Hello and welcome to this short lecture on Verst and Prose and Fantasy Literature.
And Catherine Olie, I'm a junior research fellow in mediaeval studies here at Oxford.
And in this video, I'm going to look at one particular way in which fantasy literature draws on that inspirations.
We're all quite familiar with the idea that a lot of the content of fantasy literature is ultimately derived from mediaeval myth and legend.
But what may be less widely known is how far the narrative,
form and structure of fantasy also owes a great debt to a popular, ancient and mediaeval literary form.
One of the more singular features of fantasy literature is the way it occasionally intersperses prose narration with poetry,
a form of writing known as Put Metron.
Tolkien includes numerous poems and poetic extracts and would be otherwise predominantly prose narratives of the Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit.
Readers of Bryan Jakes Redwall series may remember his frequent forays into poetry from call
it comic ballads to rousing sea shanties to riddles which the characters had to solve.
Percy Mottram is so characteristic of the fantasy genre, in fact, that it can be used to set up reader expectations in Guy Gavriel K's trilogy,
the finale of a Tapestry,
five postgraduate students at the second international Celtic conference in Toronto and magically transported from our world to see another.
The first of all worlds. Upon arrival in Vietnam.
Appearing in what he describes as a small, dimly lit room, somewhere high up, they hear the sounds of singing,
or, as he says, the unsteady carolling of someone coming down the hallway towards them.
Someone far gone, Indrek. Those who rode that night with Rever did a deed to last forever.
The weaver cut from bright cloth. Those who rode through Daniloff.
Without even having his characters leave the room where they have appeared suddenly in this new land, Kay clearly signposted to his readers.
A major shift in setting and tone. We've travelled from the familiarity of Toronto, where our main characters were beset by ordinary concerns,
such as worries about exam revision to the kind of place where heroic rides are immortalised in verse, a place of unknown.
But evidently noble history and of unfamiliar names and beliefs.
Daniloff Rever Weaver.
In short, the verse demonstrates that we are now in a recognisably fantasy space with all the narrative expectations that that entails.
Although not widely used in modern English writing prose, a metronome was extremely common in ancient and mediaeval literature,
both in Europe and beyond the Sanskrit epic, the Mahabharata, classical minifie and satire.
But we see this constellation of philosophy. The Arabic Ceara or epic narratives.
The old French Okusanya collect the Old Norse sagas.
The Old Irish Toyin Dantes of Eton Rover Meche Tales of Magdeburg is fleece and dyslectic, got typed to name just a few prose.
A metrical text survive in a huge array of languages and remained popular for centuries
from ancient times right up until the rise of the novel in the early modern period.
Why then has Posehn met Trim endured in fantasy literature when it has almost completely died out elsewhere?
Well,
one obvious answer is that fantasy literature finds much of its inspiration in the prose symmetrical literature of the ancient and mediaeval period.
Imitating this art form lends fancy literature, an air of authority and authenticity.
There's something of an irony in using Posehn that trend this way,
since poetry was often cited by mediaeval authors to lend authority to their narrative,
sort of like an early form of source referencing,
and thus the prose metrical form actually arises in part because of a desire for an authoritative narrative voice.
President Truman, fantasy is not just a method of handing, these stories have poetic quotations,
often cluster around moments of particular narrative significance,
allowing authors to linger at a moment of extreme tension or emotional impact in
the lengthy and often complex novels which are typical of the fantasy genre.
Structure is more important than ever. Intricate plots can become too involved.
Unfamiliar fantasy names can become confusing.
If a book is not well structured, embedding poetry into a narrative at critical points makes these points memorable.
By allowing for a change in register, usually it has to be said into a more melancholic or portentous Keat Tolkien, for example,
lingoes over the death of Borromeo as Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli singer lament before they send his body over the fault of Lost.
And I'll read you just the end of it. His head so proud.
His face so fair. His limbs they lay to rest. And Rudolf's golden rule Ross' fools Morhaim upon its breast o Borromeo.
