1 00:00:00,480 --> 00:00:05,700 Yeah, so I was a graduate student here, I was standing at the front of this room is like quite terrifying, but also 2 00:00:05,700 --> 00:00:10,710 wonderful at the same time, sitting there practically taking notes. I will remind you 3 00:00:10,710 --> 00:00:15,900 at the end, in case you forget, I am a former student illustrator who makes stickers 4 00:00:15,900 --> 00:00:21,150 associated with my book. I felt like my book wasn't quite enchanted looking enough. So we 5 00:00:21,150 --> 00:00:26,290 made stickers that you can re-insurance your copy of the book or just restrict your life. And so if you'd like a sticker 6 00:00:26,290 --> 00:00:31,320 sheet on, well, let me know. I've mostly bought them for that. When I meet students and other people, I just 7 00:00:31,320 --> 00:00:37,210 instead of seeing the world, they can take the. You understand? All right. 8 00:00:37,210 --> 00:00:42,450 Are you going to dive right in to make sure that we get them good enough time for lower on costs? 9 00:00:42,450 --> 00:00:47,910 And so here we go. And before I do, that would make sure I can click over easily. 10 00:00:47,910 --> 00:00:53,820 Is it just. Yes. All right. Great. All right. 11 00:00:53,820 --> 00:00:58,860 So after doing this graduate and local residents, Philip Pullman opens the Book of 12 00:00:58,860 --> 00:01:04,080 Dust Levels of Ozge, the prequel to the celebrated his Dark Materials trilogy 13 00:01:04,080 --> 00:01:10,290 with a description of a magical other officers that barely differs from the real ones. 14 00:01:10,290 --> 00:01:15,480 In one long, lazy sentence, the cat spins northward, along the time away from the heart 15 00:01:15,480 --> 00:01:20,970 of town with its, quote, great colleges of Jordan, Gabriel and Balliol and two dozen others 16 00:01:20,970 --> 00:01:26,110 until the city is just a collection of towers and fires existence. It passes the report, 17 00:01:26,110 --> 00:01:31,210 Meadow Park, Gusto, Abbey and Ends of the Troughton, where the novel introduces the 11 year 18 00:01:31,210 --> 00:01:36,230 old protagonist. This could be modern day, awkward and intriguing. But first, the 19 00:01:36,230 --> 00:01:41,410 story, I think tweaks the non-existent colleges of Jordan and Gabriel, for instance, and the restoration of Godchaux 20 00:01:41,410 --> 00:01:46,510 from crumbling roof with ruins into a bustling combat. Holleman, selective description 21 00:01:46,510 --> 00:01:51,760 of all of Oxford northern reaches reveals the city and its surrounding areas to be 22 00:01:51,760 --> 00:01:57,010 already magical. A sight, a quintessential aimlessness with a present overlap with a premodern 23 00:01:57,010 --> 00:02:02,350 past offered mediaeval structures, institutions, 24 00:02:02,350 --> 00:02:07,850 pastoral countryside and cosy English features hall settings of adventure common to children's fantasy. 25 00:02:07,850 --> 00:02:13,570 Jarah Tolkien's Bilbo left the comforts of the Shire for the Wilderness of Middle Earth and The Hobbit. 26 00:02:13,570 --> 00:02:18,730 Successive sets of English children for the capital's Rubirosa, the C.S. Lewis Narnia. 27 00:02:18,730 --> 00:02:23,740 Malcolm joins these iconic characters and the many other fictional youth who set out on a quest is a chance at other 28 00:02:23,740 --> 00:02:29,290 worlds that look like we're actually our Britain. And Pullmans is so much other fantasy. Such landscapes 29 00:02:29,290 --> 00:02:35,560 provide access to premodern experience, opportunities for adventure and above all, magic. 30 00:02:35,560 --> 00:02:41,080 What is the appeal of fantasy and sudam evil roughly British world? 31 00:02:41,080 --> 00:02:46,630 How did the genre take root and why did its reach continue to grow in spite of its association 32 00:02:46,630 --> 00:02:51,700 with escapism and the infantile? What are the cultural impacts of looking 33 00:02:51,700 --> 00:02:56,770 useful heroics, an environment steeped in longstanding race, gender and class hierarchies. My 34 00:02:56,770 --> 00:03:02,160 book Reimplanted addresses these questions which have immediate personal significance for millions of people. 35 00:03:02,160 --> 00:03:07,270 You know, the fantasy genre, and especially children's fantasy, is still seen as minor in relation to high literary 36 00:03:07,270 --> 00:03:12,550 culture, especially in places like in the top. 37 00:03:12,550 --> 00:03:17,670 I will draw Henry and chances to give a snapshot of a few of the book's main claims, beginning with a discussion 38 00:03:17,670 --> 00:03:23,800 of Tolkien and Lewis and the role they played in the genesis of a modern fantasy genre shaping their work, 39 00:03:23,800 --> 00:03:28,900 shaping it through their work as both fiction writers and architects. The Oxford undergraduate English 40 00:03:28,900 --> 00:03:33,940 curriculum. So very relevant for this particular location. And I will then move into a 41 00:03:33,940 --> 00:03:39,220 discussion of how some of the sentiments in that mediaevalist syllabus re-emerge in children's books, quite often 42 00:03:39,220 --> 00:03:44,230 educated authors, a group of writers that I call the Oxford School of the Fantasy Literature. While 43 00:03:44,230 --> 00:03:49,270 there are many ways that these mediaevalism appear to inform, circulate for the purposes of this 44 00:03:49,270 --> 00:03:54,280 talk and try to cram as best they could of the source. Bear with me and I will focus on the way that 45 00:03:54,280 --> 00:03:59,350 colonialist fantasies of white male heroism and Anglo American exceptionalism found a new home until 46 00:03:59,350 --> 00:04:04,590 this fantasy justice empire was coming to an end and Britain was facing a newly reduced role 47 00:04:04,590 --> 00:04:09,640 on the global stage. I'll then wrap up with a brief discussion of 21st century fantasy 48 00:04:09,640 --> 00:04:14,860 for adults using Dominican American novelist Junot Diaz as the brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao 49 00:04:14,860 --> 00:04:20,050 as a means of considering how authors and fans have responded to some of the exclusions and broken promises 50 00:04:20,050 --> 00:04:25,420 of 20th century children's fantasy and their own literary revision. The genre. 51 00:04:25,420 --> 00:04:30,670 When my work engages with the impact of individual writers and scholars, it also is always framed in terms 52 00:04:30,670 --> 00:04:35,950 of how institutions participate in shaping cultural phenomena and individual such activities. 53 00:04:35,950 --> 00:04:41,350 In the process of tracing the rise of Mediaeval Sultan's fantasy, I follow Michel Taco's. Articulation of power 54 00:04:41,350 --> 00:04:46,480 is something that is exercised pervasively as part of a deep network of social 55 00:04:46,480 --> 00:04:51,550 relations rather than simply a Top-Down structure of control. Power relations are shaped by 56 00:04:51,550 --> 00:04:56,660 and play out in a range of institutions. My book reveals a wide web of relationships that give children's 57 00:04:56,660 --> 00:05:02,220 fantasy cultural power for formal institutions of education with the university empire, 58 00:05:02,220 --> 00:05:07,360 the informal cultural institutions like holiday ritual and self-help practises. Sadly, one of the things that was 59 00:05:07,360 --> 00:05:12,520 dropped from this talk is my entire chapter on Christmas. These 60 00:05:12,520 --> 00:05:17,770 and other institutional interventions are key to the larger story that I want to tell about fantasy transformation 61 00:05:17,770 --> 00:05:23,080 from a niche site of cultural niche type of resistance to literary and social changes of interest 62 00:05:23,080 --> 00:05:28,090 and post-war modernity into a flexible psychological landscape for exploring Anglo 63 00:05:28,090 --> 00:05:33,320 American identity. By the start of the 21st century. My book argues that the culturally 64 00:05:33,320 --> 00:05:38,420 secondary categories of mediaevalism the magical in childhood, which are secondary to McGarity 65 00:05:38,420 --> 00:05:43,610 material, reality and adulthood respectively, are entangled in children's fantasies. Much in the same 66 00:05:43,610 --> 00:05:49,880 way they participate in a much broader and much broader notions of personal, societal and national development. 67 00:05:49,880 --> 00:05:54,890 These categories be chiefly to aspects of experience, the feelings of love, nostalgia 68 00:05:54,890 --> 00:05:59,930 and hope they aspire. In many modern subjects make some power especially difficult to difficult 69 00:05:59,930 --> 00:06:06,200 disentangle from the fabric of social life and therefore especially powerful political tools. 