1 00:00:01,330 --> 00:00:08,230 Hello, everyone. I'm Jonathan Ho from the English division at Nanyang Technological University Singapore. 2 00:00:08,230 --> 00:00:12,400 On this episode of the University of Oxford Fantasy Literature podcast, 3 00:00:12,400 --> 00:00:20,060 I'll be addressing an intriguing comparison between two authors that has really gained prominence over the past few years. 4 00:00:20,060 --> 00:00:26,060 The central question I'll be addressing is, is Jinyoung China's talking. 5 00:00:26,060 --> 00:00:35,390 Most listeners of this podcast will know of J.R.R. Tolkien, his fiction and his academic work, but far fewer will be familiar with TENIAN. 6 00:00:35,390 --> 00:00:43,720 So before I make a proper introduction to him, I'd like to start by explaining why I'm comparing these two authors in the first place. 7 00:00:43,720 --> 00:00:52,090 And I'd like to take you back to the 31st of October 2018, when the legendary Hong Kong author, Gene Young, passed away. 8 00:00:52,090 --> 00:00:55,900 His passing was reported internationally and in Anglophone media. 9 00:00:55,900 --> 00:01:07,000 The same comparison cropped up again and again, the BBC News headline read Jim Yong The talking of Chinese literature dies at 94, 10 00:01:07,000 --> 00:01:17,230 while the headlines of the Guardian in the U.K. and Newsweek in the US both referred to him as China's Tolkien in quotation marks. 11 00:01:17,230 --> 00:01:23,860 So the reason I'm discussing this comparison is, firstly, because it's been established in mainstream Anglophone media, 12 00:01:23,860 --> 00:01:33,130 and secondly because it's been given short shrift by sinologists, which raises intriguing questions over the nature and validity of the comparison. 13 00:01:33,130 --> 00:01:37,360 My own view, as I'll discuss in this talk and in a forthcoming article, 14 00:01:37,360 --> 00:01:47,000 is that the talking genome comparison has tended to be made on the basis of flawed premises, but is in fact highly appropriate for other reasons. 15 00:01:47,000 --> 00:01:51,590 Examining this comparison will not only help to reframe the discourse, 16 00:01:51,590 --> 00:01:57,620 but it will also illuminate some curious aspects about the role played by reception adaptation 17 00:01:57,620 --> 00:02:05,510 and cultural diffusion within and beyond the poorest boundaries of the fantasy genre. 18 00:02:05,510 --> 00:02:11,780 I'd like to begin by providing a brief introduction to Jim Yong because he's in a fascinating position, on the one hand, 19 00:02:11,780 --> 00:02:15,020 he's a household name throughout the sign of phone world, 20 00:02:15,020 --> 00:02:21,230 both homeland and diasporic communities, as well as throughout much of East and Southeast Asia. 21 00:02:21,230 --> 00:02:27,710 And on the other hand, he's largely unknown in the West, even though he received high civilian honours from the British and French governments, 22 00:02:27,710 --> 00:02:32,810 as well as honorary fellowships at several Oxbridge colleges. In fact, 23 00:02:32,810 --> 00:02:43,380 Jim's relative anonymity in the West is one of the reasons why it's been necessary to have a comparative frame of reference in the form of talking. 24 00:02:43,380 --> 00:02:50,580 Jinyoung was the pen name of Louis Tomlinson, who was born in 1924 in the eastern province of Zhejiang, 25 00:02:50,580 --> 00:02:55,170 in what was then the Republic of China in 1980. 26 00:02:55,170 --> 00:03:05,670 In 1948, at the age of 24, he moved to then British Hong Kong, where he worked as a journalist, editor and translator. 27 00:03:05,670 --> 00:03:15,330 Between 1955 and 1972, almost continuously, she serialised 14 novels and a short story in various Hong Kong newspapers. 28 00:03:15,330 --> 00:03:22,470 For context, by the way, 1955 was the same year that saw the publication of the third volume of talking to Lord of the Rings. 29 00:03:22,470 --> 00:03:28,650 So there was a brief period of chronological overlap between the two authors. 30 00:03:28,650 --> 00:03:32,490 Chas serialised fiction under the pen name Jin Young, 31 00:03:32,490 --> 00:03:36,540 which is simply derived by splitting the last character in his name into the two 32 00:03:36,540 --> 00:03:42,600 characters that formed the immediate and extraordinary popularity of his fiction, 33 00:03:42,600 --> 00:03:50,520 made him an instant cultural icon in Hong Kong, where films and television adaptations were produced almost immediately. 34 00:03:50,520 --> 00:03:59,280 Although in both Taiwan and Mainland China, his work remained banned for differing political reasons until the end of the 1970s. 35 00:03:59,280 --> 00:04:05,760 The lifting of those respective bans saw China's reputation skyrocket further in the sign of world, 36 00:04:05,760 --> 00:04:13,320 and his literary achievements found the favour of Chinese political leaders such as students Yaping and Jiang Zemin. 37 00:04:13,320 --> 00:04:23,550 In fact, Jang apparently made a heavy handed and ultimately unsuccessful attempt to lobby for child to be awarded the Nobel prise in literature. 