1 00:00:04,200 --> 00:00:08,520 [Auto-generated transcript. Edits may have been applied for clarity.] All right. Hi, everyone, and welcome to session two of the fantasy Summer school. 2 00:00:08,730 --> 00:00:11,910 We have two wonderful speakers for this session. 3 00:00:12,210 --> 00:00:19,770 And we are starting with Professor Giuseppe Pedercini, who is tutor and fellow at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. 4 00:00:20,370 --> 00:00:24,570 And he is a classicist by discipline. 5 00:00:25,020 --> 00:00:31,500 He's also the Tolkien editor for the Journal of Inklings Studies, and one of the founders of the Oxford Tolkien Network. 6 00:00:32,010 --> 00:00:41,370 He is the author of many publications on Tolkien, including a monograph on Tolkiens literary theory, which is out now with Cambridge University Press. 7 00:00:41,850 --> 00:00:45,659 And I'm also delighted to say this is allowed to say it now. 8 00:00:45,660 --> 00:00:54,180 He is the consultant for the new hunt for Gollum film, which will be released with Warner Brothers in December of 2027. 9 00:00:54,180 --> 00:01:00,030 So he is the official consultant on that. So if you want to ask him about that later, I'm sure he'd be happy to take questions. 10 00:01:00,240 --> 00:01:03,990 So without further ado, um, please welcome Professor Butt Seeney. 11 00:01:05,970 --> 00:01:11,860 Thank you. Thank you very much, Grace. 12 00:01:11,870 --> 00:01:15,170 Thank you very much, Stuart and Carolyn, for inviting me today. 13 00:01:15,180 --> 00:01:16,730 Uh, thanks for being here. 14 00:01:16,970 --> 00:01:26,330 Uh, Grace was say, uh, I'm a classicist, and today I will have the pleasure and a way to connect my two main life interests, the classics and Tolkien. 15 00:01:26,840 --> 00:01:32,360 I hope you got a copy of the handout, all of you. I will see that we refer to it quite often. 16 00:01:32,780 --> 00:01:37,900 And so what I'm going to do now is to discuss the classical reception in talking. 17 00:01:38,600 --> 00:01:44,930 Um, and they say this is a bit of a case study for classics, uh, in classics actually fantasy, 18 00:01:45,140 --> 00:01:49,610 although at the same time, I must say that talk in this case is a bit idiosyncratic. 19 00:01:49,610 --> 00:01:56,629 Okay, so I wouldn't say that. Uh, what I got to say today is can be applied to all fantasy authors, but maybe there would be some, 20 00:01:56,630 --> 00:02:02,060 uh, some ideas or some hints that will lead also to a better understanding of classical reception. 21 00:02:02,060 --> 00:02:07,790 Other authors, in some sense that classical reception, in talking, there is a bit of a new subject. 22 00:02:08,420 --> 00:02:15,770 As you may know, for many years and decades it was more the Nordic ingredient in talking soup that was more considered. 23 00:02:16,220 --> 00:02:21,320 But as you can see on the handout, number one, in the past few years, the sir, 24 00:02:21,330 --> 00:02:24,680 there's been a bit of a surge of interest in classical reception in Tolkien. 25 00:02:25,160 --> 00:02:28,700 And in a way, what I'm going to say today is a bit of a contribution to it. 26 00:02:29,570 --> 00:02:34,580 And it to say that Tolkien was a classicist in many ways is very accurate. 27 00:02:34,850 --> 00:02:43,700 As you can see from the handout, Tolkien was, uh, a student in this university, and the first subject of the study was, uh, classics. 28 00:02:44,000 --> 00:02:51,770 But several years before that, at the age of ten of 11 or maybe earlier than that, he had started to study Latin with his mum. 29 00:02:52,310 --> 00:02:58,010 In a way, Tolkien at the beginning was homeschooled for financial reasons, not for ideological reasons. 30 00:02:58,490 --> 00:03:01,460 And then one of the subjects studied with his mother was Latin. 31 00:03:02,240 --> 00:03:11,450 Then in it he moved to King Edward School in Baumgardner, which was one of the most the top gamma schools in the country at that time. 32 00:03:12,050 --> 00:03:19,970 And uh, um, uh, and, uh, King Edward, uh, his training in Latin and Greek started to flourish in this school. 33 00:03:20,120 --> 00:03:28,600 Students were trained to not just to read literate text, but also expected to converse and to compose or read a lot of Greek and Latin. 34 00:03:28,610 --> 00:03:31,639 And we know that that's something that Tolkien excelled at. 35 00:03:31,640 --> 00:03:41,240 Uh, and, uh, we have also some record, uh, of talks on engagement with these sort of exercises, uh, debating in Latin, performing plays in Greek. 36 00:03:41,840 --> 00:03:49,240 So it's not a surprise, therefore, that he decided to apply to study classics and also to apply the at the beginning to, 37 00:03:49,320 --> 00:03:55,010 to my college, which is Corpus Christi College. But then it was rejected to fail the examination. 38 00:03:55,010 --> 00:03:57,980 Uh, and in a way for the people of not his life. 39 00:03:58,280 --> 00:04:06,019 It was that failure that led to his sort of adoptive father called, uh, um, Francis Morgan to say, for now, 40 00:04:06,020 --> 00:04:09,829 um, you're not going to think about your girlfriend, but you will have to study hard to get into Oxford. 41 00:04:09,830 --> 00:04:15,940 So in a way, we are somehow responsible for the kind of bit of a drama in a way, and it's a bit of a nice paradox, 42 00:04:15,950 --> 00:04:22,370 a nemesis that, uh, after many decades, uh, talking about Corpus Christi College will hire a classicist. 