1
00:00:00,120 --> 00:00:07,980
[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.

2
00:00:08,220 --> 00:00:12,510
I'm also the token editor for the Journal of Indian Studies, and I am also a token scholar.

3
00:00:12,510 --> 00:00:19,560
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.

4
00:00:26,900 --> 00:00:32,990
Going back to the etymology of the word fantastic, which is a Greek etymology which is connected with the word fantasia in Greek.

5
00:00:33,590 --> 00:00:37,190
So with the idea of images in a way. So fantasia has to do with images.

6
00:00:37,910 --> 00:00:42,860
So in a way, the term fantasy for me is closely connected to the word imagination,

7
00:00:43,760 --> 00:00:48,050
and therefore I have a very broad understanding of the concept of fantasy.

8
00:00:48,080 --> 00:00:52,400
I understand that, of course, nowadays it tends to be used to refer to a particular gene,

9
00:00:53,210 --> 00:00:56,220
but I prefer to refer it to more generally to any attempt to.

10
00:00:56,240 --> 00:01:02,260
Human beings using their imagination, have done in the history of mankind to express some deeper,

11
00:01:02,300 --> 00:01:08,450
deepest truth about the reality of life, not just by imitating reality, but try to go even deeper.

12
00:01:08,800 --> 00:01:13,190
And that's, in a way, what fantasy is about. That's what the mythology was about.

13
00:01:13,670 --> 00:01:24,049
So I see a very neat continuity between Homer and he's the very first author of a Western literature, Greek, Western literature.

14
00:01:24,050 --> 00:01:27,890
And what's going on from talking all what's in terms of the fantasy genre.

15
00:01:27,890 --> 00:01:35,190
So things have developed, but what's not developed is the deep need of human beings to try to understand who we are.

16
00:01:35,270 --> 00:01:41,720
It was the world is about using a language which is not just an imitation of reality, but trying to go beyond that.

17
00:01:47,990 --> 00:01:52,790
Talking was the main, uh, the main influence in the thing, like.

18
00:01:53,870 --> 00:01:58,480
There was something like a few. Also, Lara Jean said that, uh, she was very, very glad, in fact,

19
00:01:58,490 --> 00:02:03,580
and not too afraid to talk before drafting their own stories, because otherwise she would not even start.

20
00:02:03,590 --> 00:02:11,239
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,

21
00:02:11,240 --> 00:02:15,709
especially the world building and the storytelling a more generally for the love,

22
00:02:15,710 --> 00:02:22,250
for the sheer love of inventing a war which is somehow defined for our own, yet somehow connected to it.

23
00:02:28,990 --> 00:02:35,200
Duncan is a father of it in a sense. Although I, I highlight a stress that is not a fantasy writer himself.

24
00:02:35,710 --> 00:02:42,490
But as I was saying before the fantasy genre, I started with the same theology and same with Greek mythology, especially now with tradition.

25
00:02:43,000 --> 00:02:49,239
And to a certain extent, maybe the world mythology would be a bit more appropriate to refer to this sort of very,

26
00:02:49,240 --> 00:03:00,700
very, very long tradition where you have together Milton in talking Dante and Homer, Virgil and, um, C.S. Lewis.

27
00:03:00,760 --> 00:03:07,200
So I feel this is very single tradition, you know, which is basically a kind of literature which novelistic in a sense,

28
00:03:07,200 --> 00:03:15,189
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.

29
00:03:15,190 --> 00:03:18,820
Also something that Tolkien also said, uh, fantasy,

30
00:03:19,060 --> 00:03:24,100
mix up the different colours of reality and that stuff that human beings have been doing it for a very long time,

31
00:03:24,120 --> 00:03:26,410
in fact, starting with Greek mythology.

32
00:03:32,460 --> 00:03:37,740
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.

33
00:03:37,740 --> 00:03:45,510
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.

34
00:03:45,840 --> 00:03:52,150
There are a few children of all children, and two eldest daughters now are very much into the world of Percy Jackson.

35
00:03:52,170 --> 00:03:56,930
So at the moment, I would say the fantasy literature that I read, uh, uh,

36
00:03:56,940 --> 00:04:02,140
I'm exposed to is the fantasy literature of Percy Jackson, which is also quite nice in terms of uh, uh,

37
00:04:02,160 --> 00:04:08,040
being of the same time completely anchored in a very ancient tradition and make it accessible to the modern reader,

38
00:04:08,130 --> 00:04:14,220
while at the same time absolutely embedded within the cultural discourses of the age.

