, another period question. In your opinion or from any direct evidence you have, when Prince or King Fritz is du/tu-ing a social inferior + close friend/practically husband, such as Fredersdorf or Katte, in conversation, is he necessarily also first-naming them, or could it go either way? I know intimate/formal pronouns and first/last names are sometimes coupled and sometimes decoupled, depending on the place and time, and am just wondering what our Fritz is likely doing.