Hello, my name is Gabriel Schenk, and this is a short introductory lecture to the fantasy
writer, Diana Wynne Jones. Diana
Wynne Jones was born in 1934 and she died in 2000 and 11.
She was a prolific writer of more than 40 fantasy novels, translated into over 20
languages and primarily wrote for children and young adults.
If I were forced to summarise Jones's work in just three words, I would say magical,
inventive and joyful. And the of the focus of this
mini lecture is Jones's ability to combine different types
of story and different stories sources in order to create an inventive,
magical and joyful mixture of all of these and and in
order to create something new as well. So let's begin with a brief
look at Jones's early life. She was born in London, but was
of Welsh heritage. And in an autobiographical essay published
in 1993. Jones wrote, I think I write the kinds of books I do because the world
suddenly went mad when I was five years old. And she is referring to the outbreak
of the Second World War, which meant that she had to be evacuated from London and live
in the countryside, which she moved to in 1939.
She moved around a lot in this period and in the summer of 1940,
she ended up at Lakehead in Cumbria, and this is in the north of England.
It's a very beautiful area, as you can see in that photograph, just how stunning it is. It looks
like a kind of fantasy world itself. And this is kind of what what Diana and Jones
meant when she said, this is why I write the kinds of books I do, is because
she was moving around so much in this area. And fantasy was starting to merge
with reality. She writes, Here were real mountains, lakes, brooks
racing through indescribable greenness. I was amazed, intoxicated with the beauty of
it. And if you look in that photograph, you can see a lake in the
background. And Dangerman Jones sailed on this lake as a child in a boat that
was part of the inspiration for Arthur Ransome's children's story. Swallows and
Amazons and the previous occupants of the house that Diana winchman stayed
in were the inspiration for the children in that story. And then later
she studied at Oxford University, where she was taught by Jay are
Talking and C.S. Lewis fantasy writers themselves. And she
later reflected, looking back, I see both of them had enormous influence
on me. So we get the sense of fantasy and reality merging
together, different sources, different influences. And this is, I think, why
she she ended up writing these these incredible fantasy works that combine
different ideas and cross boundaries. So to
talk more about that and the idea of crossing genres, let's look at this quotation from
Diana. When Jones and her essay Writing for Children, she says, It doesn't
seem to me that genres are, per say, necessary. There's no reason why you shouldn't
mix them up a bit and change them around and make something new. This is what I like to do
and this is what she does in her series. The Cresta Munsie books is
a seven books, and they're all about magic. And you might be thinking, oh, this sounds like
Harry Potter, but it actually isn't anything like Harry Potter because the Harry Potter
series is set in the same place and has the same characters and moves through
year on year. The crest amongst these series is a bit more like C.S. Lewis
as The Chronicles of Narnia in which every book is different. And although some characters cross
over, most of the books are have their own sets of characters. And the early recurring
character is the figure of Aslan. Chris Months is a bit
like that in that the figure of Cresta Munsie is in each
book. But Cresta Munsie isn't just one person. Cresta Mansi actually refers
to a job title. Someone in the government in a parallel world
where magic exists. And Chris Muncie's job is to supervise magic
in that world as well as in other worlds like our own, such as our
own is our own is one example and
a location that is vested in this series and make sure that
magic is under control and the places where it should be and isn't leaking out into other worlds where it shouldn't
exist. The focus of
these books changes quite a lot. So are in the first book published in. 1977
Charmed Life. You see Cresta Mansi as an adult.
He is Christopher Chant and the young boy Eric
Cat Chant sort of sees him as a as a bit of a villain to begin with. And then
as the book progresses, we we get a different perspective on that character
in the book, The Lives of Christopher Chance. We see that character as a young boy himself,
and he's interacting with the. At the time, the current post
holder of the crest dormancy position, who is another character entirely.
So both these books are very much focussed on the crest of Mansi,
but different people occupy that position.
There are other books, such as The Magicians of Proner, which is a sort of
almost a retelling of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. It's about these feuding families
or her novel, which week, which is set in a world where magic has been banned.
And in a boarding school where some of the students are developing
magical abilities to have to hide them. These two novels, Cresta
Mansi, comes in at the end as a secondary character in order to tidy things up.
So, you know, sometimes Cresta Munsie is the focus, sometimes his side
character. Sometimes one person is in the role of Cresta man seen. Sometimes another person
is in the role of Crest Mansi. So you can see what Jones was saying when she said,
you know, we don't need fixed genres. We can just mix stuff up, we
can be inventive, we can be we can have fun with us. And this is what she
does in all her books. So if you think about her novel, Fire and Hemlock,
she's drawing on Scottish folk tales, but she's sort of doing
different things with them, new things with them, creating something new. In eight days of Luke, she's
drawing on Norse mythology in Hex Wood. She's drawing on the legends
of King Arthur. And in Castle, in the air, she's drawing on the Arabian Nights.
But even in these stories, she's not just using all stories
in a new way, she's also combining other stories together. So Castle in the Air
has elements of Grimm's fairy tale, the 12 dancing princesses,
as well as the wonderful Wizard of Oz. The fantasy scholar Farrah
Mendelsohn describes this as a kind of remixing that
Jones does doesn't just repeats other elements of stories, but she
kind of brings them together. She she changes that elements of it to create something new. And
the scholar Susan Ang talks about how Jones
reenergizes old tropes from mythology to renew them
and give them new energy. So I'm going to give an example of this
as as my kind of ending point of this little introduction. And this
is a quotation from her novel, Howl's Moving Castle, one of my favourite books.
And this book contains the idea of a seven
league boots and a seven lead boot is something that's featured in European mythology
and folklore. And usually you put on two boots and every stride you
take, you go forward seven leagues, which is quite a far distance in Jones's
version. They only have one boots and they have two characters. So they both have to share the boots. They both
put their feet in one of the boots and they take a step forward. And this is what happens.
Point yourself towards upper folding before you boot. Put the boot down. Michael warned her
not tread Zipp. The landscape instantly rushed past them so fast
it was only a blur. A grey green blur for the land in a blue grey blur. The sky,
the wind of that going tore at Sophie's hair dragged every wrinkle in her face backward until she thought
she would arrive with half a face behind each air. The rushing stopped as suddenly
as it had begun. Everything was calm and sunny. They were knee deep
in buttercups in the middle of upper folding village. Common cow nearby stared at them.
Beyond it, thatched cottages drowned under trees. Unfortunately,
the bucket late boot was so heavy that Sophie staggered as she landed.
Don't put that foot down, Michael yelled to lakes. There was another zipping blow and more rushing
wind when it stopped. Sophie found herself down the folding valley almost into marsh folding.
Oh, drat! She said, and hopped carefully around on her shoe and tried again.
Zip blur. And she was back on up a folding green again, staggering forward under the weight
of the boot. She had a glimpse of Michael diving to catch a zip blur.
Oh, bother. Well, Sophie. So
that's an example of her of Jones taking an element from folklore. Doing something
new with it. Doing something inventive. Something joy for. And most of all. Something magical.
So I hope I've inspired you to read to Diana Wynne Jones. If you haven't done so already.
And thank you very much for listening.