70 00:06:06,200 --> 00:06:11,270 In this sense, mediaevalists Tilden's best represents how so-called trivial material may in fact be some of 71 00:06:11,270 --> 00:06:16,340 the most important cultural phenomena to step back from the studies through a critical lens because 72 00:06:16,340 --> 00:06:21,710 of what they reveal about the institutional structures that makes them possible. So in addition to my particular 73 00:06:21,710 --> 00:06:27,530 claims about fantasy, I'm also making a meta argument about what it is we do in the academic humanities 74 00:06:27,530 --> 00:06:32,540 and perhaps in teaching, preaching to the choir today, advocating that we invest in spaces, bases like the one we're 75 00:06:32,540 --> 00:06:37,760 sharing right now for studying a wide array of cultural texts, including often overlooked ones like children's 76 00:06:37,760 --> 00:06:45,520 literature and genre fiction in conversation with larger social phenomena and social shifts. 77 00:06:45,520 --> 00:06:50,920 Some familiar faces when most of us know it's fantasy today, growth in large part out of the work and convictions 78 00:06:50,920 --> 00:06:56,510 of Jarah, Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. Modernism defendants 79 00:06:56,510 --> 00:07:02,600 interwar years poking and Lewis reaffirms the relevance of their own preferred modes of literature. 80 00:07:02,600 --> 00:07:07,880 They rejected the idea that social hierarchies, triumphalists narrative, triumphant narrative and moral guidance 81 00:07:07,880 --> 00:07:13,040 that they found in mediaeval literature and fairy stories no longer had a place in adult discourse. 82 00:07:13,040 --> 00:07:18,380 They had been in love with the stories and languages of the European villages since childhood and were convinced 83 00:07:18,380 --> 00:07:23,630 that the mediaeval law they chose the study of scholars with its battles monsters, heroes and magic 84 00:07:23,630 --> 00:07:29,360 remains profoundly relevant, capable of providing both deep pleasure and direction for contemporary life. 85 00:07:29,360 --> 00:07:34,370 It became one of the great quests for their lives to shift the current English cultural thought away 86 00:07:34,370 --> 00:07:39,770 from its growing emphasis on the mundane reality of McGarity toward the enchantments of mediaeval literature. 87 00:07:39,770 --> 00:07:44,840 And you had to see works that were called early sources. Talking to Lewis made their largest impact 88 00:07:44,840 --> 00:07:50,090 by publishing the literary category. It was most receptive to mediaeval isms in the first half of the 20th century. 89 00:07:50,090 --> 00:07:55,130 Children's literature Fokin first metallist tell The Hobbit and all of Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia 90 00:07:55,130 --> 00:08:00,260 were originally published and written for children. Tolkien explained his decision in 1967 91 00:08:00,260 --> 00:08:05,490 interview. Quote, If you're a youngish man and you don't want to be made fun of, you say you're writing for children. 92 00:08:05,490 --> 00:08:10,640 And the fact that peacoat had been brought up to believe that there was a real special connexion between children 93 00:08:10,640 --> 00:08:15,740 and fairy story. He later said that he regretted writing The Hobbit for Children and of course, published Lord 94 00:08:15,740 --> 00:08:21,040 of the Rings from a general audience. But looking at the children's section of nearly any kinds 95 00:08:21,040 --> 00:08:26,120 of stories today, it seems to confirm the continued and increased, indeed increased strength of the 96 00:08:26,120 --> 00:08:31,550 idea that children have a special relationship to the magical middle aged from the pervasive 97 00:08:31,550 --> 00:08:37,460 night and despair and toyshop to the seemingly countless dragon, the ferryboats and children's and young adult literature. 98 00:08:37,460 --> 00:08:42,530 The Anglo American world seems to have agreed that they used to inherit the future must first be encouraged to 99 00:08:42,530 --> 00:08:47,790 relive and enchanted version of the past. 100 00:08:47,790 --> 00:08:53,300 Why is childhood so persistently alive? It's very telling fantasy with a broad idea of a magical 101 00:08:53,300 --> 00:08:58,310 European Middle Ages in particular. Notably, both children and the villages sit on the 102 00:08:58,310 --> 00:09:04,040 premises. A popular individual and social narrative of development have a correspondence 103 00:09:04,040 --> 00:09:09,050 in the shared sense of being a period of early origin. A settler noted this history of 104 00:09:09,050 --> 00:09:14,480 children's literature. The child is a metaphor for much later period. Consider mediaeval 105 00:09:14,480 --> 00:09:19,950 in itself following the spread of forensic analytical theories of development in the early 20th century. 106 00:09:19,950 --> 00:09:24,990 Childhood took on a new significance as the form the seed of adult identity. This narrative agreed 107 00:09:24,990 --> 00:09:30,200 with 19th century muddied nationalisms discovery a distinct national roots in early folklore, a myth 108 00:09:30,200 --> 00:09:35,270 across north across northern Europe. So for Western Europe, its colonial inheritors looking at the 109 00:09:35,270 --> 00:09:40,280 Middle Ages means looking at our infancy and the words of Umberto Eco and the Middle Ages, imbued 110 00:09:40,280 --> 00:09:45,650 with the magic considered natural to romantic childhood themes in this light, especially appropriate for young people. 111 00:09:45,650 --> 00:09:50,840 No time to go into the magic of romantic childhood, but affecting the physician, 112 00:09:50,840 --> 00:09:56,030 which I saw in greater detail. My book is the Children's Literature. Media often used literary form of genres 113 00:09:56,030 --> 00:10:01,310 that reach their height of popularity in the mediaeval period. Larra writes that, quote, The forms of children's 114 00:10:01,310 --> 00:10:07,120 literature are distinctly premodern and cites allegory, moral fever, fable, romance and symbolism 115 00:10:07,120 --> 00:10:12,470 as examples of narrative devices that dominated mediaeval literature that gave way to the, quote, realisms history 116 00:10:12,470 --> 00:10:18,470 social to keep the psychological depth associated with literature for adults and survived modern. 117 00:10:18,470 --> 00:10:23,720 It is no coincidence that these forms were conducive to both fantastical and moralising 118 00:10:23,720 --> 00:10:28,830 modes of storytelling, which offer diverting surface narratives. The underlying message of. 119 00:10:28,830 --> 00:10:34,180 In both mediaeval Angelou's literature, allegorical narratives rely on a shared sense of order, 120 00:10:34,180 --> 00:10:39,310 religious, cultural, moral aesthetic that makes it possible to point to the start to a discernable 121 00:10:39,310 --> 00:10:44,590 second layer of meaning. While more often team starts, social hierarchies have become 122 00:10:44,590 --> 00:10:49,720 cooped up in the light of 20th century modernity and subsequent postmodern thought. That is, tradition 123 00:10:49,720 --> 00:10:55,270 of children's literature thrives on the expectation that the world is knowable and articulable and precisely 124 00:10:55,270 --> 00:11:00,580 the ways necessary to make allegorical and simple living narratives to make sense of allegorical 125 00:11:00,580 --> 00:11:06,220 and simple living narrative across time. Tolkien and Lewis Holmes literature scholars. 126 00:11:06,220 --> 00:11:11,520 But they were interested in restoring and maintaining the modes of thought that support such interpretation and composition 127 00:11:11,520 --> 00:11:16,570 despite changing social conditions. One of the ways they did this was through their 128 00:11:16,570 --> 00:11:21,830 chosen fiction, which reimagined early narratives in new. And they claim 129 00:11:21,830 --> 00:11:27,130 for the continued relevance of these tales. Scholars like your own Dualeh, 130 00:11:27,130 --> 00:11:32,290 Elizabeth Filipovic, have unearthed mediaeval roots of Tolkien's work, including the striking parallels between 131 00:11:32,290 --> 00:11:37,420 the Dragon episode and in Beowulf and The Hobbit. Lewis, meanwhile, is famous for his repositioning 132 00:11:37,420 --> 00:11:42,520 of Christ's passion in the mediaevalist candidate landscape of the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, as well as more 133 00:11:42,520 --> 00:11:47,680 explicit mediaeval borrowing's and other volumes of the Chronicles of Narnia. These were not only 134 00:11:47,680 --> 00:11:53,320 celebrate the traditions of the mediaeval past and reinsert them into the public imagination to children's stories, 135 00:11:53,320 --> 00:11:59,410 but also a touch to help contain wisdom that can guide an ailing modern world. 