38 00:04:23,550 --> 00:04:30,000 The official legitimisation of China by such political heavyweights demonstrates just how quickly Jinyoung, 39 00:04:30,000 --> 00:04:38,190 the author, grew into something of a cultural institution. He himself continued to cultivate his own literary status, 40 00:04:38,190 --> 00:04:48,810 most notably by officially revising his 15 stories into a 36 volume set of completed works once in the 1970s and then again in the 2000s. 41 00:04:48,810 --> 00:05:00,650 And his stories have stayed in the public consciousness over the decades, in part thanks to 100+ film and television adaptations. 42 00:05:00,650 --> 00:05:08,650 Louis Cha, also or many other hats in addition to that of an author. He was a media mogul, co-founding and editing Ming Power, 43 00:05:08,650 --> 00:05:16,990 which served as a vessel for much of his serialised fiction and is today still one of Hong Kong's leading Chinese language newspapers. 44 00:05:16,990 --> 00:05:26,580 He was a prolific columnist to writing on a range of topics from film and literary criticism to social issues to politics. 45 00:05:26,580 --> 00:05:28,830 As his status as a civic leader grew, 46 00:05:28,830 --> 00:05:37,590 he played an influential role in the draughting of Hong Kong's mini constitution ahead of the city's return to Chinese rule in 1997. 47 00:05:37,590 --> 00:05:46,530 The relevance and ramifications of that legacy continue to reverberate even today, as you may have seen from recent international headlines. 48 00:05:46,530 --> 00:05:54,510 Chow was also involved in academia in his later years, serving as honorary professor and dean of humanities at his Home University, 49 00:05:54,510 --> 00:05:59,040 Zhejiang University, for five years at the turn of the millennium. 50 00:05:59,040 --> 00:06:07,960 Before reading for a master's and Ph.D. in Oriental history at Cambridge in the 2000s, when he was already an octogenarian. 51 00:06:07,960 --> 00:06:13,080 So although it's although this talk is primarily concerned with Jinyoung the author, 52 00:06:13,080 --> 00:06:22,270 it's impossible to overstate just how multifaceted Young's life and his influence on modern Hong Kong has been. 53 00:06:22,270 --> 00:06:31,780 Jinyoung was a master of the genre called OCR spelled WXYZ, which translates to martial arts chivalry. 54 00:06:31,780 --> 00:06:38,290 You may have heard the genre briefly mentioned in an earlier episode of this podcast by Nelson Landry. 55 00:06:38,290 --> 00:06:46,360 In essence, Russia is a genre of chivalric romance adventure stories involving martial artists, be individuals, houses, 56 00:06:46,360 --> 00:06:57,340 clans or sects living in an historical period of imperial China and operating within a vigilante like community with its own system of moral codes, 57 00:06:57,340 --> 00:07:07,270 social hierarchies and combat based justice coexistence with but independent of contemporary systems of political governance. 58 00:07:07,270 --> 00:07:17,320 Even before Jinyoung, this genre had gained both huge popularity and a status as lowbrow Pulp Fiction, in part due to its escapist qualities. 59 00:07:17,320 --> 00:07:25,270 It's easy to see the appeal of a story wherein virtuous chivalrous characters can help the oppressed overcome feuds, 60 00:07:25,270 --> 00:07:28,810 defeat powerful antagonists and corrupt government officials, 61 00:07:28,810 --> 00:07:37,580 and attain self-sufficiency and supremacy independently of the strictures of ordinary government regulated society. 62 00:07:37,580 --> 00:07:43,010 Structurally and thematically, there are similarities to the chivalric romances of mediaeval Europe, 63 00:07:43,010 --> 00:07:51,900 although the U.S. is descended from a long tradition of Chinese chivalric fiction stretching back a little over 2000 years. 64 00:07:51,900 --> 00:07:58,770 But why is genial venerated head and shoulders above his usual contemporaries and predecessors? 65 00:07:58,770 --> 00:08:04,620 It's true that he was a naturally gifted storyteller, but so in many other ways, the authors. 66 00:08:04,620 --> 00:08:11,370 It's also true that the quality of his plot devices benefited from the strong influence of not just important Chinese texts, 67 00:08:11,370 --> 00:08:16,320 but also major Western authors such as Shakespeare and Alexander demand. 68 00:08:16,320 --> 00:08:22,590 But that in itself wouldn't necessarily have made him wildly popular with China phone readerships. 69 00:08:22,590 --> 00:08:25,050 But in combination with these aspects, 70 00:08:25,050 --> 00:08:34,290 what characterised Jinyan was his comprehensive infusion of numerous aspects of traditional Chinese culture into his story worlds. 71 00:08:34,290 --> 00:08:39,960 As a keen historian, he often place a strong emphasis on historical veracity. 72 00:08:39,960 --> 00:08:46,740 His work also engages extremely closely with classical Chinese literature, philosophy, religion and medicine. 73 00:08:46,740 --> 00:08:53,560 Many of the martial arts that he invented, for instance, are loosely based on lines of classical literature. 74 00:08:53,560 --> 00:09:02,080 His fiction was therefore seen to offer something of a romantically essentialist Chinese identity, and that really resonated with Hong Kong readers, 75 00:09:02,080 --> 00:09:10,030 particularly at a period in history when many aspects of traditional Chinese culture were being torn down on the mainland. 