1 00:00:00,590 --> 00:00:05,720 Hello, I'm Gabriel Schenck. And welcome to the short introductory lecture on the fantasy author 2 00:00:05,720 --> 00:00:10,760 T.H. White. Terence Hanbury White 3 00:00:10,760 --> 00:00:16,010 was born in 1986 and he died in 1964. He wrote 23 books 4 00:00:16,010 --> 00:00:21,050 including poetry, translation, children's literature and even a Guide for Training 5 00:00:21,050 --> 00:00:27,740 Gottschalk's. But his most famous work is a retelling of the author in legend. 6 00:00:27,740 --> 00:00:33,140 His work is full of adventure, full of humour and wet, 7 00:00:33,140 --> 00:00:38,900 but also full of sadness and tragedy. And I think that combination makes him a wonderful 8 00:00:38,900 --> 00:00:44,300 writer of fantasy literature. He was born in India 9 00:00:44,300 --> 00:00:49,730 in 1986, and by 1911 he'd been sent back to England, 10 00:00:49,730 --> 00:00:55,220 his native home, to live with his grandparents in Sussex 11 00:00:55,220 --> 00:01:00,350 at just the age of five. And this was partly because his parents were so unhappy 12 00:01:00,350 --> 00:01:05,780 and so dangerous, they kept on arguing with each other. They kept on threatening to 13 00:01:05,780 --> 00:01:10,850 hearts T.H. White that he was sent away from them. 14 00:01:10,850 --> 00:01:16,010 And he continues to have a really difficult relationship with his mother throughout his 15 00:01:16,010 --> 00:01:21,290 life. And the fantasy scholar Tom Sheppey even puts T.H. White 16 00:01:21,290 --> 00:01:27,210 on a list of traumatised authors who later on wrote fantasy. 17 00:01:27,210 --> 00:01:32,750 But he had a better time when he read English at Queen's College Cambridge. 18 00:01:32,750 --> 00:01:39,020 And he wrote his dissertation on this book, Mallory's Learmont Daughter. 19 00:01:39,020 --> 00:01:45,740 This was one of the very first books ever to be published in fourteen eighty five. 20 00:01:45,740 --> 00:01:51,200 And you can see is a very thick book and it's thick because Sir Thomas Mallery 21 00:01:51,200 --> 00:01:57,080 collected all the different stories and legends of King Arthur, who 22 00:01:57,080 --> 00:02:02,150 was a king who may or may not have existed, but certainly has written about in mediaeval 23 00:02:02,150 --> 00:02:07,460 romance. And ah, he tells the whole story of Arthur's 24 00:02:07,460 --> 00:02:12,650 reign from the moment that Arthur is born, to the moment that he is defeated at the hands 25 00:02:12,650 --> 00:02:18,420 of Mordred and his kingdom ends. And 26 00:02:18,420 --> 00:02:23,510 Tish Whyte read this book, wrote about it in his dissertation. And then a few years later, he 27 00:02:23,510 --> 00:02:29,240 reread Thomas Mallory's Lamott Arthur, and he came to a realisation 28 00:02:29,240 --> 00:02:34,370 that he'd missed what it was all about to begin with for 29 00:02:34,370 --> 00:02:39,530 whites. The theory and story is all about trying 30 00:02:39,530 --> 00:02:44,600 to avoid warfare. This is what he thought Mallory was trying to do, find an antidote 31 00:02:44,600 --> 00:02:49,700 to war itself. How do we stop going to war? Well, this is what 32 00:02:49,700 --> 00:02:55,430 he thought Mallory was trying to answer. And this inspired T.H. White 33 00:02:55,430 --> 00:03:00,680 to write his own versions of the Austrian legend. And he began 34 00:03:00,680 --> 00:03:07,430 doing this with the Sword and the Stone, which was published in 1938. 