136 00:11:59,410 --> 00:12:04,450 At the end of The Hobbit, Bilbo marvels at the old songs that late time have turned out to be true after a 137 00:12:04,450 --> 00:12:10,030 fashion. Gandalf replies, Of course. And why should they not prove true? Surely you don't disbelieve 138 00:12:10,030 --> 00:12:15,350 the prophecies because you had a hand in bringing them about yourself. Tolkien and Lewis's fantasy 139 00:12:15,350 --> 00:12:20,530 suggest young readers have the opportunity and responsibility to draw upon the lessons 140 00:12:20,530 --> 00:12:26,580 of mediaevalist narrative. Western mediaevalist nurses to remake a world sliding towards moral decay, 141 00:12:26,580 --> 00:12:31,630 but taking a bit look poking Middler Pills and Louis' Chronicles of Narnia were only part of these 142 00:12:31,630 --> 00:12:37,540 men's larger investment in resisting the tide of modernity in general and modernist literary direction. In particular, 143 00:12:37,540 --> 00:12:42,800 the juicy part. The other major avenue for this was an English curriculum. 144 00:12:42,800 --> 00:12:48,040 Student, after his appointment as a role, was in the Bosworth's Professor of Anglo-Saxon offered and twenty five 145 00:12:48,040 --> 00:12:53,350 Tolkin, who had developed a linguistic English school requirements as a reader at Leeds University, began 146 00:12:53,350 --> 00:12:59,470 to articulate his vision for the Future of Oxford study. 147 00:12:59,470 --> 00:13:04,510 In 1930, he published an article in the Oxford magazine that put mediaeval literature forward at the core 148 00:13:04,510 --> 00:13:09,550 context for competent English education, which should be read as more than just philological 149 00:13:09,550 --> 00:13:14,620 examples as a subject of literary study, in the sense developed and expanded into the 150 00:13:14,620 --> 00:13:19,840 18th and 19th centuries, which is to say, as moral and patriotic vehicles to metaphysical 151 00:13:19,840 --> 00:13:25,090 truth. The suggestions for reform revealed the frustrations with existing schools, divided 152 00:13:25,090 --> 00:13:30,190 nature in which the mediaeval material appeared mainly at the service of linguistic study and most 153 00:13:30,190 --> 00:13:35,230 literary studies focussed on post mediaeval text. Oxford undergraduates could choose to focus 154 00:13:35,230 --> 00:13:40,390 on either one side or the other, and the vast majority opted for the more relatively modern literary 155 00:13:40,390 --> 00:13:45,910 text. Tolkien urged, Bring these two sides of the school together to ensure that all undergraduates 156 00:13:45,910 --> 00:13:51,340 spent time considering the cultural, moral and aesthetic qualities of early English literature, as well as the historical 157 00:13:51,340 --> 00:13:57,070 foundations of which Lewis initially opposed. Tolkien suggested reform 158 00:13:57,070 --> 00:14:02,350 that was one of his strongest supporters. By the time the faculty voted on them after they passed, Lewis 159 00:14:02,350 --> 00:14:07,450 wrote proudly in a letter about the syllabus, which my party and I have forced upon the widow after much hard 160 00:14:07,450 --> 00:14:14,650 fight and would defend it in subsequent essays, according to some of it. 161 00:14:14,650 --> 00:14:19,960 This may look familiar. The new syllabus for the 1930s offers 162 00:14:19,960 --> 00:14:25,000 three track options rather than two. Lewis described course one was derived from the logical track of the 163 00:14:25,000 --> 00:14:31,150 old curriculum as frankly, mediaeval the more modern course three as a literary course proper 164 00:14:31,150 --> 00:14:36,340 course to. The title is missing. As literary course proverb, which the vast 165 00:14:36,340 --> 00:14:41,470 majority of our students take course to the halfway house between courses one and three with a combination 166 00:14:41,470 --> 00:14:46,990 of topics from books. Course one was made up of old and middle English philology, two subsidiary 167 00:14:46,990 --> 00:14:52,180 mediæval languages such as Gothic, Old Norse, old French. You could see the options here and only 168 00:14:52,180 --> 00:14:57,310 papers that cover literature from the Middle Ages. Of course, three required only a logical course in modern 169 00:14:57,310 --> 00:15:02,380 English, although of course modern, widely interpreted and the remaining eight papers 170 00:15:02,380 --> 00:15:07,990 all feature literary studies. However, old and middle English literature and the paper on Chaucer and contemporaries 171 00:15:07,990 --> 00:15:14,110 were mandatory for students in all tracks and there were no required texts from after 1830. 172 00:15:14,110 --> 00:15:19,210 All other 19th century literature was optional and there were no examinations or formal tuition on the 20th 173 00:15:19,210 --> 00:15:24,820 century. In any tract, as Lewis notes, most often students chose the modern course 174 00:15:24,820 --> 00:15:30,080 between 1933 with a new curriculum was fully invested in their country. Nearly 95 percent 175 00:15:30,080 --> 00:15:35,110 of students opted for course. Three students across all three tracks are required to read the 176 00:15:35,110 --> 00:15:40,370 exams upon heroic and LJ poetry, such as fables and selections from the old English Exeter book 177 00:15:40,370 --> 00:15:45,920 Chevallier Tales of Magic Like Sorghum and The Green Knight and the Fairy Romance or Fail Narrative. Meditations 178 00:15:45,920 --> 00:15:51,170 on Love, Religion, Morality, Philosophy by Chaucer, Leinwand and Gower. Late Mediaeval Tales 179 00:15:51,170 --> 00:15:56,690 of Wonder and Exploration for Mandeville's Time and Mallory's More Dhafir and early modern mediaevalism 180 00:15:56,690 --> 00:16:02,150 flicks. But there is therapy in their exams. They have to be able to comment on these works. History 181 00:16:02,150 --> 00:16:07,220 form and consequences. English literature and respond to questions like this one from 1956, the 182 00:16:07,220 --> 00:16:13,130 year that Susan Cooper died, when Jones and a few others that their are events which simply states, 183 00:16:13,130 --> 00:16:18,170 no matter how you answer this question right on ferry in middle English poetry. 184 00:16:18,170 --> 00:16:23,510 Both Tolkien and Lewis Revengers in 1933, meaning that they mark the paper that likely played prominent 185 00:16:23,510 --> 00:16:29,640 roles in settings and question the text in this new curriculum, which remained largely in place until 1970, 186 00:16:29,640 --> 00:16:34,730 share an unabashed interest in the magical, heroic allegorical divide. When I was doing my 187 00:16:34,730 --> 00:16:39,810 defo here between 2007 and 2010, I studied and taught undergraduates many of these texts and 188 00:16:39,810 --> 00:16:44,890 a number of them remain on the curriculum today. Like most curriculum design offered 189 00:16:44,890 --> 00:16:49,930 English under tofu, Lewis wasn't ideological project. In this case, nationalistic traditionalists 190 00:16:49,930 --> 00:16:55,730 and resistant to the ambiguities and disenchanted realism that they saw belonged to the. Degraded identity. 191 00:16:55,730 --> 00:17:00,780 But English studies relative newness of this field history is emerging from the context of colonial and working 192 00:17:00,780 --> 00:17:06,580 class education, popularity amongst women and perceived lack of difficulty, a marginality 193 00:17:06,580 --> 00:17:11,980 that conflicted with the vision that they were trying to advance for their curriculum. So Tolton and Lewis strove 194 00:17:11,980 --> 00:17:17,110 to position Oxford English as an analogue to the well respected school. The concept claiming that mastering England's 195 00:17:17,110 --> 00:17:22,180 early languages and analysing mediaeval literature, the Nobley work that provides deep and 196 00:17:22,180 --> 00:17:27,340 timeless access to the inner heart of the nation. Writing about old 197 00:17:27,340 --> 00:17:32,380 English in the late 1930s, Lewis claims, I see at once that words like Gold and Wolfe and 198 00:17:32,380 --> 00:17:37,750 Heart and blood and Winter and Earth had the same overtones for them as for me. Everything is already 199 00:17:37,750 --> 00:17:45,310 unmistakeably English. This near English, this is usually called romanticism by those who do not know Anglo-Saxon. 200 00:17:45,310 --> 00:17:50,860 Lewis believes literary English has a particular character and that it is archaic. 