76 00:09:10,030 --> 00:09:16,930 This essentialist identity is also why he became an instant success with diasporic xylophone communities, 77 00:09:16,930 --> 00:09:22,210 as well as with mainland Chinese and Taiwanese readership. After the bands were lifted. 78 00:09:22,210 --> 00:09:31,230 But it makes us work quite culturally esoteric, which is one of the reasons why he's considered such a challenging author to translate effectively. 79 00:09:31,230 --> 00:09:36,930 Incidentally, there have been official English translations of forging new novels so far. 80 00:09:36,930 --> 00:09:44,160 And in fact, the Tolkien genome comparison appears to have arisen from press coverage of the most recent translation. 81 00:09:44,160 --> 00:09:49,890 But as a whole, these translations have been tricky for literary scholars to get into because they vary 82 00:09:49,890 --> 00:09:55,950 quite a bit in terms of translation style and editorial decisions such as abridgement. 83 00:09:55,950 --> 00:09:59,940 And they also lack substantial critical introductions and apparatuses, 84 00:09:59,940 --> 00:10:06,610 which inevitably influences the accessibility of these culturally esoteric texts. 85 00:10:06,610 --> 00:10:14,050 There are actually some admirable fan translations as well. Produced collaboratively on online forums over the course of many years. 86 00:10:14,050 --> 00:10:18,840 But as you'd expect, these also lack support supporting critical materials. 87 00:10:18,840 --> 00:10:28,440 However, there is some excellent English language scholarship out there, which can help to contextualise those translations. 88 00:10:28,440 --> 00:10:35,970 Now that we have a flavour of Jong's life and work, I'd like to turn to the talking Jinyoung comparison. 89 00:10:35,970 --> 00:10:40,370 In some regards, that comparison might seem like an obvious one to make. 90 00:10:40,370 --> 00:10:48,090 Both authors have become household names in their respective spheres and have become virtually synonymous with the genres that they innovated. 91 00:10:48,090 --> 00:10:56,410 This is reflected in book sales, of course, and if you look up Wikipedia's list of bestselling fiction authors, that both pretty high up. 92 00:10:56,410 --> 00:11:01,630 Both of them were either suggested or formally recommended for the Nobel prise in literature. 93 00:11:01,630 --> 00:11:10,120 Talking was nominated by C.S. Lewis. Both Tolkien and Jinyoung also received civilian honours for their phenomenal literary success. 94 00:11:10,120 --> 00:11:15,620 A CBE for Tolkien and an OBE for Jinyoung, amongst others. 95 00:11:15,620 --> 00:11:20,960 Talking is strongly associated with Oxford, where he was a professor for three and a half decades, 96 00:11:20,960 --> 00:11:26,750 while Jinyoung is associated with Cambridge, where he read for a master's and Ph.D. in his 80s. 97 00:11:26,750 --> 00:11:28,490 Just over a decade ago. 98 00:11:28,490 --> 00:11:37,760 In fact, there's a large stone in his college St. John's, inscribed with a couplet that he that he composed about his time there. 99 00:11:37,760 --> 00:11:47,060 But one of the main premises upon which the talking genome comparison is popularly based is the idea that they were both authors of fantasy. 100 00:11:47,060 --> 00:11:53,420 Jinyoung is explicitly associated with fantasy and all of the news reports that I mentioned earlier. 101 00:11:53,420 --> 00:12:02,190 This premise is both problematic and productive, and I'll try to use the rest of this talk to explain why that is. 102 00:12:02,190 --> 00:12:12,120 The genre of fantasy is generally characterised by what Colin Mamluk describes as an irreducible element of supernatural or impossible worlds, 103 00:12:12,120 --> 00:12:22,360 beings or objects. In other words, fantasy should contain the presence of things which the author considers to be impossible within our real world. 104 00:12:22,360 --> 00:12:30,460 It's this element of impossibility, this unbridgeable ontological distance from some aspect of our reality that cultivates 105 00:12:30,460 --> 00:12:36,190 the sense of wonder that we feel whenever we encounter a fantasy story world. 106 00:12:36,190 --> 00:12:43,750 Tolkien, of course, is widely regarded as the master of the genre, the two works of fiction that he published during his lifetime. 107 00:12:43,750 --> 00:12:48,730 The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings depict a coherent world containing invented races, 108 00:12:48,730 --> 00:12:55,750 cultures and geographies along with magic, which is usually a good marker of impossibility. 109 00:12:55,750 --> 00:13:01,090 However, it's much harder to place Jinyoung under the umbrella of fantasy. 110 00:13:01,090 --> 00:13:08,230 Although some authors do incorporate supernatural beings or objects in their fiction, Genuine never did so. 111 00:13:08,230 --> 00:13:15,280 His fiction contains nothing which unambiguously contravenes the natural laws of the real world, as understood by his readership. 112 00:13:15,280 --> 00:13:18,570 Though I will qualify this later on. 113 00:13:18,570 --> 00:13:26,680 There are no supernatural beings or objects, and there's no magic, although again, this is a point I will qualify later on. 114 00:13:26,680 --> 00:13:35,170 He is simply not regarded as an author of fantasy by psychologists who tend to dismiss or ignore the talk in comparison as a result. 