That's how a God show Eggar North would gaze to Red Cross.
Golden Red Cross falls until the end of days and Guy Gavriel Kay uses poetry in quite a similar fashion.
At the end of his novel, The Lions of Other Ascend, the final fall of the kingdoms of our Gassan is lamented in a verse.
And again, I'll just read you the end of it.
The wells and the fountains, weak for sorrow as a lover does when Dawn comes to take him away from his desire.
They mourn for the passing of lines for the ending of our Rassam, the beloved.
Which is gone.
Breaking into poetry here heightens the pathos of the moment, it sharpens the emotional impact and it allows Kay to impart a sense of closure.
The poem is all about an ending. On one level, it's about the ending of the fictional kingdom of Rahsaan.
But on another, it's drawing the book itself to a close.
That's the conclusion of the novel themes is conveyed not just in content, but also in form.
It's not just what Kaye writes, but how he writes it.
But most importantly, I think embedding poetry within prose,
in fantasy writing has been so successful because these posehn metrical episodes are highly monck multi functional while remaining at the same time,
stylistically elegant worldbuilding is a key component of fantasy literature.
We judge authors on the skill with which they conjure up new civilisations and peoples for us to explore.
But we do not want to feel like we're reading an encyclopaedia.
A deft author can use a best quotation to subtly inform us about character and emotion,
to educate us about a world history and culture, and to situate us in a particular atmosphere or temporal setting.
Take, for example, this speech by Sam in Lord of the Rings.
Chapter eleven when the Hobbits and Stryder camping at the top and they're discussing its old function as a
watchtower from which the minable looked for the coming of Gale God from the West to help them fight the darkness.
And at this point, some rather unexpectedly breaks into poetry.
Then he recites, Gail Ballard was an elvan king of him, the harp and sadly sing the last,
whose round was fair and free between the mountains and the sea.
But long ago he rode away. And where he dwells, none can say.
For into darkness fell his star in Mortal, where the shadows.
The scene deepens our understanding of Sam's character,
evidencing his particular fascination with the elves, which is what prompted him to learn these verses.
And yet, as he tells his astonished friends, he did not memorise the remainder of the poem,
further emphasising that Sam is really more of a practical rather than a sort of bookish hobbit.
And Stryder informs us that the verses are actually a translation by Bilbo of an older Elvish Lei.
So it's use of syllabic metre and rhyme is thus also culturally characteristic.
And it contrasts with the stress based alliterative verse of Rohana.
And finally, the subject matter. By remembering a distant and legendary past establishes a sense of historical
depth and contributes to a growing sense of dread regarding the shadow of mortal.
Even at this very early stage in the narrative, all of this from a scene of perhaps a few hundred words,
Tolkien's interweaving of verse and prose and his Lord of the Rings is worthy of a lecture in itself.
But here I want to highlight just one particular way in which he utilises the frequent shifts he makes between prose and poetry.
One of the most striking aspects of the Lord of the Rings is the tone of the narrative,
the way in which Tolkien is able to situate his readers in a world that feels both
indescribably ancient and yet has a historical and legendary depth of its own quote.
That sense of perspective of antiquity with a greater and yet darker antiquity behind.
Now, those are Tolkien's own words. But he was not talking about the Lord of the Rings.
He was actually talking about Bales and that poet's brilliant invocation of the many layers of historical time.
Now, Tolkien evidently admired what the Beowulf poet achieved in that regard because he clearly tries to replicate it in his own work and prose.
A metronome is the essential strategy used by talking to conjure up that same sense of perspective in his own fantasy writing.
He uses poetic quotations and the framing prose to look back in time.
Consider one of his most celebrated passages where now the horse and the rider.
Where is the horn that was blowing, whereas the helm and the hoback and the bright hair flowing and I wouldn't read all of it.
Let's skip to the end.
Who shall gather the smoke of the dead wood burning or behold the flowing years from the sea returning and then we switch into prose.
