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[Auto-generated transcript. Edits may have been applied for clarity.]
Hi everyone! My name is Teresa Best and I'm a scholar in medieval literature, mostly concentrating on German medieval literature,

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and I also work on fantasy literature and doing a project at the University of Sweden where I'm based on the popular Middle Ages,

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where I'm one of two principal investigators,

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yet researching how medieval literature is adapted in fantasy and is transformed in recent fantasy literature.

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As a literary scholar. The answer, uh, is very boring at first, Mavi says.

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I would say fantasy is first and foremost a literary genre.

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But what is so special about fantasy is its world building.

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So the secondary worlds that are created and that are so complex, so rich with different cultures, different languages, different ethics and so on.

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So to invent such a complex, three dimensional and detailed world is what is the most fascinating thing about fantasy for me.

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Yeah. Being in Oxford. Uh, I, I have to, uh, single out Tolkien because I think, uh,

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the novels and all the literary works of J.R.R. Tolkien are really unprecedented for fantasy, and they shape the genre in an unprecedented way.

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And if we actually think about it, it would be highly unlikely that, uh,

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such complex novels written by an Oxford man and an Oxford scholar on Old Norse and Old English literature would become this popular.

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This would be highly unlikely. So maybe this Tolkien, and maybe to name a second one, is William Morris.

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Maybe not so much, uh, based on his literary work, which was influential for Tolkien, of course, and his companions at the inklings.

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But, uh,

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I think William Morris is important for fantasy because of his aesthetics that he and the Pre-Raphaelites and the Arts and Crafts movement developed.

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And so bringing some kind of these kinds of medieval decorations into fantasy and into book printing is something that is very special,

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um, for fantasy. And this makes William Morris so special.

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And when you look around in England, all of his patterns and, um, everything he produced is nearly everywhere.

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So he's very popular as well and therefore so influential, I think.

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When you're a literary literary scholar, there is such a few time to read for your own pleasure.

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And then it's mostly, to be honest, not fantasy. But, uh, what I read in spring, when I was here in Oxford as a fellow at Saint John's, was RFK Babel.

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And I really like that because it's a totally different kind of fantasy, almost not related to medieval literature or the Middle Ages,

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I would say, but it has an interesting mixture of linguistics, academia, as I recently learnt, belonging to the genre of dark academia.

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And uh, this is combined with, yeah, some interesting perspective on postcolonial issues and also a bit of revolution.

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And so even though it's an ending that you wouldn't expect, uh, I would recommend that.

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And it's also nice for someone who's interested in Oxford, even though Oxford is, uh, to some extent fictitious.

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Maybe not so much have concrete thoughts, but a lot of questions that I ask myself on where the genre is heading.

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And maybe I would predict that this trend of transmedia expansion is will be going on for a while.

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I think there are so many prequels in production right now that I'm not so confident,

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to be honest, that this fantasy hype will last for very long time.

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From now on. I think it might be. There might be a point where this expansion of the world is becoming a bit dull or even harder to invent,

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something that is really new, and that could tell people something new about the world they know so well.

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And so maybe this the trend will last for bit of time, but, um, maybe not forever.

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And but the interesting thing is to see how fantasy is developing its neo medieval aesthetics,

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what happens with the popular Middle Ages that we find in fantasy, and how is fantasy reacting to appropriations that are there from far right?

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For example, how do they cope with this go vote, go broke theme and issue?

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And this will be an interesting thing also, I think for um, for cultural studies in general to see how these things are developing.

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And so a lot of questions and maybe we should look at that in, uh, five years or ten years and see what, uh, what it turned out to be.

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At first, when I started working on fantasy literature, the focus was very much on fantasy coming from medieval literature.

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And, um. Yeah, you're always very trained to look at structures, motives, motivation of events and plots and so on.

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And so there are a lot of things I recognise, um, when, for example, historical characters are mentioned or motives,

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um, are there that can be recognised because they, they are known from medieval literature or known from texts.

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I know to some point very well. And so, um, this gives me another perspective, I think, on, um, on the fantasy literature and to some extent maybe,

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uh, hinders me to feel this very immersive feeling that maybe other fans are experiencing with fantasy.

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But the really interesting thing is that I wouldn't have predicted in the first place,

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is that fantasy literature always influences my reading of medieval literature, because you see that some things aren't so modern at all.

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So, for example, surreality or worldbuilding, transmedia expansion.

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These are all things that we to some extent can observe in medieval literature.

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And even though we cannot say that there's a direct influence backwards.

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But, um, this helps to get a new focus in research and to understand this medieval texts in another way,

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which is very interesting and creates new insights every now and again when you reread texts.

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The most popular example may be why it's The Ones and Future King.

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Because we have these additions that are full of decorations and decorated title pages,

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which are very much informed by William Morris's Kelmscott Press, and he was influenced by medieval and early modern printing.

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Also in other fantasy, we have these initials, these decorated initials that remind us of medieval literature and how it was produced.

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We have the decorations at the beginnings of chapters or something like that.

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So, um, this is something where we find medieval texts in the books.

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And, um, what I also had to look at is how our fantasy host fantasy literature state that staging, that it is medieval or neo medieval.

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So what is shown on the covers, for example?

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So we have swords, axes, crowns when we think of Martin for example.

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So all things that remind us or that tell the people looking at the covers, this is something we relate to Middle Ages.

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And so this medieval or neo medieval character is put very much to the front.

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So it's kind of a technique to advertise fantasy.

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And um, this is so interesting because it relates so much to what we think about the Middle Ages.

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What is the Middle Ages for us?

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And so we find Middle Ages or things that remind us of the Middle Ages in the text as well as on the fronts.

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And this is was what interested me most in the first place.

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And so I'm very eager always to see how new special editions are designed.