115 00:13:35,170 --> 00:13:40,840 Instead, John's work is strongly aligned with the genre of historical fiction. 116 00:13:40,840 --> 00:13:43,930 Most of his stories have explicit historical settings, 117 00:13:43,930 --> 00:13:51,840 and his deep knowledge of Chinese history is a characteristic which sets him apart from most other Russia authors. 118 00:13:51,840 --> 00:13:58,080 As an example, one of his earlier works, who's a who's official English title, is the equal shooting heroes, 119 00:13:58,080 --> 00:14:04,290 but which is better known nowadays as the Legend of the Condor heroes after an early television adaptation 120 00:14:04,290 --> 00:14:11,940 features a plethora of historical figures from various regional powers at the turn of the 13th century. 121 00:14:11,940 --> 00:14:17,250 The most notable of these historical figures is the famed Mongol warlord Genghis Khan, 122 00:14:17,250 --> 00:14:24,150 who appears prominently along with his sons, close advisers, rivals and so on. 123 00:14:24,150 --> 00:14:32,430 Shimkus is only a supporting character in the novel, but many aspects of the historical personages life are retained and dramatised, 124 00:14:32,430 --> 00:14:36,810 including his rocky rise to power, his relationships with certain advisers, 125 00:14:36,810 --> 00:14:44,970 his decisions regarding his succession, his Westwood's conquest of the charisma and city of Samarkand in modern day Uzbekistan, 126 00:14:44,970 --> 00:14:50,770 and his interest in Daoism and interactions with a specific Taoist monk. 127 00:14:50,770 --> 00:14:56,770 Other novels similarly feature fictionalised versions of major emperors from the Ming and Qing dynasties, 128 00:14:56,770 --> 00:15:01,430 as well as figures from smaller and lesser known kingdoms. 129 00:15:01,430 --> 00:15:08,030 The depth of historical reconstruction in Jinyoung fiction was made possible by his strong grasp of history. 130 00:15:08,030 --> 00:15:15,620 And in this regard, he was influenced not only by the strong historic graphical elements found in much of classical Chinese fiction, 131 00:15:15,620 --> 00:15:20,300 but also by the European tradition of the historical novel. 132 00:15:20,300 --> 00:15:27,170 In several of his essays and interviews, Joe mentioned his great admiration for Walter Scott and Alexander Dumont, 133 00:15:27,170 --> 00:15:36,410 whom he regarded as his literary forebears. Additionally, his own English name was apparently chosen as a nod to Robert Louis Stevenson. 134 00:15:36,410 --> 00:15:41,760 Several of whose works fall under the genre of historical fiction. 135 00:15:41,760 --> 00:15:47,580 It's therefore clear that Geno himself regarded historical fiction and not fantasy as his arena. 136 00:15:47,580 --> 00:15:55,720 And that's a position shared by Sinologists, which is why the talking comparison is generally dismissed or ignored in those circles. 137 00:15:55,720 --> 00:15:59,230 History and fantasy need not be mutually exclusive, of course. 138 00:15:59,230 --> 00:16:08,350 A prominent author of historical fantasy is Guy Garvey, OK, who was the subject of an earlier episode of this podcast by Catherine Olley. 139 00:16:08,350 --> 00:16:15,700 But historical fantasy as a subset of fantasy still requires that irreducible elements of the impossible, 140 00:16:15,700 --> 00:16:20,950 and that's something that can't be convincingly identified in John's work. 141 00:16:20,950 --> 00:16:24,250 I'll come back to the connexion between genius and fantasy later. 142 00:16:24,250 --> 00:16:34,330 But the point I want to make here is that the Tolkien genome comparison has so far mostly been made on misconceived grounds or genre. 143 00:16:34,330 --> 00:16:40,000 This isn't the first time, of course, that talking has been the subject of a slightly strained comparison with another author, 144 00:16:40,000 --> 00:16:49,390 we might perhaps be reminded of the early reviews of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, which drew very comparisons to Lewis Carroll's fantasy. 145 00:16:49,390 --> 00:16:55,900 Like the Carol talking comparison, the talking Jinyoung comparison can be productive and illuminating if, 146 00:16:55,900 --> 00:17:01,750 if framed in a certain way on the spectrum of imaginary story worlds, 147 00:17:01,750 --> 00:17:06,460 one author may have been on the fantasy end and the other on the end of historical fiction. 148 00:17:06,460 --> 00:17:11,860 But some of the methods that are used to build those imaginary story worlds are actually very similar. 149 00:17:11,860 --> 00:17:16,750 And what's really interesting from a comparative literature point of view is that those methods 150 00:17:16,750 --> 00:17:23,860 contributed independently to similarly phenomenal success in two disparate literary cultures. 151 00:17:23,860 --> 00:17:28,540 In a nutshell, the two authors were both successful at creating deep, coherent, 152 00:17:28,540 --> 00:17:38,280 immersive story worlds that drew heavily and multifarious on the pre-modern literatures of their respective cultural spheres. 153 00:17:38,280 --> 00:17:41,490 With talking, this process can simply be called mediaevalism, 154 00:17:41,490 --> 00:17:49,980 which refers broadly to the later reception and adaptation of the Middle Ages with Jinyoung, it's slightly more complicated. 