39
00:04:22,180 --> 00:04:25,180
And so I think that fantastic will continue to grow in many ways,

40
00:04:25,180 --> 00:04:32,740
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,

41
00:04:32,770 --> 00:04:37,060
whether we are really seeking for a common language and paradoxically,

42
00:04:37,360 --> 00:04:41,200
literature which is a bit too close, a bit too imitative, or a bit too mimetic,

43
00:04:41,680 --> 00:04:47,950
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.

44
00:04:47,950 --> 00:04:54,370
Literature, which is not just simply mimetic, provides a language and a common ground for people to come together.

45
00:04:54,850 --> 00:05:00,520
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,

46
00:05:00,970 --> 00:05:09,430
and all our different bubbles tend to like some particular, um, things without talking to the others, whereas fantasy has the power itself.

47
00:05:09,670 --> 00:05:15,639
And talking is a very good example, because talking is the author who is loved by people coming from very different backgrounds,

48
00:05:15,640 --> 00:05:21,740
from the extreme right left to the extreme right, up and up and down from the west to the from the east, from Russia.

49
00:05:21,800 --> 00:05:26,320
So you have a lot of Tolkien fans to the South America.

50
00:05:26,710 --> 00:05:35,560
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,

51
00:05:35,560 --> 00:05:38,890
which, as I said, it's getting a bit more divided that every single day.

52
00:05:45,330 --> 00:05:53,310
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,

53
00:05:53,390 --> 00:05:59,490
because I feel that I experience which is real and that we cannot escape, not least because one day we're going to die.

54
00:05:59,520 --> 00:06:07,340
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.

55
00:06:07,350 --> 00:06:13,919
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.

56
00:06:13,920 --> 00:06:16,320
Okay. And also what can be done with the kind of ingredient.

57
00:06:16,530 --> 00:06:20,759
And talking to the narrative of the client is an ingredient, but it's not the only ingredient.

58
00:06:20,760 --> 00:06:29,450
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.

59
00:06:29,460 --> 00:06:36,090
So it's not like a, uh, something which prevents decline because our government does not really stop decline.

60
00:06:36,090 --> 00:06:41,459
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,

61
00:06:41,460 --> 00:06:47,700
but it's a victory whose reality is possible only because there is also decline narrative entangle with it.

62
00:06:47,710 --> 00:06:56,550
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.

63
00:06:56,850 --> 00:07:10,700
But then what they do with that can be very different. So I think I mean, talking himself in one of the letters, uh,

64
00:07:10,720 --> 00:07:17,370
said that he had the desire that other minds and hands will come and, uh, walk with these mythologies.

65
00:07:17,380 --> 00:07:22,960
So in a sense, I think that he himself, in fact, sold the rights of the Lord of the rings for a movie.

66
00:07:23,440 --> 00:07:30,399
Uh, that was, of course, a very different time. But in a way, he himself kind of, uh, foresaw that that would happen.

67
00:07:30,400 --> 00:07:36,639
So in a way, I think this is something which is part, uh, unavoidable and also, uh, positive part of its perception.

68
00:07:36,640 --> 00:07:40,450
Okay. So we always buy like that, but maybe in the future this will ever go.

69
00:07:40,780 --> 00:07:44,200
I think you can do walks on talk.

70
00:07:44,260 --> 00:07:48,249
We talking on talking in two different ways or three different ways.

71
00:07:48,250 --> 00:07:52,770
One way would be to say, look, I use Tolkien just as a source of inspiration.

72
00:07:52,780 --> 00:07:59,049
Are you talking like, uh, as, um, as a place, um, as a setting of the movies?

73
00:07:59,050 --> 00:08:03,910
And then I invent my own stories with no reference whatsoever to the original text,

74
00:08:04,060 --> 00:08:07,990
or even with the desire to somehow subvert the original message in the original text.

75
00:08:08,950 --> 00:08:16,269
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.

76
00:08:16,270 --> 00:08:20,530
So I'm going to kind of translate it into images, the original text.

77
00:08:21,040 --> 00:08:26,319
And they would be very problematic because the language of cinematic language is different than literary language.

78
00:08:26,320 --> 00:08:30,250
So I feel that Tolkien himself would not have like neither of the two positions.

79
00:08:30,250 --> 00:08:34,479
Okay. In the right position to have is so is basically the position of love.

80
00:08:34,480 --> 00:08:38,230
So you need someone who loves the original text so much,

81
00:08:38,740 --> 00:08:45,760
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.

82
00:08:46,180 --> 00:08:50,890
Tolkien said again and again that art always had the desire to do something new.

83
00:08:51,640 --> 00:08:56,650
I think that basically Peter Jackson and Team Philippa Boyens and the other great people

84
00:08:56,650 --> 00:09:00,940
I've been working with in the past months have the kind of desire to do something new,

85
00:09:00,940 --> 00:09:07,930
to do something which is great, which is original, but the subtlety which is completely embedded within the love of the original work.