201 00:17:50,860 --> 00:17:55,910 The English mood is not modern, he asserts. Therefore, 202 00:17:55,910 --> 00:18:01,710 the feel with it therefore argues in English studies the tap root Anglo-Saxon 203 00:18:01,710 --> 00:18:06,760 old English can never be abandoned. The man who does not know it remains all his life. The child 204 00:18:06,760 --> 00:18:11,890 amongst real English students. There we find the speech rhythms that we use every day made the basis 205 00:18:11,890 --> 00:18:16,970 of metre. There we find the origins, that romance of that romanticism for which the ignorant and 206 00:18:16,970 --> 00:18:22,030 best such odd explanation, by contrast, remember, never can be 207 00:18:22,030 --> 00:18:27,160 abandoned. By contrast, at this point, Cambridge English had long since abandoned 208 00:18:27,160 --> 00:18:34,400 old English by making it optional in their undergraduate English curriculum. In 1917, 209 00:18:34,400 --> 00:18:39,850 when he was moved by arguments such as those left been released in his thirties 13 treatise, What is Education? 210 00:18:39,850 --> 00:18:45,550 Which I quote, in the interests of the average student who entered the English school principally as a logical 211 00:18:45,550 --> 00:18:50,680 or literary, historical, humanistic, archaeological or is it modern? 212 00:18:50,680 --> 00:18:55,840 Leifs goes on to say, quote, I can't bring myself to regard mid middle English and Anglo-Saxon as in any 213 00:18:55,840 --> 00:19:01,240 way necessary to a university course of English literature, end quote. Considering these languages more appropriate 214 00:19:01,240 --> 00:19:06,340 for specialised postgraduate, the places a lot of the local principal camera does 215 00:19:06,340 --> 00:19:11,390 new courses shaped by the contemporary modernist writers and other use. Hilliard, 216 00:19:11,390 --> 00:19:16,870 the faculty. The time called T.S. Eliot, responsible for many of the ideas, introduced a Cambridge English 217 00:19:16,870 --> 00:19:22,270 named Elliott collection of essays of sacred wood of the Texas shapes his thinking in particular. 218 00:19:22,270 --> 00:19:27,340 He recalled how Cambridge students read at the most recent criticism as it appeared, including Elliot Armitage, John 219 00:19:27,340 --> 00:19:34,040 Dryden, John Middlebury, Middleton, Murray's Keep in Shakespeare and Virginia Woolf. Common Reader. 220 00:19:34,040 --> 00:19:39,200 In addition to this emphasis on post mediaeval literature and contemporary modern has thought a new style of critical 221 00:19:39,200 --> 00:19:44,390 analysis developed at Cambridge in the 1920s and became a pillar of the revised English typos, 222 00:19:44,390 --> 00:19:49,460 what they call the courses. When the faculty formally separated from mediaeval and modern languages own departments in 223 00:19:49,460 --> 00:19:54,830 1926. I Richard began teaching at Cambridge in 1919 and thought, 224 00:19:54,830 --> 00:19:59,990 quote, scientific approaches to literary analysis in 1920s, the drawn textual evidence, 225 00:19:59,990 --> 00:20:05,120 the experience of the contemporary reader, and lessons from the burgeoning field of psychology. His 226 00:20:05,120 --> 00:20:10,340 practical criticism, as he called it, originated from having students analyse poetry without any contextual 227 00:20:10,340 --> 00:20:15,680 material, focussing their attention on the minutia of the text itself. This approach influenced 228 00:20:15,680 --> 00:20:21,260 American new critics and their host reading practises, which still dominate literary studies today. 229 00:20:21,260 --> 00:20:26,360 The language that we continue to use to teach in grade, close reading reveals, is aphorist aspirations 230 00:20:26,360 --> 00:20:31,580 towards scientific objectivity. Literature instructors encourage students to build arguments based on specific 231 00:20:31,580 --> 00:20:36,620 evidence from text rather than broad, subjective, emotional responses. Moreover, whenever 232 00:20:36,620 --> 00:20:41,720 Leavis joined the Cambridge English faculty in the thirties, he made modernist literature the subject of serious 233 00:20:41,720 --> 00:20:46,820 academic enquiry with its own books of criticism. Beginning in that decade, strongly influenced by 234 00:20:46,820 --> 00:20:51,860 Elliot leave his work with Barry Vitrine and romantic approaches to literature and highlighted 235 00:20:51,860 --> 00:20:56,900 the importance of writing by contemporary poets such as Yate Elliott and Pownce Cambridge, his emphasis 236 00:20:56,900 --> 00:21:02,150 on contemporary literature. The first time a departure from philology foreshadowed the directions of English 237 00:21:02,150 --> 00:21:07,160 departments that English departments would take across Britain and America in the 20th century. 238 00:21:07,160 --> 00:21:15,200 OXFORD, However, Tolkien, Lewis and their supporters brewed an unusual and prominent outlier, 239 00:21:15,200 --> 00:21:20,450 Susan Cooper. Diana Wynne Jones. Kevin Crossly Holland and Philip Pullman each received their English degrees 240 00:21:20,450 --> 00:21:25,610 at Oxford between 1956 in 1968 and went on to become celebrated offers of children's fantasy 241 00:21:25,610 --> 00:21:31,430 literature that engages with aspects of the English curriculum of its undergraduate. 242 00:21:31,430 --> 00:21:36,740 Each of these authors places her his own mark on enchantments, mediaevalism and the modern Britain by variously 243 00:21:36,740 --> 00:21:41,810 interpreting and reframing early English literature and legends, including many texts central to Tolkien elusive 244 00:21:41,810 --> 00:21:47,030 English syllabus, new works for young audience. This blossoming of fantasy based on working 245 00:21:47,030 --> 00:21:52,470 Oxford English curriculum filled Tolkien's dream with sparking an enchanted literary revolution. 246 00:21:52,470 --> 00:21:57,800 In his 1936 essay, A Fable The Monsters and the Critics, he proudly referred to the new poetry 247 00:21:57,800 --> 00:22:03,110 inspired by the Dragon of Fables had been composed, quote, since Beowulf escaped somewhat 248 00:22:03,110 --> 00:22:08,150 from the domain of students of origin. The students of poetry, 249 00:22:08,150 --> 00:22:14,060 while talking less likely, refers here to his own poetry and the driving episode that would appear in The Hobbit 1937. 250 00:22:14,060 --> 00:22:19,380 His phrasing shows his approval at the idea of mediaeval studies leading to new works of literature. 251 00:22:19,380 --> 00:22:25,040 And Susan Cooper has reminisced. Offered English students. Indeed, found themselves to believe in dragons, 252 00:22:25,040 --> 00:22:30,610 both through their studies of mediaeval literature and in many cases, their private reading of Tolkien's fantasy. 253 00:22:30,610 --> 00:22:35,840 Tolkien, Lewis and these four authors make up what I call the Oxford School of Children can see literature 254 00:22:35,840 --> 00:22:40,840 was taken together, have created a through line of Oxford English related fantasy for young readers that 255 00:22:40,840 --> 00:22:46,120 has remained in wide circulation from the 1930s through to today. Above all, these authors 256 00:22:46,120 --> 00:22:51,220 and their successors follow a rule that Tolkien sets up for fairy story quotes. One thing must 257 00:22:51,220 --> 00:22:56,760 not be made fun of the magic itself that must in stories is taken seriously. 258 00:22:56,760 --> 00:23:02,050 Either laughed at or land away. This whole is evil in this depict ancient or impossible 259 00:23:02,050 --> 00:23:07,120 scenarios. In spite of this distance distance, they contain the sacred power to meaningfully address 260 00:23:07,120 --> 00:23:12,580 immediate social concerns. The office schools interested in writing about enchantment without smurfing 261 00:23:12,580 --> 00:23:17,920 or seeking to debunk it together with the conviction that really English literature and culture remains relevant 262 00:23:17,920 --> 00:23:23,020 in the presence, captures and reproduces the key elements of Tolkien and Lewis's lifework and gives 263 00:23:23,020 --> 00:23:28,320 it new resonance in the popular culture of subsequent decades. Quick 264 00:23:28,320 --> 00:23:33,460 note on the side of say, these authors fascinatingly are not the only people 265 00:23:33,460 --> 00:23:38,500 who end up writing fantasy from a frenzy for children in a mediaevalist mode who study the 266 00:23:38,500 --> 00:23:43,900 author. And I'd be interested, happy to talk about that as well later. But there are others in different humanities 267 00:23:43,900 --> 00:23:49,480 degrees. The authors of this work like Alexander, for example, Penelope Lively. 268 00:23:49,480 --> 00:23:54,550 My book delves into the work into work by all four of these second generation authors, as well as obviously talking to 269 00:23:54,550 --> 00:24:01,040 Lewis, who, in spite of many differences, share their predecessors seriousness about the importance of magic and mediaevalists 270 00:24:01,040 --> 00:24:06,670 each bring unique interests, political lenses, a sense of humour and social beliefs to the reimagining scenarios 271 00:24:06,670 --> 00:24:11,800 and figures from English literature and law. Some most obviously, Pullman even 272 00:24:11,800 --> 00:24:17,110 attempt to rewrite the rules of fantasy through intentional reinterpretation of the Oxford curriculum. 