155 00:17:49,980 --> 00:17:54,330 China does happen to be a polity to which the Eurocentric term mediaeval can be usefully 156 00:17:54,330 --> 00:18:00,060 applied because it's generally considered to have had a middle period in its history. 157 00:18:00,060 --> 00:18:06,510 But Jim Yong, like Walter Scott, drew on that period to very different extents, from novel to novel. 158 00:18:06,510 --> 00:18:12,960 So for some of his novels, the more general term antiquarian ism might be more appropriate. 159 00:18:12,960 --> 00:18:18,780 Either way, I would suggest that the most salient basis upon which to compare talking and Jinyoung from a literary 160 00:18:18,780 --> 00:18:25,650 perspective is the read depth and complexity of their mediaevalist or antiquarian story worlds. 161 00:18:25,650 --> 00:18:34,290 And I'd like to run through just a few ways in which they built them. It's well known that Tolkien was an expert in Germanic philology, 162 00:18:34,290 --> 00:18:41,990 and that his fiction was heavily influenced by mediaeval and mediaeval, English and Icelandic language and literature. 163 00:18:41,990 --> 00:18:46,610 This influence can be seen from the macro level to the micro level. 164 00:18:46,610 --> 00:18:54,500 There are details as minute as day chronic puns which play on the ancient and modern meanings of specific words. 165 00:18:54,500 --> 00:19:00,530 One simple example from the Lord of the Rings would be the ambiguity of a Macbeth like prophecy, 166 00:19:00,530 --> 00:19:09,020 stating that a certain being cannot be cured by a man, which can refer in the more archaic sense to a human being as in mankind. 167 00:19:09,020 --> 00:19:14,030 Or it can refer to an adult male, which has become the dominant sense. 168 00:19:14,030 --> 00:19:20,440 The fulfilment of that prophecy ends up hinging on the ambiguity of that single word. 169 00:19:20,440 --> 00:19:27,520 But on the macro level of mediaevalist creation, we might think of some of the more fundamental and original elements of the story world. 170 00:19:27,520 --> 00:19:32,680 For instance, the species of giant tree like creatures known as MS. 171 00:19:32,680 --> 00:19:44,120 She's very conceptualisation was founded upon an old English word for giant, which features in a poetic phrase found in several old English poems. 172 00:19:44,120 --> 00:19:48,620 Interestingly, we find a similar range of methods at work in Jinyoung fiction, 173 00:19:48,620 --> 00:19:54,620 again from the micro to the macro level, although not philologist by profession. 174 00:19:54,620 --> 00:19:59,360 He did occasionally engage in wordplay such as di chronic puns on the screen. 175 00:19:59,360 --> 00:20:02,330 I put an example from the demigods and Semi Devils, 176 00:20:02,330 --> 00:20:08,450 a chronological prequel to the Eagle shooting heroes involving a misunderstanding between a well-educated 177 00:20:08,450 --> 00:20:16,490 prince and an uncultured young lady over a word which in classical Chinese was an adjective meaning proper. 178 00:20:16,490 --> 00:20:24,290 But in later, Chinese is a verb, meaning to recoil on the macro level. 179 00:20:24,290 --> 00:20:28,400 One of the most fundamentally original aspects of Genea was martial arts. 180 00:20:28,400 --> 00:20:30,560 It is the martial arts themselves, 181 00:20:30,560 --> 00:20:38,060 and many of the martial arts invented by him derive the names and conceptual inspirations from phrases from classical Chinese literature, 182 00:20:38,060 --> 00:20:44,180 including poetry as an example from early on in the same novel. 183 00:20:44,180 --> 00:20:51,770 The erudite prince I just mentioned stumbles upon a scroll containing the instructions for a set of wonderfully evasive footwork, 184 00:20:51,770 --> 00:20:59,570 which derives its name from a line of a famous poem composed in the early third century. 185 00:20:59,570 --> 00:21:07,790 From these brief examples, it's clear that both authors were not only comfortable playing with historical forms of their respective languages, 186 00:21:07,790 --> 00:21:16,560 but also capable of creating original story road elements, which drew heavy inspiration from pre-modern literatures. 187 00:21:16,560 --> 00:21:21,840 There were many other similarities between the storytelling styles of the two authors as well 188 00:21:21,840 --> 00:21:27,450 stylistic parallels range from techniques such techniques as simple as onomatopoeia words, 189 00:21:27,450 --> 00:21:36,210 which imitate sounds such as bang or crash to more complex constructions, such as interwoven narratives. 190 00:21:36,210 --> 00:21:42,690 They also made notable use of the virtuality of written scripts in establishing the depth of their story worlds. 191 00:21:42,690 --> 00:21:50,040 One of Tolkien's innovations was his incorporation of a runic script based on the old runic alphabets of the Germanic peoples. 192 00:21:50,040 --> 00:21:58,310 While Jinyoung occasionally built plot points around the calligraphic nature of the traditional Chinese writing system. 193 00:21:58,310 --> 00:22:05,000 But something that I've been researching recently and wanted to mention briefly is a curious parallel in literary form, 194 00:22:05,000 --> 00:22:12,210 namely the particular use of cosmodrome, which refers to the mixture of verse and prose. 