Thus spoke of forgotten poet long ago in Rohana,
recalling how tall and third was a will be young who rode down out of the north and there were wings upon the feet of his steed,
the ladder of father of horses. So men still sing in the evening.
The episode helps to introduce the civilisation of Rome, establishing its antiquity and its nobility and most importantly,
perhaps with the dominant use of the B.S. that the where all motif a sense of its current decline.
Under the failing rule of the bewitched king. They had an. But Tolkien doesn't just use poetry to add historical depth to his world.
He also uses poetry to look forward in time and thereby situate his own present narrative in the historical past.
After the battle of Pelen Fields, he takes a moment to review the slain.
So we're told. No few had fallen renowned or nameless, captain or soldier, for it was a great battle and the full count of it.
No tale has told so long afterward, a maker in row home said in his song of the mounds of Montebourg.
We heard of the horns in the hills reading The swords shining in the South Kingdom Steeds went striding
into stony land as wind in the morning war was kindled that they had and fell fingerling mighty.
And so it goes on, becoming a catalogue of the names of those who have fallen.
And this allusion to song makers in Rohana long afterwards pushes us as readers forward into the future,
a reminder that the heroes of the Lord of the Rings will themselves pass into legend.
Tolkien actually uses his poetry to look even further forward than that.
It's sometimes forgotten, I think that the Lord of the Rings takes place in our own world.
I can see that's much more apparent in the early part of the novel, especially the prologue, than in the latter sections.
But at the Prancing Pony, Imbrie Frodo sings a song that Bilbo wrote about the man in the moon who came
down to earth to drink some beer and ended up drinking the whole night away.
Only a few words of the song, we are told, quote, are now, as a rule remembered.
And I'll read you just the final two verses because it's a very long song, but I think that you'll find them familiar.
So the poem ends with a payment upon the fiddle strings broke.
The cow jumped over the moon and the little dog laughed to see such fun.
And the Saturday dish went offered a run with the Silver Sunday spoon.
The round moon rolled behind the hill as the sun raised up her head.
She hardly believed her fiery eyes. But then it was day. To her surprise, they all went back to bed.
The illusion, of course, is to the nursery rhyme paid a little for which Tolkien has invented an entire explanatory backstory.
But the episode is an intriguing bridge between the world of the reader and the world of the novel,
suggesting for a moment a continuity of being a line that can be traced from ourselves in the present all the way to the end of the prancing pony.
If we remember those few words of which Tolkien as narrator speaks, we are for a moment ourselves a part of the narrative.
The scene enhances the realism of the narrative by connecting it to our own reality.
If we are real and we are drawn into the narrative, then that same narrative is invested with the realism of our own existence.
And fantasy, perhaps more than other literary genres, needs to feel real to be taken seriously.
Stories which include consciously fantastical elements need to work extra hard to
integrate them into a narrative to make them believable and to make them relatable.
In a similar fashion guy, Gapuwiyak also uses poetry to provide a bridge between the familiar world of the reader,
a world that in this case is shared with his main characters who come from Toronto and the magical world of Vietnam.
The main theme in the first book of his vision of a trilogy is the way his characters Kevin and pulled
process their grief for the death of their friend Rachel in a car accident before the novel starts.
And it eventually leads Poole to an act of self-sacrifice on the cemetery.
But Kevin deals with his grief in a different way. Late one night in a tavern where he's been taken by some of his new friends from Vietnam.
He performs Rachel's song, which is an adapted version of the second movement of the Brahms F major cello sonata.
And the song is an explicit lament for Rachel. And I'll just reaching again the beginning, love.
Do you remember my name? I was lost in summer and winter, made bitter by frost.
And when June comes December, the heart pays the cost.
The breaking of waves on a long shore in the grey morning.
The slow fall of rain and stone lies over.