35 00:03:07,430 --> 00:03:12,740 And this is a fascinating book because it's set in a period that isn't covered by 36 00:03:12,740 --> 00:03:17,840 Thomas Mallory. So Mallory begins with the birth of King 37 00:03:17,840 --> 00:03:22,850 Arthur. And then he says that Arthur pulls the sword out of the stone, 38 00:03:22,850 --> 00:03:28,520 which makes him become King Arthur King of all of England. According to a magical prophecy 39 00:03:28,520 --> 00:03:34,520 about this sword. What White does is he sets his story 40 00:03:34,520 --> 00:03:39,920 in the period of time when Arthur is a child and doesn't know he's 41 00:03:39,920 --> 00:03:45,260 about to become king of England. And he has the character of 42 00:03:45,260 --> 00:03:51,950 Merlin, the wizard train Arthur up by teaching him different lessons 43 00:03:51,950 --> 00:03:57,170 through the form of turning him into animals by magic. And this was also turned 44 00:03:57,170 --> 00:04:02,330 into an animated film by Walt Disney. And Tish White 45 00:04:02,330 --> 00:04:07,340 has a lot of fun with this version of the story because you can sort of play around with it. You know, it's 46 00:04:07,340 --> 00:04:12,830 never been done before. He can do whatever he likes. So he throws in Robin Hood there as well. Even the Robin Hoods 47 00:04:12,830 --> 00:04:18,790 kind of belongs to a different literary tradition. And it's a very funny and 48 00:04:18,790 --> 00:04:24,410 and informative book. The sequel, The Witch in the Woods 49 00:04:24,410 --> 00:04:29,660 is set after Arthur has become king. And it deals with the problems 50 00:04:29,660 --> 00:04:35,480 that Arthur has as king. And he's trying to avoid warfare. He's trying to be a good leader. 51 00:04:35,480 --> 00:04:40,610 The sequel to that book, The Ill Made Knight, is about one 52 00:04:40,610 --> 00:04:46,520 of the knights in King Arthur's round table, Sir Lancelot. 53 00:04:46,520 --> 00:04:51,530 And then T.H. White continued the story in a fourth book called The Candle in the 54 00:04:51,530 --> 00:04:56,600 Wind, which was published alongside the first three parts in 55 00:04:56,600 --> 00:05:01,790 this book, The Once and Future King, published in 1958, 56 00:05:01,790 --> 00:05:07,490 and the title, The Once and Future King, refers to King Arthur because, according to the legend, 57 00:05:07,490 --> 00:05:12,550 he was king. At one point, so he was once king, but also he 58 00:05:12,550 --> 00:05:18,010 is a future king because he will come back. Is he hasn't actually died. He's just hiding. 59 00:05:18,010 --> 00:05:23,050 He's gone off to rest somewhere. He's going to come back and save us in our hour of 60 00:05:23,050 --> 00:05:28,240 need. And so T.H. White republished the first three books 61 00:05:28,240 --> 00:05:33,300 that he'd already written. He actually rewrote them for the 1958 Wants 62 00:05:33,300 --> 00:05:38,470 a Future King. He changed some of the lessons that the young authors 63 00:05:38,470 --> 00:05:44,050 taught by Merlin to emphasise the point about avoiding warfare. 64 00:05:44,050 --> 00:05:49,480 And he also rewrote the which the the witch and the wood to focus less on 65 00:05:49,480 --> 00:05:54,490 the character mortgagers, which he had sort of based on his mother. And it felt sort 66 00:05:54,490 --> 00:05:59,620 of had spoilt that whole book. And so he reduced those sections and put the emphasis 67 00:05:59,620 --> 00:06:05,130 back on Arthur himself. 68 00:06:05,130 --> 00:06:11,220 The fantasy author, C.S. Lewis read some of T.H. White's books. 69 00:06:11,220 --> 00:06:16,260 Mrs. Mushroom's, Reposts and the Sword in the Stone, and he wrote to his friend to 70 00:06:16,260 --> 00:06:22,020 say, have just read T.H. White's Mrs. Machines reposts, which I think excellent. 