273 00:24:17,110 --> 00:24:22,240 But they all remain faithful advocates of early English literature, its capacity to reincarnate disenchanted 274 00:24:22,240 --> 00:24:27,400 world through allegorical reading and creative rewriting. Meanwhile, the sharp distinction 275 00:24:27,400 --> 00:24:32,410 between the institutions of literature that arose out of pulping in Lewis's Oxford English on the one hand 276 00:24:32,410 --> 00:24:37,990 and Richard and leave us is Cambridge English on the other to demonstrate important political literary divergences. 277 00:24:37,990 --> 00:24:43,410 Each represented at the time legacies that continue to clash in popular intellectual spheres today. 278 00:24:43,410 --> 00:24:48,670 And if we have time to talk. Also, I'd love to talk about the way in which mediaevalism appear in this audience. Joan was 279 00:24:48,670 --> 00:24:54,350 published 1938 by former Cambridge undergraduate students. His wife 280 00:24:54,350 --> 00:25:00,100 often made no knowledge of holding this poetry as a measure of real English. And then this. And this in turn 281 00:25:00,100 --> 00:25:06,010 served as a measure of the students words, not just as a scholar, but as a quote, man. 282 00:25:06,010 --> 00:25:11,230 Even as English remains, one of the fields most likely to attract women and colonial born students is offered. Lewis 283 00:25:11,230 --> 00:25:18,070 describes studying the English school English school curriculum in masculinist imperialist language. 284 00:25:18,070 --> 00:25:23,260 In the great rough countryside, which we now throw open to you, you can choose your own path. Here's 285 00:25:23,260 --> 00:25:29,050 your gun, your space, your efficient capital. Go and get yourself a dinner. 286 00:25:29,050 --> 00:25:34,060 Do not tell me you would sooner have a nice compositor menu of dishes from half the world drawn up 287 00:25:34,060 --> 00:25:40,270 for you. You're too old for that. This time you learn to wrestle with nature for yourself. 288 00:25:40,270 --> 00:25:45,640 This conceit English literature becomes an undiscovered country ripe for exploration and conquest by the scholar 289 00:25:45,640 --> 00:25:50,680 who is prepared to take it on linguistic and historical knowledge of old norful. Englishman, linguist and 290 00:25:50,680 --> 00:25:55,900 other mediaeval literature become the gun Spayd and fishing tackle. That will allow implicitly male English 291 00:25:55,900 --> 00:26:00,940 students to make his way to the literary landscape and force it to yield up its treasures. Mature 292 00:26:00,940 --> 00:26:06,160 student is too old to have literary for a spoon fed to him by others from a Frenchified menu 293 00:26:06,160 --> 00:26:11,380 or list of predetermined texts from across the period. Lewis suggests that such study is not only babyish 294 00:26:11,380 --> 00:26:16,840 but also inherently unequal. italicise in the French loanword marks it as foreign, 295 00:26:16,840 --> 00:26:22,310 even though the practise of italicise in the word menu fallen out of common use in the 19th century. 296 00:26:22,310 --> 00:26:27,520 This vision of scholarly activity in the great rough countryside of English literature absolutely captures 297 00:26:27,520 --> 00:26:32,570 a youthful, vigorous spirit. Edwardian and Victorian boys. Imperial adventure novels. 298 00:26:32,570 --> 00:26:37,780 But it depicts England's cultural history, reverent colonial setting as the rightful landscape 299 00:26:37,780 --> 00:26:42,790 for inspiration, achievement and transition. An idealised male. The 300 00:26:42,790 --> 00:26:48,310 English of the image of the English student as a masculine hunter, digger fisherman Flora 301 00:26:48,310 --> 00:26:54,160 is in keeping with the martial metaphors used to debate between modernists and anti modernist at the time. 302 00:26:54,160 --> 00:26:59,230 Both camps accuse the other of being insufficiently manly to be taken seriously 303 00:26:59,230 --> 00:27:04,700 as exemplified and talking in Lewis's frequent claims that McGarity is obsessed with a feminist fashion. 304 00:27:04,700 --> 00:27:09,820 Louis' ideal English student relishes the adventure of making his own way through literature and prefers 305 00:27:09,820 --> 00:27:14,890 to wrestle with texts. As part of his individual national and scholarly identity. Lewis's 306 00:27:14,890 --> 00:27:20,080 conceit makes the approach to English curricula more than a matter of academic preference. It makes the choice 307 00:27:20,080 --> 00:27:25,810 a moral and developmental one and bears over time from 19th century muscular Christianity, Anglo-Saxon 308 00:27:25,810 --> 00:27:31,690 Anglo-Saxon exceptionalism and the colonial mission. 309 00:27:31,690 --> 00:27:36,850 This curious interweaving of colonialist imagery, the Middle Ages and English literature also 310 00:27:36,850 --> 00:27:41,860 appear until the fantasy. It's common knowledge that the cardiograph acknowledges the genre often takes the 311 00:27:41,860 --> 00:27:46,870 British Isles or some imaginary standard as a central starting point. Writing Avión from there eventually 312 00:27:46,870 --> 00:27:52,150 include peripheral lands with warmer weather and people with people with darker skin. The central tragedy 313 00:27:52,150 --> 00:27:58,070 of Britain or England's offence to other other worlds makes sense in the light of Tolkien, Lewis's Anglophilia 314 00:27:58,070 --> 00:28:03,250 and the narrowly defined English studies syllabus. The authors go off and share the fantasy by subsequent 315 00:28:03,250 --> 00:28:08,360 British writers like J.K. Rowling or American authors, which is to more Piers George R.R. Martin than others. 316 00:28:08,360 --> 00:28:13,570 Continue this emphasis on creating worlds. Inspired by England's past and simultaneously perpetuate 317 00:28:13,570 --> 00:28:20,560 underlying colonial centric sentiments and presumptions of what it is that characterises the genre, 318 00:28:20,560 --> 00:28:25,630 there can be no question of the parallels between the quests of mediaeval epic and romance. On the one hand, and the mediaeval 319 00:28:25,630 --> 00:28:30,830 influence total fantasy of the 20th and 21st centuries and the other. Ensuring forth into 320 00:28:30,830 --> 00:28:35,980 dangerous, magical witnesses to perform a task or seek a goal is one of the most common scenarios 321 00:28:35,980 --> 00:28:41,620 and fantasy. But this is also the kind of useful thing that appears in British imperial gothic 322 00:28:41,620 --> 00:28:46,890 literature and boys colonial adventure stories and the libertarian and a worrisome period for the works 323 00:28:46,890 --> 00:28:51,940 of each writer Haggard, to Richard Kipling, to the prolific jayanti of the literature of the time, 324 00:28:51,940 --> 00:28:56,980 often taught English to set out into the high seas or into the African or Asian interior to 325 00:28:56,980 --> 00:29:02,460 meet physical and mental challenges in lands filled with exotic peoples and cultures, middleclass books, 326 00:29:02,460 --> 00:29:07,600 as well as more affordable magazines like the widely read Boys on Paper or have any boys. Publications 327 00:29:07,600 --> 00:29:13,060 like the Union Jack were filled with intrepid young men who had displayed manly qualities that affirmed the superiority 328 00:29:13,060 --> 00:29:18,580 and right to rule. These characters journeys make them into men and often surprise officers and representatives 329 00:29:18,580 --> 00:29:23,670 of the British Empire as well. Children fantasy like Lewis's voyages that on Treader and the Horse 330 00:29:23,670 --> 00:29:28,840 in boys offer mid century analogues to these earlier tales of seafaring in uncharted waters 331 00:29:28,840 --> 00:29:33,940 and travelled to lands a life that doesn't show up at school and subsequent fantasy. 332 00:29:33,940 --> 00:29:39,310 Tennessee Tech lift the narratives out of a world dominated by the British Empire and places them 333 00:29:39,310 --> 00:29:44,380 in imaginary realms of magical mediaevalism where wighton with power. So its use on the rise 334 00:29:44,380 --> 00:29:49,510 and bursting globe conquering potential. Some images from 335 00:29:49,510 --> 00:29:54,910 some novel covers The Voyage of the Dawn Treader particularly features 336 00:29:54,910 --> 00:30:01,430 English children participating in colonial activities involved in NowI tax collection 337 00:30:01,430 --> 00:30:06,610 and the oversight of regional governors exploring, naming and acting and mapping new lands for the home 338 00:30:06,610 --> 00:30:12,850 country and learning how to rule over indigenous people. In spite of their seemingly nonsensical local practises, 339 00:30:12,850 --> 00:30:18,130 the novel refers to Texan trips in the Middle Ages as much as it does to colonial activities. 