195 00:22:12,210 --> 00:22:16,050 I'll be publishing some early findings shortly. But in simple terms, 196 00:22:16,050 --> 00:22:23,730 what's remarkable is that Tolkien and Jinyoung seem to have independently developed the same way of incorporating verse with 197 00:22:23,730 --> 00:22:31,020 the effect of stretching the historical depth of their respective story worlds while maintaining their total immersion. 198 00:22:31,020 --> 00:22:39,840 In other words, the way that poetry is interpolated by Tolkien and Jinyoung has a near identical effect on the story world immersion that we, 199 00:22:39,840 --> 00:22:47,490 as readers, feel they appear to have arrived at this use of poetry by drawing independently on separate, 200 00:22:47,490 --> 00:22:54,630 pre-modern traditions of extended cross Metron and John's case the long form classical Chinese novel, 201 00:22:54,630 --> 00:22:59,760 and in Tolkien's case, the Old Norse Icelandic saga tradition. 202 00:22:59,760 --> 00:23:04,590 There's plenty more comparative research to be done on cross-match from in Tolkien and Jinyoung, 203 00:23:04,590 --> 00:23:08,010 but I just wanted to highlight the fact that the similarities between the mediaevalist 204 00:23:08,010 --> 00:23:15,830 or antiquarian impulses of the two authors extend to literary form as well. 205 00:23:15,830 --> 00:23:24,290 It seems clear, then, that the lens of mediaevalist antiquarian ism is a highly illuminating way to approach the talking Jinyoung comparison. 206 00:23:24,290 --> 00:23:27,380 For one thing, it bypasses the question of genre. 207 00:23:27,380 --> 00:23:36,110 You can have two authors who build from many of the same literary impulses but employ a different degree of secondary distance in their story worlds, 208 00:23:36,110 --> 00:23:40,830 resulting in their fiction being classified under different genres. 209 00:23:40,830 --> 00:23:49,680 In the case of talking and Jinyoung, many of this shared military impulses are based on an unusually deep understanding of pre-modern literatures, 210 00:23:49,680 --> 00:23:58,460 which therefore represents a highly significant part of their respective literary heritage and an important foundation for any comparison. 211 00:23:58,460 --> 00:24:02,720 One important footnote is to mention one important footnote to mention sorry, 212 00:24:02,720 --> 00:24:07,640 is that the parallels that I've outlined seem to have arisen independently. 213 00:24:07,640 --> 00:24:14,660 Genomes only known copies of Tolkien's novels were bought for him years after he'd finished serialising his final story. 214 00:24:14,660 --> 00:24:19,610 And so far, I haven't found any evidence that he'd read Tolkien before then. 215 00:24:19,610 --> 00:24:23,570 The phenomenal success that the two authors had in developing story worlds are rare. 216 00:24:23,570 --> 00:24:28,100 Cultural depth is therefore a comparison worth studying further because it has 217 00:24:28,100 --> 00:24:36,070 implications for our understanding of the poetics of historicity and functionality. 218 00:24:36,070 --> 00:24:46,210 Now that I've discussed where I think the the firmest ground for the talking genuine comparison lies, I want to come back to Jinyoung and fantasy. 219 00:24:46,210 --> 00:24:54,160 His work might not fit the criteria for fantasy literature, but there is something about it which lends itself to the association with fantasy. 220 00:24:54,160 --> 00:25:03,280 In fact, even his obituary in The Straits Times, a Singaporean newspaper, referred to him as an author of Martial Arts Fantasy. 221 00:25:03,280 --> 00:25:14,170 In other words, there is something to the curious association between Jinyoung and Fantasy, and I'd like to spend the rest of this talk exploring it. 222 00:25:14,170 --> 00:25:18,310 I mentioned earlier that fantasy is generally characterised by the presence of elements 223 00:25:18,310 --> 00:25:24,780 which invoke a sense of wonder by virtue of the impossibility in our real world. 224 00:25:24,780 --> 00:25:28,170 Within Jinyoung fiction, there is one grey area in that regard. 225 00:25:28,170 --> 00:25:34,250 And it's found in a fundamental aspect of his martial arts fiction, the martial arts themselves. 226 00:25:34,250 --> 00:25:41,720 The more remarkable and elite feats that some of these top martial artists are able to perform the ability to run on water, 227 00:25:41,720 --> 00:25:48,230 for instance, or the ability to shoot projected energy from one's fingers might seem wholly implausible. 228 00:25:48,230 --> 00:25:58,670 But within the context of the epistemological framework of most native sign foreign readers, they are in fact supernormal rather than supernatural. 229 00:25:58,670 --> 00:26:04,730 What I mean by that is that the martial arts, as they are presented in the text of Jin Young's fiction, 230 00:26:04,730 --> 00:26:13,330 are rationalised according to medical concepts and practises, which form part of native reader's understanding of the world. 231 00:26:13,330 --> 00:26:16,360 So even though the physical feats might seem implausible, 232 00:26:16,360 --> 00:26:25,500 they're grounded in traditional medical concepts that a native reader recognises to have widespread acceptance in their society. 