[Auto-generated transcript. Edits may have been applied for clarity.] So my name is Sidney. I am a fellow in Latin Language and literature, a Corpus Christi College here in the University of Oxford.
I'm also the token editor for the Journal of Indian Studies, and I am also a token scholar.
I will say, collaborating with a few friends of this university on a token research network that's been going on now for a few years.
Going back to the etymology of the word fantastic, which is a Greek etymology which is connected with the word fantasia in Greek.
So with the idea of images in a way. So fantasia has to do with images.
So in a way, the term fantasy for me is closely connected to the word imagination,
and therefore I have a very broad understanding of the concept of fantasy.
I understand that, of course, nowadays it tends to be used to refer to a particular gene,
but I prefer to refer it to more generally to any attempt to.
Human beings using their imagination, have done in the history of mankind to express some deeper,
deepest truth about the reality of life, not just by imitating reality, but try to go even deeper.
And that's, in a way, what fantasy is about. That's what the mythology was about.
So I see a very neat continuity between Homer and he's the very first author of a Western literature, Greek, Western literature.
And what's going on from talking all what's in terms of the fantasy genre.
So things have developed, but what's not developed is the deep need of human beings to try to understand who we are.
It was the world is about using a language which is not just an imitation of reality, but trying to go beyond that.
Talking was the main, uh, the main influence in the thing, like.
There was something like a few. Also, Lara Jean said that, uh, she was very, very glad, in fact,
and not too afraid to talk before drafting their own stories, because otherwise she would not even start.
And in a sense, and many other authors also said that, uh, talking really set the bar very, very, very high, as the, I would say,
especially the world building and the storytelling a more generally for the love,
for the sheer love of inventing a war which is somehow defined for our own, yet somehow connected to it.
Duncan is a father of it in a sense. Although I, I highlight a stress that is not a fantasy writer himself.
But as I was saying before the fantasy genre, I started with the same theology and same with Greek mythology, especially now with tradition.
And to a certain extent, maybe the world mythology would be a bit more appropriate to refer to this sort of very,
very, very long tradition where you have together Milton in talking Dante and Homer, Virgil and, um, C.S. Lewis.
So I feel this is very single tradition, you know, which is basically a kind of literature which novelistic in a sense,
that does not pretend to be reality than imitation reality, but it tries to use images in a way he manages and mixing up the ingredients.
Also something that Tolkien also said, uh, fantasy,
mix up the different colours of reality and that stuff that human beings have been doing it for a very long time,
in fact, starting with Greek mythology.
Yes, I will say that I still read a lot of talk because it's a it's a professional thing that I'm doing at the moment.
So I would say not a single day passes without me spending this one hour when I talk about takes my talking, but I got also some.
There are a few children of all children, and two eldest daughters now are very much into the world of Percy Jackson.
So at the moment, I would say the fantasy literature that I read, uh, uh,
I'm exposed to is the fantasy literature of Percy Jackson, which is also quite nice in terms of uh, uh,
being of the same time completely anchored in a very ancient tradition and make it accessible to the modern reader,
while at the same time absolutely embedded within the cultural discourses of the age.
And so I think that fantastic will continue to grow in many ways,
and that is why it will continue to grow even more exponentially is because we are seeking in a world which is divided by war,
whether we are really seeking for a common language and paradoxically,
literature which is a bit too close, a bit too imitative, or a bit too mimetic,
may your service to be a bit divisive in a sense, whereas I do think that the fantasy literature has a shine in more generally.
Literature, which is not just simply mimetic, provides a language and a common ground for people to come together.
And in that sense, I think there would be even more need for fantasy because of that, because we are the divided society in a divided world,
and all our different bubbles tend to like some particular, um, things without talking to the others, whereas fantasy has the power itself.
And talking is a very good example, because talking is the author who is loved by people coming from very different backgrounds,
from the extreme right left to the extreme right, up and up and down from the west to the from the east, from Russia.
So you have a lot of Tolkien fans to the South America.
In that sense, it's a big asset to this kind of literature, because you can really create a space of dialogue and open and build bridges in the world,
which, as I said, it's getting a bit more divided that every single day.
Any piece of literature in general. I will say just with talking, it needs to have the narrative of the clan as an ingredient to be real,
because I feel that I experience which is real and that we cannot escape, not least because one day we're going to die.
So in a way, it's difficult to talk. You will also say it's difficult to have to a literature without some sort of reference to the theme of death.
Okay, if it's real. So I think the question is not really whether that ingredient is there or not, but whether it's the all ingredient.
Okay. And also what can be done with the kind of ingredient.
And talking to the narrative of the client is an ingredient, but it's not the only ingredient.
I mean, it's the lot of drinks. And so we the we I hope I mean, there is a renewal which is not just an attempt to bring back the golden age.
So it's not like a, uh, something which prevents decline because our government does not really stop decline.
I mean, that's something that's not really with a lot of other things is about there is a victory at the end of the drinks,
but it's a victory whose reality is possible only because there is also decline narrative entangle with it.
So I think that, uh, I think all human beings, all you have to somehow have to deal with these ingredients because it's part of their own nature.
But then what they do with that can be very different. So I think I mean, talking himself in one of the letters, uh,
said that he had the desire that other minds and hands will come and, uh, walk with these mythologies.
So in a sense, I think that he himself, in fact, sold the rights of the Lord of the rings for a movie.
Uh, that was, of course, a very different time. But in a way, he himself kind of, uh, foresaw that that would happen.
So in a way, I think this is something which is part, uh, unavoidable and also, uh, positive part of its perception.
Okay. So we always buy like that, but maybe in the future this will ever go.
I think you can do walks on talk.
We talking on talking in two different ways or three different ways.
One way would be to say, look, I use Tolkien just as a source of inspiration.
Are you talking like, uh, as, um, as a place, um, as a setting of the movies?
And then I invent my own stories with no reference whatsoever to the original text,
or even with the desire to somehow subvert the original message in the original text.
Another opposite way would be to, um, instead to say, okay, I'm going to do a movie, but I will be very, very, very faithful to the original text.
So I'm going to kind of translate it into images, the original text.
And they would be very problematic because the language of cinematic language is different than literary language.
So I feel that Tolkien himself would not have like neither of the two positions.
Okay. In the right position to have is so is basically the position of love.
So you need someone who loves the original text so much,
but at the same time say they love them so much that they also share Tolkien's desire to get something different, to create something new.
Tolkien said again and again that art always had the desire to do something new.
I think that basically Peter Jackson and Team Philippa Boyens and the other great people
I've been working with in the past months have the kind of desire to do something new,
to do something which is great, which is original, but the subtlety which is completely embedded within the love of the original work.