340 00:30:18,130 --> 00:30:23,170 The Voyage of the Dawn Treader evokes accounts of St. Brendan the Navigator sixth century voyage from Ireland to the 341 00:30:23,170 --> 00:30:28,330 Isle of the Blessed. In the 14th century, Mandeville's travelled a popular travel narrative that describes the 342 00:30:28,330 --> 00:30:33,400 likely fictional author's journey to the Holy Land Café for China, Tasco Islands 343 00:30:33,400 --> 00:30:38,410 and the End of the world. Of course, his travels as part of the English curriculum as well. These 344 00:30:38,410 --> 00:30:43,450 were called up the goal of seeking God's country, not claiming other people's land. The real aim of earthly 345 00:30:43,450 --> 00:30:48,460 adventuring. And the scholars like Michael Board have argued the spiritual search for ASMs country is a major 346 00:30:48,460 --> 00:30:53,590 aspect of Lewis's children's novel as well. But the objectives of imperial control and spiritual 347 00:30:53,590 --> 00:30:59,590 striving are not unrelated in either historical four fantasy versions of global exploration. 348 00:30:59,590 --> 00:31:05,770 Both St. Brendan's story and Mandeville's travels served as inspiration in the so-called age of exploration. 349 00:31:05,770 --> 00:31:10,810 Christopher Columbus may have carried a copy of Mandaville with him on his initial journey to what would become known as the New 350 00:31:10,810 --> 00:31:15,880 World. Speculated that he discovered might lead to the earthly paradise which he believed 351 00:31:15,880 --> 00:31:21,080 to be on a raised portion of the globe looking. Be writing a letter, something like a woman's nipple, 352 00:31:21,080 --> 00:31:26,080 and access to this aethereal sea, which many believed to leak liquid substance in the form of fresh 353 00:31:26,080 --> 00:31:31,600 water, was not only a spiritual goal. But inevitably a political one as well. 354 00:31:31,600 --> 00:31:36,620 What nation would not wish to claim that had been graced with divine favour and found a direct route to 355 00:31:36,620 --> 00:31:41,650 a country? This political religious success is ultimately with a Narnia's. Children 356 00:31:41,650 --> 00:31:46,990 achieve in the void that John Tretter, as one appears throughout the novel of The Heavenly Monarch, 357 00:31:46,990 --> 00:31:52,090 who not only offers spiritual guidance but also oversees colonial activity. He fashions 358 00:31:52,090 --> 00:31:57,320 Narnian exploration and sentence and disgrace, an ability to governorships, the far flung lands 359 00:31:57,320 --> 00:32:02,350 and in the final pages of the book as a book of the Narnia number of his of the crew into his holy 360 00:32:02,350 --> 00:32:07,390 kingdom. Besides, the English children home to their country and the young can cast going back to Narnia to rule 361 00:32:07,390 --> 00:32:12,820 with the blessing. These hybrid evil imperial references 362 00:32:12,820 --> 00:32:18,100 are systematic, a cultural shift that took place in the 50s on the fall of the British Raj 363 00:32:18,100 --> 00:32:23,180 in India and Britain's post-war decline on the world stage, children's fantasy began. I argue, 364 00:32:23,180 --> 00:32:28,600 to offer the magical Middle Ages as the ultimate location for the continued expression of colonialist 365 00:32:28,600 --> 00:32:34,150 masculinity in white English superiority. Other scholars have written about the popularity of James Fonda 366 00:32:34,150 --> 00:32:39,370 as an example of how British culture responded with reduced global position, strutting around that time not fazed 367 00:32:39,370 --> 00:32:45,070 by reassigning British power from the overt dominance of empire to the undercover strength of super agents 368 00:32:45,070 --> 00:32:50,500 in Cold War Europe. Also extraordinarily cool fantasy by many of the offers authors 369 00:32:50,500 --> 00:32:55,510 and those that follow in the tradition create a similar pressure release valve that reconciled the sudden invisibility of 370 00:32:55,510 --> 00:33:00,670 English power with a conviction that it remained essential to global functioning as ever 371 00:33:00,670 --> 00:33:05,800 from the Lord of the Rings to Harry Potter. Fantasy often makes the implicitly or explicitly English 372 00:33:05,800 --> 00:33:11,010 hero's mission nothing less than to save the world from moral and physical disaster from pure 373 00:33:11,010 --> 00:33:16,300 embodied people like James Bond. Such enemies may be ones that most people do not even know 374 00:33:16,300 --> 00:33:21,550 in their lives. But these battles take place in realms of Manichaean opposition. And in this tradition 375 00:33:21,550 --> 00:33:27,760 of talking to Lewis represents the struggle, the struggle for righteousness in a world endangered by moral decay. 376 00:33:27,760 --> 00:33:32,920 The protagonist, the children's fantasy Tiffiny, the Matthew Exploring, Spiting in your escapes. The colonial 377 00:33:32,920 --> 00:33:38,020 adventures in ways that suggest Britain's ongoing legacy of heroism but do so in magical 378 00:33:38,020 --> 00:33:43,280 other worlds of the premodern passed away from the politicised landscapes of the real world. Local 379 00:33:43,280 --> 00:33:48,700 s in this way, fantasy's, macedo and evil settings retain patriotic implications 380 00:33:48,700 --> 00:33:53,860 for Britain, but also avoid the political awkwardness and social responsibility associated with the airport with 381 00:33:53,860 --> 00:33:59,650 Empire. Since the growth of anticolonial movements in the 20th century. 382 00:33:59,650 --> 00:34:04,970 So while the conversation between Alvin and the foreign governor of the native people that the children encounter, in the words of the Dawn Treader, 383 00:34:04,970 --> 00:34:10,060 sounds distinctly colonialist. The novel mediaevalism is rendered exchange innocence of such 384 00:34:10,060 --> 00:34:15,070 meaning. I'll read it here. You grow weary, curious in a ruling such foolish subject said. 385 00:34:15,070 --> 00:34:20,140 I have given you here on that. Know that the magician. They are very stupid. But there is 386 00:34:20,140 --> 00:34:25,180 no real harm in them began. They grow rather fond of the creatures. Sometime, perhaps 387 00:34:25,180 --> 00:34:31,440 I'm a little impatient, waiting for the day when they can be governed by wisdom instead of this rough magic. 388 00:34:31,440 --> 00:34:36,490 The foolish subjects in this exchange of duffers endorse a race comedy fantasy since tokens and 389 00:34:36,490 --> 00:34:41,890 fairy story the mediaeval epic and romance. Before that, polling danger illustration. And Lewis is now 390 00:34:41,890 --> 00:34:47,050 the victim of racially white and dressed in Western clothing. So they confound 20th the 21st century expectations 391 00:34:47,050 --> 00:34:52,390 about colonised indigenous peoples. At the same time, the very mediaevalism that does this is the Jefferson 392 00:34:52,390 --> 00:34:57,490 colonialist implications convey racialized and geographical information that suggests England's 393 00:34:57,490 --> 00:35:02,790 imperial legacy. Their appearance is one legged creatures who sleep under a giant single foot. 394 00:35:02,790 --> 00:35:08,140 To dufort duffers to the wonderous monopod also called Firepower's or monarchal mediaeval 395 00:35:08,140 --> 00:35:13,170 travel Americans who hail from Ethiopia and Mandeville's travel and India in front of the others. 396 00:35:13,170 --> 00:35:18,670 Naturalist Historia. Meanwhile, colorations reference to this rough magic. 397 00:35:18,670 --> 00:35:23,860 The words that Prospero uses to describe his own control over native magical spirits from Shakespeare's The Tempest 398 00:35:23,860 --> 00:35:28,960 by a properly educated reader. The blurry line between England's literary fascination with 399 00:35:28,960 --> 00:35:37,420 premodern and Titmus. On the one hand, it's also no legacy on the other. 