Although very different in tone to the song quoted when the characters first arrive in
Vietnam over that song about those who rode that night with rather much more similar,
in fact, to a modern love song, really, than an ancient ballad. The song nevertheless sets up music as a kind of universal language,
something that both those characters from Toronto and those from Vienna, VA have in common.
Where case early a shift into poetry emphasised all that was unfamiliar about Vietnam either as a distant and magical land.
Kaye now uses poetry to highlight what is similar to begin breaking down the boundaries
between worlds and to show that what happens in one world can have consequences in another.
And that's really all I've got time for in this short lecture,
but I want to end with the big question is the golden age of Prosy Metron in fantasy literature over?
Should we now resign ourselves to more prosaic narratives in the literal sense of the word?
It's undeniable that Prosy Metro has fallen out of fashion.
I think lingering on mainly in the form of protheses magic speech, which is often still rendered in poetic form to highlight its portentous nature.
It's a sort of subtle coding, but one that we all instinctively understand.
However, the impulse to turn to verse and moments of particularly high drama still remains.
Consider the Song of Fire and Ice by George R.R. Martin.
Perhaps the most major fantasy series of recent time.
Arguably the most famous moment of the whole series is The Red Wedding.
When and this is a huge spoiler alert. So please stop listening now.
If you've not read it when the valiant Rob Stark is brutally betrayed and murdered at the wedding of his uncle Tully.
And the scene is told to us from the perspective of Rob's mother, Kathleen.
And I just want to read you a short extract.
The players in the gallery had finally gotten both king and queen down to their name day suits with scarcely a moment's respite.
They began to play a very different sort of song. No one signed the words, but Katlin knew the rains of customizer when she heard it.
Edwin was hurrying toward the door. She hurried faster, driven by the music.
Six quick strides and she caught him. And who are you, the proud Lord said that I misspelled so much.
She grabbed Edwyn by the arm to turn him and went cold all over when she felt the iron rings beneath his silken sleeve.
The critical moment of realisation is interrupted by the ominous words of the song.
Who are you? The proud Lord said that I miss Bauer. So low is a final moment of quiet before the chaos and the slaughter erupts.
The moment is particularly well rendered in the HBO show,
where that juxtaposition of the music and the murder is even more pronounced because we get to hear much more of the song that we do in the book.
So given the success of that scene,
it's not surprising that this show made reached for the same technique in season eight when they reached a similarly dramatic moment
the night before the final battle with a seemingly unbeatable knight king who can say how the story will unfold in Martin's version.
But the show makers have Patrick Payne saying Gennie of Old is an old and very sad folk song.
Of the Seven Kingdoms, while the camera pans over the surviving characters to show how they choose to spend what may very well
be the last night of their lives and the words go like this high in the halls of the kings who are gone.
Jenny would dance with her ghosts, the ones she had lost and the ones she had found, and the ones who had loved her the most.
And she never wanted to leave. Never wanted to leave.
The lyrics, redolent as they are of loss and death, have clearly been written for their multi valence.
They are not just a reflection of Gennie situation,
but of the situation of everybody waiting at Winterfell in these two moments of extremely high drama.
Martin and his show creators, Benioff and Vice, reach for a familiar tactic.
They employ verse to create an atmosphere that cannot easily be created by simple narration or by means of direct speech between characters.
Verse provides a much more subtle and implicit means of conveying tone and meaning to an audience.
Whether that be the sense of ominous threat at the Red Wedding or of pre-emptive grief the night before the night King's attack.
Martin Benioff and Vice are not alone in using best this way.
Who was able to watch the Netflix series The Witch without coming away humming the song Toss a Coin to Your Witch?
A song which again works to establish the character and drives of the series protagonist The Whicher of the show's title.
I think it's fantasy adaptations increase me. We may well see the resurgence of prison Metron not perhaps in the written form,
which may never return to quite the kind of popularity it once enjoyed.
But as a performative technique, as effective now as it was hundreds of years ago,
as a way to structure dramatic and spoken storytelling, oscillation between verse and prose still has a long and dynamic future.
Thank you.