233 00:26:25,500 --> 00:26:29,520 The main concept from traditional Chinese medicine, which is central to martial arts, 234 00:26:29,520 --> 00:26:38,640 both to many practitioners in real life and in fiction, is the concept of Chee spelled QE. 235 00:26:38,640 --> 00:26:45,420 She refers to vital energy within the human body, which can be channelled along specific pathways called meridians, 236 00:26:45,420 --> 00:26:50,840 which connect sensitive spots across the body called acupuncture points. 237 00:26:50,840 --> 00:26:56,840 Many schools of Chinese martial arts believe that, and I believe in cultivating and controlling ji, 238 00:26:56,840 --> 00:27:04,310 this in a vital energy in order to enhance physical abilities while fighting. 239 00:27:04,310 --> 00:27:08,870 The concept is deeply embedded in the public consciousness of sign of foreign cultures, 240 00:27:08,870 --> 00:27:16,280 meaning that even those who regard fatalism or traditional Chinese medicine as a pseudoscience have at least heard of it. 241 00:27:16,280 --> 00:27:23,690 In fact, the concept of chai is so ubiquitous that it has even lent its name to the global standard of wireless phone charging, 242 00:27:23,690 --> 00:27:30,390 whose underlying technology was invented in Hong Kong. Now, the concept of, gee, 243 00:27:30,390 --> 00:27:38,370 this vital energy which can be harnessed to enhance physical abilities might sound really mystical to those who aren't familiar with the concept. 244 00:27:38,370 --> 00:27:47,970 It might sound a little like the mystical marines of the Star Wars franchise, which form the biological explanation for the ability to use the force. 245 00:27:47,970 --> 00:27:54,450 But she has actually been a fundamental part of traditional Chinese medical practise for over two millennia. 246 00:27:54,450 --> 00:28:01,680 And the difference in how this concept is understood by different readerships is a huge part of the varying association of genome 247 00:28:01,680 --> 00:28:09,980 with fantasy because it means that martial arts based on cheap will seem more impossible to some readerships than to others. 248 00:28:09,980 --> 00:28:17,180 Some readers, they might seem super normal to others, they might seem superhuman or supernatural. 249 00:28:17,180 --> 00:28:27,320 And there is, in fact, a really interesting essay by the psychologist Mayor Sharp on she and super normality in the martial arts of genius fiction. 250 00:28:27,320 --> 00:28:32,690 I just want to mention quickly here that the discrepancy in different cultures understanding of chy is one 251 00:28:32,690 --> 00:28:38,690 of the reasons why Disney's recent live action Mulan remake got such a negative reception within China. 252 00:28:38,690 --> 00:28:49,530 Its use of Chee as a vaguely defined justification for a range of random magical powers was felt to be a fundamental misunderstanding of the concept. 253 00:28:49,530 --> 00:28:51,930 What we have in the concept of Gee, then, 254 00:28:51,930 --> 00:29:02,170 is the potential for differences in the conceptualisation of fiction based on differences in epistemological frameworks. 255 00:29:02,170 --> 00:29:05,560 The picture that I've just outlined is greatly exacerbated by the way, 256 00:29:05,560 --> 00:29:15,430 in which the supernormal qualities of the martial arts and Jinyoung works and indeed in the wider onre are reimagined through trans mediation or, 257 00:29:15,430 --> 00:29:23,410 in other words, through popular adaptation in different media films, television shows, comic books, video games and so on. 258 00:29:23,410 --> 00:29:31,900 Out of all of these media forms, television shows have historically been the most prominent vehicle for the adaptation of Jim Jones fiction. 259 00:29:31,900 --> 00:29:38,080 They've been produced far more regularly than films because they increase length is better suited to longer narratives, 260 00:29:38,080 --> 00:29:42,730 and they became a household fixture decades before video games did. 261 00:29:42,730 --> 00:29:50,890 In total, over the past five decades, there have been just over 70 TV adaptations of Jennings novels so far, 262 00:29:50,890 --> 00:29:55,570 and the ways in which these adaptations have changed stylistically can also tell us a great 263 00:29:55,570 --> 00:30:03,990 deal about how and why genome is more heavily associated with fantasy today than ever before. 264 00:30:03,990 --> 00:30:09,780 In the 70s to 90s, TV adaptations of Jin Young were mostly produced in Hong Kong, 265 00:30:09,780 --> 00:30:13,890 and these local adaptations were often both rigorously faithful to the source 266 00:30:13,890 --> 00:30:19,620 material and limited in terms of the special effects they were able to use. 267 00:30:19,620 --> 00:30:27,480 But after the turn of the millennium, the majority of TV adaptations have been produced in Mainland China with enormous budgets, 268 00:30:27,480 --> 00:30:35,720 and these more recent adaptations have taken greater creative liberties with both source material and style. 