71 00:06:22,020 --> 00:06:27,180 The vulgarity which spoilt the sword and stone like a pencil moustache scribbled 72 00:06:27,180 --> 00:06:32,340 on the lip of a great statue seems to have disappeared. So this is C.S. 73 00:06:32,340 --> 00:06:37,350 Lewis, whose opinion in 1947, as you can tell, he did not like the 74 00:06:37,350 --> 00:06:43,080 sword in the stone. He thought it was disrespectful to the great matter of Britain, 75 00:06:43,080 --> 00:06:48,330 as written by Sir Thomas Mallory, that Tetch was taking too many 76 00:06:48,330 --> 00:06:53,580 liberties with the legend and having too much fun with that, perhaps when he thought 77 00:06:53,580 --> 00:06:59,130 he should have been much more serious and respectful in that book. However, later, critics 78 00:06:59,130 --> 00:07:04,230 have been much more favourable to teach White the fantasy, 79 00:07:04,230 --> 00:07:09,270 author Lev Grossman wrote. The Sword in the Stone is 80 00:07:09,270 --> 00:07:14,520 the most perfect story of a childhood ever committed to paper. White 81 00:07:14,520 --> 00:07:19,650 took hold of the ultimate English epic and recast it in modern literary 82 00:07:19,650 --> 00:07:25,410 language, sacrificing none of its grandeur or its strangeness. And it is very strange 83 00:07:25,410 --> 00:07:32,690 in the process and adding in all the humour and passion that we expect from a novel. 84 00:07:32,690 --> 00:07:37,740 But my favourite summary of the Once and future king comes from the novelist Helen 85 00:07:37,740 --> 00:07:42,750 MacDonald, who wrote The Once and Future King is 86 00:07:42,750 --> 00:07:47,970 that great historical epic, that comic tragic romantic retelling of Arthurian 87 00:07:47,970 --> 00:07:54,270 legend that tussles with questions of war and aggression and mights and rights 88 00:07:54,270 --> 00:07:59,400 and the matter of what a nation is or might be. 89 00:07:59,400 --> 00:08:04,410 And I am much more in agreement with Helen MacDonald and Lev Grossman 90 00:08:04,410 --> 00:08:09,690 than I am with C.S. Lewis on this matter. I think Lewis just got it wrong. And 91 00:08:09,690 --> 00:08:14,820 perhaps if he'd continued reading T.H. White and read the Once and Future King, he would have changed 92 00:08:14,820 --> 00:08:19,980 his mind because he would have seen that T.H. White is actually making some quite serious 93 00:08:19,980 --> 00:08:26,680 points in amongst all this fun and fancy of the sword in the stone. 94 00:08:26,680 --> 00:08:32,070 And I'm going to leave you with a quotation from T.H. White. This is from 95 00:08:32,070 --> 00:08:37,170 the Sword in the Stone, and it's one of my favourite quotations in English literature. 96 00:08:37,170 --> 00:08:42,330 And for me, this kind of captures the what I've been saying about T.H. 97 00:08:42,330 --> 00:08:47,370 White, that kind of sense of fun, the wet. But also some of 98 00:08:47,370 --> 00:08:52,480 the sadness in his work. The best 99 00:08:52,480 --> 00:08:57,520 thing for being sad, replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow is to learn 100 00:08:57,520 --> 00:09:02,680 something that is the only thing that ever fails. You may grow old and trembling 101 00:09:02,680 --> 00:09:07,840 in you, anatomies. You may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins. You may 102 00:09:07,840 --> 00:09:13,870 miss your only love. You may see the world. But you devastated by evil lunatics 103 00:09:13,870 --> 00:09:18,910 or know Your Honour, trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There 104 00:09:18,910 --> 00:09:23,910 is only one thing for them to learn. I 105 00:09:23,910 --> 00:09:28,920 think that's a wonderful message, whether Thomas Mallory really 106 00:09:28,920 --> 00:09:34,170 dead right. The author imagined in order to find an antidote to war 107 00:09:34,170 --> 00:09:39,240 is is is is up for discussion. Well, I 108 00:09:39,240 --> 00:09:45,300 certainly think is that T.H. White wrote the Once and Future King 109 00:09:45,300 --> 00:09:50,400 in order to try and find the antidote to war and to 110 00:09:50,400 --> 00:09:55,500 learn in the process. And as you can see from this quotation, 111 00:09:55,500 --> 00:10:00,870 learning is is the best thing for being sad. So 112 00:10:00,870 --> 00:10:05,880 I hope I've inspired you to read T.H. White. I hope I've inspired you to keep learning, 113 00:10:05,880 --> 00:10:11,869 especially if you're feeling sad. And thank you very much for listening.