400 00:35:37,420 --> 00:35:42,530 Aside, anxiety about English and adequacy have produced this kind of paradoxical 401 00:35:42,530 --> 00:35:47,750 confidence in the nation's potential for an empire nowhere. Jeffrey Knapp demonstrates 402 00:35:47,750 --> 00:35:53,240 how 16th and 17th century writers located English, moral and spiritual authority in its smallness, 403 00:35:53,240 --> 00:35:58,360 insularity and triviality. During the early years of European colonisation, at a time when England 404 00:35:58,360 --> 00:36:04,250 was being variously embarrassingly overshadowed by Spain and Portugal in the race for global domination, 405 00:36:04,250 --> 00:36:09,800 early modern writers from Spencer to Shakespeare located English drinks and other rolling mejor 406 00:36:09,800 --> 00:36:14,930 pointed to literary production as an example of something Kesling that could nonetheless reshape the world 407 00:36:14,930 --> 00:36:19,940 in one image. History repeats itself. The literature from English colonialism 408 00:36:19,940 --> 00:36:25,130 chiqui beginnings can offer insights into how trifling genre fiction, like children's fantasy, 409 00:36:25,130 --> 00:36:33,710 seems to contain its profound implications for white Anglo American identity. After the collapse of the colonial enterprise, 410 00:36:33,710 --> 00:36:39,080 other forms of implicit and explicit racism entered of the genre to go to all day. Scholars 411 00:36:39,080 --> 00:36:44,090 like Ebony, Elizabeth Thomas and Helen Young discuss an in-depth value of fans and critics I recently called out in the 412 00:36:44,090 --> 00:36:49,220 public sphere. My book addresses several examples at length, including the recurrence of the barbaric 413 00:36:49,220 --> 00:36:55,060 Sarasohn figure, which takes on new forms of meetings in the years following 9/11. The launch of the war on terror. 414 00:36:55,060 --> 00:37:00,230 And yet, as Robin Bernstein's work has shown, the holy obliviousness of childhood, the selective 415 00:37:00,230 --> 00:37:05,270 not knowing that is so crucial to innocents has long protected many racist symbols, 416 00:37:05,270 --> 00:37:11,870 practises and ideas in children's culture from serious critique that you haven't read both in the book. 417 00:37:11,870 --> 00:37:16,940 According to racial innocence, everything calls it. Children should not and would not recognise the cruel 418 00:37:16,940 --> 00:37:21,980 history of racism in their own material culture as such. Children's culture remains free to 419 00:37:21,980 --> 00:37:27,140 innocently reproduce the lessons of white supremacy, such as the circulation of American author Joel Chinderah, 420 00:37:27,140 --> 00:37:32,300 timbre houses, racist Uncle Remus Tales and the holdover missile show imagery and characters from 421 00:37:32,300 --> 00:37:37,640 Makino to the Cat in the Hat. Middleton's naughty. I just talked with last week in my classroom. 422 00:37:37,640 --> 00:37:42,930 I just had a complete nervous breakdown in real life of their favourite topic. Characters were a minstrel show 423 00:37:42,930 --> 00:37:48,290 amid widespread racial innocence, I argue was also enabled. Modern Gas's colonial 424 00:37:48,290 --> 00:37:53,990 imaginations just arrived well beyond the empire and into the present, through an array of Anglo American fantasy 425 00:37:53,990 --> 00:38:00,290 bound up an affecting narrative of adventure and kettmann connexions to the past 426 00:38:00,290 --> 00:38:05,660 and the 21st century. The norms of mediaevalist children's fantasy are widely known and shared. 427 00:38:05,660 --> 00:38:11,030 Fantasy has become, as Neil Gaiman stated in his review of my book, a way of being 428 00:38:11,030 --> 00:38:16,240 like wallpaper. Part of our world. Generations of young people have grown up reading fantasy 429 00:38:16,240 --> 00:38:21,410 authors. School tradition have had dreams and expectations shaped by this work. While many 430 00:38:21,410 --> 00:38:26,510 adults put onto the love of these books Enchanted Rome, many also have questions about the disappointment gap 431 00:38:26,510 --> 00:38:32,120 between fantasy and triumphalist narratives and their life experiences. The last few chapters of Reincarnated 432 00:38:32,120 --> 00:38:37,710 are dedicated to fantasy revisions in recent decades, including by Oxford school authors like Jones and Pullman, 433 00:38:37,710 --> 00:38:42,950 novelists of literary fiction for adults and people and authors of colour who are looking to widen the definition 434 00:38:42,950 --> 00:38:49,320 of where enchantment lives, in which people can hope to have access to it. 435 00:38:49,320 --> 00:38:54,590 At the end of 2000, Level seven novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao captured some of the intersecting 436 00:38:54,590 --> 00:38:59,600 expressions of love for concerns about literacy interventions into the fantasy 437 00:38:59,600 --> 00:39:04,610 to characterise this period of reassessment and generic change. This footnote does not like a fantasy 438 00:39:04,610 --> 00:39:09,980 novel in any traditional way. Those who read it will know what is in that work. The chronically 439 00:39:09,980 --> 00:39:14,990 uncool, oppositely own filtered Dominican American Chalfin and to short adulthood with what the 440 00:39:14,990 --> 00:39:20,230 narrator Yunior called fantasy sci fi animated superheroes. 441 00:39:20,230 --> 00:39:25,910 Such childhood reading brings author both Joy and Schupp suffering. Wow. 442 00:39:25,910 --> 00:39:31,760 His mother roared and now would go like a boy condemned to spend a few hours being tormented by the other boys. 443 00:39:31,760 --> 00:39:36,980 I want to stay with his mother. She shoved him out. You mean a woman to be staying in the house one hour 444 00:39:36,980 --> 00:39:42,050 two until finally he could slip back inside unnoticed, hiding in the upstairs closet where 445 00:39:42,050 --> 00:39:47,110 he'd read by the slightest light residents from the door. He had. His novel emphasises 446 00:39:47,110 --> 00:39:52,370 the harsh contrast between authors, Wonder's experiences of fantasy and how his impassioned reading negatively 447 00:39:52,370 --> 00:39:57,410 affects his everyday life. Clearly in the closet with a book, Moscow's hiding suggests both 448 00:39:57,410 --> 00:40:02,450 non-member activity and aggression keeps creeping back into the darkened room of his mother's house in 449 00:40:02,450 --> 00:40:07,640 spite of her attempt to thrust enough. Far from absorbing the masculine qualities of venturing fantasy 450 00:40:07,640 --> 00:40:12,710 heroes, author of Nerd Identity make him the laughing stock of his peers and renders him an outcast in his 451 00:40:12,710 --> 00:40:17,720 community. Meanwhile, Fantasy casts him out as well. Author Dreams of Someday Becoming 452 00:40:17,720 --> 00:40:22,760 the Dominican Tolkien. And then one passage of the novel. He turns to the Lord of the Rings for solace from heartbreak and 453 00:40:22,760 --> 00:40:27,850 humiliation for the millionth time had been, quote, one of his greatest love and greatest comfort 454 00:40:27,850 --> 00:40:33,230 in his first discovered back when he was nine and lost the movie reading. As an adult, 455 00:40:33,230 --> 00:40:38,530 he cannot go any further when he comes to the line and out of. Rod Block mentally catrell. 456 00:40:38,530 --> 00:40:43,850 Then you have to stop his heart, head and heart, put too much and put in the face of his own racial identity. 457 00:40:43,850 --> 00:40:49,120 Figure this monstrosity in his most beloved Texas. Fantasy often create such painful 458 00:40:49,120 --> 00:40:54,660 gulf between fans and protagonist and Oscar Wilde as part of a much larger cultural trend towards reimagine 459 00:40:54,660 --> 00:40:59,950 family in the light of intersexual understandings of contemporary adulthood, such approaches to the genre often 460 00:40:59,950 --> 00:41:05,200 do more than the superficial changes to the diversity of mediaeval fantasy world that challenge the notion 461 00:41:05,200 --> 00:41:10,630 that unreconstructed deposition's representations of magical otherworld can usefully guy contemporary 462 00:41:10,630 --> 00:41:15,700 experience, a logic that has been at the core of fantasy. Talking to Lewis argues for the universal 463 00:41:15,700 --> 00:41:21,180 importance of Dragon. 21ST century sentences for adults, especially, interrogate 464 00:41:21,180 --> 00:41:26,210 this connexion between the morally simple worlds, the most mediaeval fantasy and the complexities of my 465 00:41:26,210 --> 00:41:31,250 life. For instance, 466 00:41:31,250 --> 00:41:36,650 in George R.R. Martin, a song of Ice and Fire series and Game of Thrones television station, 467 00:41:36,650 --> 00:41:42,020 Carolin, the face of the Winterville Children demonstrate how nearly every major type of Tilden's fantasy 468 00:41:42,020 --> 00:41:47,390 protagonist would have a story that twists or death, trauma or disillusionment in a mediaevalist world 469 00:41:47,390 --> 00:41:52,820 that does not honour the genre's demand for a happy ending. What our modern refers to a sort of Disneyland 470 00:41:52,820 --> 00:41:57,830 Middle Ages, whether it be a chosen boy hero like Rob, the unlikely orphan like 471 00:41:57,830 --> 00:42:02,960 John, a fair damsel like sounds, a girl warrior like Aria, the spiritual searcher 472 00:42:02,960 --> 00:42:08,300 like Bram, or the badly behaved youth in need of reformation. Like on these characters, 473 00:42:08,300 --> 00:42:14,130 Suffering raises questions about how upbringings and faith morally stark traces of childhood 474 00:42:14,130 --> 00:42:19,970 or young people as they enter into adult life. Stern. Martin's book 475 00:42:19,970 --> 00:42:24,980 book perform the personal and psychological fallout of growing up in a postmodern world where many have been 476 00:42:24,980 --> 00:42:30,260 raised on fetishised, on the fat, fetishised, magical up to the fantasy but left in adulthood to grapple 477 00:42:30,260 --> 00:42:35,820 with the gap between expectations for these produce the disappointments of adult experience and the success. 