269 00:30:35,720 --> 00:30:43,670 And one of the key changes in style is the application of increasingly heavy special effects to the depiction of martial arts. 270 00:30:43,670 --> 00:30:45,830 I'd like to give you an example of this. 271 00:30:45,830 --> 00:30:56,660 I'll show you two video clips now, and for those listening to this as audio without video or describe what happens in each clip after I've shown it. 272 00:30:56,660 --> 00:31:01,790 One of the best known martial martial skills in Jinyoung fiction featuring in four 273 00:31:01,790 --> 00:31:09,860 of his novels is the sets of 18 Palme attacks called the 18 Dragon Taming Palms. 274 00:31:09,860 --> 00:31:20,120 Dragons are a symbol of power in Chinese culture. So the name 18 Dragon Taming Palms testifies to the fact that this is a powerful elite skill. 275 00:31:20,120 --> 00:31:38,060 This first clip depicts the execution of the skill in the classic 1983 Hong Kong TV adaptation of the Eagle Shooting Heroes. 276 00:31:38,060 --> 00:31:43,940 In this clip, the protagonist prepares to perform this elite skill, and as he builds up to it, 277 00:31:43,940 --> 00:31:49,040 we are switched to a stylised cut scene in which the protagonist is shown against a black background, 278 00:31:49,040 --> 00:31:54,580 going through the motions of the skull with an overlay dragon to capture its symbolic power. 279 00:31:54,580 --> 00:32:00,190 As the scene, as the cut scene ends, we return to the actual execution of the skill in real time, 280 00:32:00,190 --> 00:32:06,610 and the execution itself is pretty ordinary, with the protagonists palms clashing with his target. 281 00:32:06,610 --> 00:32:14,030 There's nothing supernatural about the way it's performed, and everything special about it is captured within the cut scene. 282 00:32:14,030 --> 00:32:19,490 By contrast, the second clip I'm about to show you is the same martial skill as depicted 283 00:32:19,490 --> 00:32:25,340 in the 2013 mainland Chinese TV adaptation of the Demigods and Semi Devils, 284 00:32:25,340 --> 00:33:17,840 the chronological prequel to the Eagle shooting heroes. Yeah. 285 00:33:17,840 --> 00:33:24,650 In the second clip, the martial arts is performing, the skill is essentially depicted as a flying human missile launcher, 286 00:33:24,650 --> 00:33:28,940 although not as random in its use of Chee as Disney's live action Mulan. 287 00:33:28,940 --> 00:33:33,140 The levitated and destructive abilities in this clip are clearly superhuman, 288 00:33:33,140 --> 00:33:38,240 and they defy the physical laws of our world in ways that the first clip didn't. 289 00:33:38,240 --> 00:33:43,130 These abilities have been extended so far from our reality as to be considered impossible. 290 00:33:43,130 --> 00:33:48,230 And this TV adaptation may therefore rightly be categorised as fantasy. 291 00:33:48,230 --> 00:33:55,280 Indeed, the super normality of the concept of Chee lends itself to supernatural depiction in popular adaptations, 292 00:33:55,280 --> 00:34:00,410 and this sort of transformation of martial arts into hyperbolic superhuman powers 293 00:34:00,410 --> 00:34:05,180 is characteristic of more recent Reacher films and television shows in general, 294 00:34:05,180 --> 00:34:09,260 including the many adaptations of Jin Young's fiction. 295 00:34:09,260 --> 00:34:15,350 It's therefore not surprising that these depictions of physics defying biology flying feats contribute 296 00:34:15,350 --> 00:34:21,320 significantly to the popular Association of Jinyoung with fantasy even within China phone audiences, 297 00:34:21,320 --> 00:34:26,680 especially younger audiences who grew up watching these TV series. 298 00:34:26,680 --> 00:34:34,780 What's fascinating here is that Jinyoung may not have conceived of his stories as fantasy literature or his storyboards as fantasy story worlds. 299 00:34:34,780 --> 00:34:41,260 But like much richer fiction, they've proven to be well-suited to fantastic adaptation. 300 00:34:41,260 --> 00:34:49,830 This sort of fantasy potential reminds us just how important reception is to the genre of fantasy literature. 301 00:34:49,830 --> 00:34:54,030 Concepts can seem more unrealistic when transmitted from one country to another. 302 00:34:54,030 --> 00:35:00,060 And unrealistic qualities can also be amplified by popular adaptations. 303 00:35:00,060 --> 00:35:04,980 The case of Jinyoung Young shows that story walls, which wouldn't originally be classified under fantasy, 304 00:35:04,980 --> 00:35:11,220 can still grow transmedia mediately into the genre. 305 00:35:11,220 --> 00:35:18,630 To return to the question at the heart of this talk, then I think a number of factors have aligned to make the talking Jinyoung comparison viable, 306 00:35:18,630 --> 00:35:27,620 not only in terms of their extraordinary popular success, but also in terms of the literary attributes which generated their success. 307 00:35:27,620 --> 00:35:33,650 In both cases, we have imagined an imaginative story worlds of rare antiquarian depth. 308 00:35:33,650 --> 00:35:39,350 We have parallels in storytelling style and formal similarities in the use of prose mecham. 309 00:35:39,350 --> 00:35:46,370 And we have some sort of connexion to fantasy, which in this case is the result of transmit reality. 310 00:35:46,370 --> 00:35:53,750 I'd like to close with the observation that the toking genome comparison is still very fertile ground for further comparative literary study. 311 00:35:53,750 --> 00:35:59,367 So this podcast episode certainly won't be the last word. Thanks for listening.