Hello, I'm Gabriel Schenck. And welcome to the short introductory lecture on the fantasy author
T.H. White. Terence Hanbury White
was born in 1986 and he died in 1964. He wrote 23 books
including poetry, translation, children's literature and even a Guide for Training
Gottschalk's. But his most famous work is a retelling of the author in legend.
His work is full of adventure, full of humour and wet,
but also full of sadness and tragedy. And I think that combination makes him a wonderful
writer of fantasy literature. He was born in India
in 1986, and by 1911 he'd been sent back to England,
his native home, to live with his grandparents in Sussex
at just the age of five. And this was partly because his parents were so unhappy
and so dangerous, they kept on arguing with each other. They kept on threatening to
hearts T.H. White that he was sent away from them.
And he continues to have a really difficult relationship with his mother throughout his
life. And the fantasy scholar Tom Sheppey even puts T.H. White
on a list of traumatised authors who later on wrote fantasy.
But he had a better time when he read English at Queen's College Cambridge.
And he wrote his dissertation on this book, Mallory's Learmont Daughter.
This was one of the very first books ever to be published in fourteen eighty five.
And you can see is a very thick book and it's thick because Sir Thomas Mallery
collected all the different stories and legends of King Arthur, who
was a king who may or may not have existed, but certainly has written about in mediaeval
romance. And ah, he tells the whole story of Arthur's
reign from the moment that Arthur is born, to the moment that he is defeated at the hands
of Mordred and his kingdom ends. And
Tish Whyte read this book, wrote about it in his dissertation. And then a few years later, he
reread Thomas Mallory's Lamott Arthur, and he came to a realisation
that he'd missed what it was all about to begin with for
whites. The theory and story is all about trying
to avoid warfare. This is what he thought Mallory was trying to do, find an antidote
to war itself. How do we stop going to war? Well, this is what
he thought Mallory was trying to answer. And this inspired T.H. White
to write his own versions of the Austrian legend. And he began
doing this with the Sword and the Stone, which was published in 1938.
And this is a fascinating book because it's set in a period that isn't covered by
Thomas Mallory. So Mallory begins with the birth of King
Arthur. And then he says that Arthur pulls the sword out of the stone,
which makes him become King Arthur King of all of England. According to a magical prophecy
about this sword. What White does is he sets his story
in the period of time when Arthur is a child and doesn't know he's
about to become king of England. And he has the character of
Merlin, the wizard train Arthur up by teaching him different lessons
through the form of turning him into animals by magic. And this was also turned
into an animated film by Walt Disney. And Tish White
has a lot of fun with this version of the story because you can sort of play around with it. You know, it's
never been done before. He can do whatever he likes. So he throws in Robin Hood there as well. Even the Robin Hoods
kind of belongs to a different literary tradition. And it's a very funny and
and informative book. The sequel, The Witch in the Woods
is set after Arthur has become king. And it deals with the problems
that Arthur has as king. And he's trying to avoid warfare. He's trying to be a good leader.
The sequel to that book, The Ill Made Knight, is about one
of the knights in King Arthur's round table, Sir Lancelot.
And then T.H. White continued the story in a fourth book called The Candle in the
Wind, which was published alongside the first three parts in
this book, The Once and Future King, published in 1958,
and the title, The Once and Future King, refers to King Arthur because, according to the legend,
he was king. At one point, so he was once king, but also he
is a future king because he will come back. Is he hasn't actually died. He's just hiding.
He's gone off to rest somewhere. He's going to come back and save us in our hour of
need. And so T.H. White republished the first three books
that he'd already written. He actually rewrote them for the 1958 Wants
a Future King. He changed some of the lessons that the young authors
taught by Merlin to emphasise the point about avoiding warfare.
And he also rewrote the which the the witch and the wood to focus less on
the character mortgagers, which he had sort of based on his mother. And it felt sort
of had spoilt that whole book. And so he reduced those sections and put the emphasis
back on Arthur himself.
The fantasy author, C.S. Lewis read some of T.H. White's books.
Mrs. Mushroom's, Reposts and the Sword in the Stone, and he wrote to his friend to
say, have just read T.H. White's Mrs. Machines reposts, which I think excellent.
The vulgarity which spoilt the sword and stone like a pencil moustache scribbled
on the lip of a great statue seems to have disappeared. So this is C.S.
Lewis, whose opinion in 1947, as you can tell, he did not like the
sword in the stone. He thought it was disrespectful to the great matter of Britain,
as written by Sir Thomas Mallory, that Tetch was taking too many
liberties with the legend and having too much fun with that, perhaps when he thought
he should have been much more serious and respectful in that book. However, later, critics
have been much more favourable to teach White the fantasy,
author Lev Grossman wrote. The Sword in the Stone is
the most perfect story of a childhood ever committed to paper. White
took hold of the ultimate English epic and recast it in modern literary
language, sacrificing none of its grandeur or its strangeness. And it is very strange
in the process and adding in all the humour and passion that we expect from a novel.
But my favourite summary of the Once and future king comes from the novelist Helen
MacDonald, who wrote The Once and Future King is
that great historical epic, that comic tragic romantic retelling of Arthurian
legend that tussles with questions of war and aggression and mights and rights
and the matter of what a nation is or might be.
And I am much more in agreement with Helen MacDonald and Lev Grossman
than I am with C.S. Lewis on this matter. I think Lewis just got it wrong. And
perhaps if he'd continued reading T.H. White and read the Once and Future King, he would have changed
his mind because he would have seen that T.H. White is actually making some quite serious
points in amongst all this fun and fancy of the sword in the stone.
And I'm going to leave you with a quotation from T.H. White. This is from
the Sword in the Stone, and it's one of my favourite quotations in English literature.
And for me, this kind of captures the what I've been saying about T.H.
White, that kind of sense of fun, the wet. But also some of
the sadness in his work. The best
thing for being sad, replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow is to learn
something that is the only thing that ever fails. You may grow old and trembling
in you, anatomies. You may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins. You may
miss your only love. You may see the world. But you devastated by evil lunatics
or know Your Honour, trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There
is only one thing for them to learn. I
think that's a wonderful message, whether Thomas Mallory really
dead right. The author imagined in order to find an antidote to war
is is is is up for discussion. Well, I
certainly think is that T.H. White wrote the Once and Future King
in order to try and find the antidote to war and to
learn in the process. And as you can see from this quotation,
learning is is the best thing for being sad. So
I hope I've inspired you to read T.H. White. I hope I've inspired you to keep learning,
especially if you're feeling sad. And thank you very much for listening.