478 00:42:35,820 --> 00:42:42,320 This case, obviously beyond racial or ethnic experience or gendered experience to much broader. 479 00:42:42,320 --> 00:42:47,390 Meanwhile, the Pulitzer prise winning Oscar Wao demonstrates adult interest in rethinking reworking. They 480 00:42:47,390 --> 00:42:52,490 also extend the highbrow spheres of literary fiction. Many literary authors have increasingly 481 00:42:52,490 --> 00:42:57,640 incorporated genre forms into their work, a practise that Jeffrey Jay Williams calls probably the most striking form 482 00:42:57,640 --> 00:43:03,410 of innovation in literary fiction since 1990. Diaz's novel combines law 483 00:43:03,410 --> 00:43:08,990 passed down from the Lord of the Rings and other speculative genres with a distinctly American magic of Suku, 484 00:43:08,990 --> 00:43:14,150 the doom brought to the new world by Europeans and their murderous aspirations inflation. 485 00:43:14,150 --> 00:43:19,190 These two legacies, each of which came into being under the auspices of colonialism, shape a 21st 486 00:43:19,190 --> 00:43:24,390 century plot not about heroes who think the stark laws will save the Earth from peril, but about young people 487 00:43:24,390 --> 00:43:30,470 valiant effort to achieve a of inner wholeness, purpose and emotional connexion. 488 00:43:30,470 --> 00:43:35,600 To do so, they use an Oscar Wilde chart path through a complicated, punishing world dominated 489 00:43:35,600 --> 00:43:40,640 by relentless structures of power, such as the economic constraints of late capitalism, 490 00:43:40,640 --> 00:43:46,240 compulsory hetero patriarchy and inheritances of slavery and imperialism. 491 00:43:46,240 --> 00:43:51,460 Planning and executing a path to financial and social success under such conditions is notoriously 492 00:43:51,460 --> 00:43:56,590 difficult. And I'd like to briefly pause to note that the kind of neo liberal economic policies that 493 00:43:56,590 --> 00:44:01,660 have given rise to such disenchantment in contemporary life and fiction are precisely what have led to 494 00:44:01,660 --> 00:44:07,390 the current university college and its strikes, which are pushing back against overwork and pay, casualisation, 495 00:44:07,390 --> 00:44:12,460 wages, pensions and the gender pay gap. Given the widespread internalisation of such 496 00:44:12,460 --> 00:44:18,100 conditions, perhaps should not be surprising that like everyday people, 24 centuries fantasy environments 497 00:44:18,100 --> 00:44:25,660 often figure achievement first in terms of small personal victories rather than world altering heroics 498 00:44:25,660 --> 00:44:30,730 in Diaz's novel. It's a spoiler, but the title can give it a rest. Brutally 499 00:44:30,730 --> 00:44:35,740 killed for his steadfast, seemingly suicidal love for a woman, and the world continues to 500 00:44:35,740 --> 00:44:40,780 turn. But in a letter that arrived after his death unit reads about the weekend 501 00:44:40,780 --> 00:44:45,980 that his friend managed to spend with his lover and author, shock discovery of a small intimacies 502 00:44:45,980 --> 00:44:51,130 that overshadow even his long awaited deflowering. The final words of a novel come 503 00:44:51,130 --> 00:44:56,350 from this letter and are our striking reversal of the final lines of Joseph Conrad. Early moderate's 504 00:44:56,350 --> 00:45:01,570 novel of colonialism in the place of curses and bitter dying gaf. The Horror, the Horror 505 00:45:01,570 --> 00:45:07,930 and Heart of Darkness. Oscar writes for his friend of the beauty, the beauty. 506 00:45:07,930 --> 00:45:13,000 In spite of all of the suffering that he endured, often 507 00:45:13,000 --> 00:45:18,010 offers a brief glimpse of the incredible potential for beauty in human life. And the other decision to 508 00:45:18,010 --> 00:45:23,150 end on this note signal investments in a pressing, unironic belief in wondrous transcendence and 509 00:45:23,150 --> 00:45:28,380 joy. If not, without first acknowledging the complex web of institutional forces that disallow 510 00:45:28,380 --> 00:45:33,400 any conclusions and the lasting triumph of good in our world. This ending is 511 00:45:33,400 --> 00:45:38,830 emblematic of the rise of a movement that lead to new calls by a reclaiming of earnestness, 512 00:45:38,830 --> 00:45:43,840 literary writing ethnologists, the failures of sincerity that pushes past cynicism to seek 513 00:45:43,840 --> 00:45:48,910 out beauty and fulfilment. Nonetheless, Kelley, writing off from our topic, 514 00:45:48,910 --> 00:45:54,490 claims that David Foster Wallace has call for a radical turn away from irony toward sincerity in the 1990s 515 00:45:54,490 --> 00:45:59,790 is what ushered in this movement, which he called, quote, primarily about returning to literary narration 516 00:45:59,790 --> 00:46:04,900 a concern of sincerity not seen since modernism shifted the ground so fundamentally almost a century 517 00:46:04,900 --> 00:46:09,970 before. End quote, the anti modernist Oxford School tradition that talking to Lewis is put 518 00:46:09,970 --> 00:46:14,980 into motion ensure that such 30 have had a prominent place in 20th century suchan in 519 00:46:14,980 --> 00:46:20,160 the minor and relatively undervalued category of mediaevalist children's fantasy. So 520 00:46:20,160 --> 00:46:25,270 Lipoma plaintive Mikuni six readers, quote, still need drawings like the promise of connexion with something beyond 521 00:46:25,270 --> 00:46:30,340 themselves. That suggest at the time that perhaps children's literature is the last forum left for such 522 00:46:30,340 --> 00:46:35,360 a project to interpret Intercon attraction of literary and genre fiction 523 00:46:35,360 --> 00:46:40,360 in recent decades has meant that now both elite and popular culture are meditating on imagist 524 00:46:40,360 --> 00:46:45,640 origins and belief, if not with the result that Tolkien Lewis might have. 525 00:46:45,640 --> 00:46:50,650 Meanwhile, much of the work of contemporary fantasy revisions is itself. Are right in the sense 526 00:46:50,650 --> 00:46:55,750 that it involves taking a clear eyed view of the shortcomings of exclusions of fantasy literature and the tradition 527 00:46:55,750 --> 00:47:01,090 of the Oxford School, but also expresses a commitment to reinitiating modernity for a new generation 528 00:47:01,090 --> 00:47:06,280 of readers and thinkers. Well-spoken and Lewis may not have recognised 529 00:47:06,280 --> 00:47:11,470 or agreed with all the ways that has transformed under New Hense today. A great deal of 21st century 530 00:47:11,470 --> 00:47:16,770 fantasy revisions revive and void the key tenets of the author's school authors. Junot Diaz. 531 00:47:16,770 --> 00:47:22,360 Of course, for a kid jemison's something. I met Sophia Samatar. Shahzia, Malene and many others 532 00:47:22,360 --> 00:47:27,490 may critique the long exclusion of non-white voices and diverse heritages, and Fantasy refused 533 00:47:27,490 --> 00:47:33,240 to structure their own work. According to mediaevalist narrative and the clients that their work in lands that look like off ritcher 534 00:47:33,240 --> 00:47:38,600 with the world that they create reinforce the often school message that the past is crucially important. 535 00:47:38,600 --> 00:47:43,680 Presence, experience and illuminates incredible potential for chairmen's enjoy in, despite the pain, 536 00:47:43,680 --> 00:47:48,790 the disappointments and often dehumanising institutions of modern life. They also reveal their 537 00:47:48,790 --> 00:47:53,920 commitment. The idea that fiction and fiction, the fantastic mode in particular, is essential to 538 00:47:53,920 --> 00:47:59,290 everyday living, both in the ways that it helps us encounter the world at many levels simultaneously. 539 00:47:59,290 --> 00:48:04,450 Reading it for messages and coding beneath the surface, encoded beneath the surface, and for a flooring 540 00:48:04,450 --> 00:48:09,880 the furthest reaches of our lives. In the same token of Lewis's quests or reissuance, the world 541 00:48:09,880 --> 00:48:14,950 has been startlingly successful, breaking a movement that continues to spread and evolve across the Anglo American 542 00:48:14,950 --> 00:48:24,633 world.