43 00:04:22,370 --> 00:04:29,989 It was also talking scholar in many ways, as you know, after two years, uh, of his degree in talk, 44 00:04:29,990 --> 00:04:36,470 he decided to change and, and went to study church on the other side and went to study English language and literature. 45 00:04:36,770 --> 00:04:40,910 And yet Tolkien never rejected his classical training. 46 00:04:41,750 --> 00:04:47,870 His work, especially the early work, I will say, is filled with classic essays, and this is often a knowledge, 47 00:04:48,290 --> 00:04:53,600 um, bit of in the often talking himself a knowledge and extensive use of classical reception. 48 00:04:54,320 --> 00:04:56,150 So for instance, you can see on the handout, 49 00:04:56,600 --> 00:05:03,559 has he explicitly referred to classical epic to describe some elements of a secondary world, including, for instance, 50 00:05:03,560 --> 00:05:08,060 the heroic horseman of the Second Age who lived in a heroic state, 51 00:05:08,060 --> 00:05:16,730 and it led to wonderfully one influences of classical heroic epic have been identified also in the katabatic Journey Moria. 52 00:05:16,910 --> 00:05:21,260 The parts of that The Escape for the Fall of Gondolin that's even clearer, I think. 53 00:05:21,740 --> 00:05:28,010 But also there are several top point scenes, including especially one which is the catalogue of Warriors. 54 00:05:28,010 --> 00:05:35,389 You remember me in a series, and we know that in the manuscript Tolkien um, made that not saying Homeric catalogue. 55 00:05:35,390 --> 00:05:38,840 Okay, so he clearly had an Homeric catalogue in mind. 56 00:05:38,840 --> 00:05:43,640 But again, you see a few examples on the handout, but the list is growing. 57 00:05:43,670 --> 00:05:46,820 I mean, I would say especially The Fall of Gondolin, which I recently read, 58 00:05:47,150 --> 00:05:55,040 it's impossible not to see the influence of the book two of the internet, for instance, in, uh, in The Fall of Gondolin. 59 00:05:55,040 --> 00:05:57,980 But that would be for another, another lecture, maybe. 60 00:05:58,860 --> 00:06:08,309 So what I'm going to do now is to focus on one particular case where I think we can see the influence of classical motifs and using later, 61 00:06:08,310 --> 00:06:13,530 we'll also try to expand a bit on what I think was told King's mode of classical reception. 62 00:06:13,950 --> 00:06:18,810 And this motif number two on the handout is the motif of the narrative of decline. 63 00:06:19,980 --> 00:06:28,559 The narrative of decline is essentially a narrative, a story that posits a gradual degradation, a moral and ontological, 64 00:06:28,560 --> 00:06:40,830 but also spiritual and technological, maybe of humans or nature, or the two together from a idolise past, a golden age. 65 00:06:41,340 --> 00:06:48,780 Again, I want to dig into politics, but do you see how the Golden Age is still the phrase golden age still used very, 66 00:06:48,780 --> 00:06:53,489 very often nowadays to justify maybe problematic things? 67 00:06:53,490 --> 00:06:59,250 But anyway, that's the narrative of decline that, um, has an archetype in Western literature, 68 00:06:59,610 --> 00:07:04,979 which is a poem called The Walks and Days by the Greek poet Hesiod. 69 00:07:04,980 --> 00:07:07,350 You see, number two on the handout are quoted, 70 00:07:07,350 --> 00:07:16,920 especially a passage which is really like the archetype of the decline narrative, uh, going back to a golden age. 71 00:07:17,960 --> 00:07:22,300 This narrative was then uh, is also found in Homer in a way. 72 00:07:22,310 --> 00:07:26,120 So to a certain extent it also predates Hesiod. 73 00:07:26,450 --> 00:07:33,080 It goes into the Latin literature. You find it in Catullus, you find it in Virgil, you find it everywhere in a way. 74 00:07:33,590 --> 00:07:39,890 Anyone who has studied a bit the classical world will see how the narrative of decline that things are going, uh, bad. 75 00:07:40,040 --> 00:07:46,429 It's really everywhere. There are some exceptions, like Augustus, the first emperor who said that the Golden Age was coming back to earth. 76 00:07:46,430 --> 00:07:50,990 But overall, I will say that the ancient sensitivity was déclin East. 77 00:07:51,350 --> 00:07:54,140 Life history is at decline. 78 00:07:55,850 --> 00:08:05,629 And the important text for this, um, uh, um, uh, codification of the narrative of the decline into the Western tradition is Augustus, 79 00:08:05,630 --> 00:08:09,920 the key word that today, you see at the end of page one on the handout. 80 00:08:10,280 --> 00:08:16,130 Again, I won't go into it today, but certainly especially in the Middle Ages, the idea that, 81 00:08:16,700 --> 00:08:21,860 uh, the world was going into decline was somehow mediated by this important text. 82 00:08:23,360 --> 00:08:30,079 If you turn the page just to want to say a couple of things more about this narrative of decline in the ancient world, 83 00:08:30,080 --> 00:08:34,940 which, as I said, is omnipresent, but it's found also in different variants. 84 00:08:35,510 --> 00:08:43,820 There is one important variant which is the one, uh, a number on number three on the handout, which is we may call primitive, primitive mystic. 85 00:08:44,390 --> 00:08:48,590 It's a primitive state, a version of decline. 86 00:08:49,550 --> 00:08:54,710 Again, that's the one, uh, which we find, uh, especially in Hesiod, but also in Catullus. 87 00:08:55,160 --> 00:09:00,080 And the idea is that, uh, um, uh, everything from the very beginning. 88 00:09:00,090 --> 00:09:04,660 So the idea that the Golden Age people were living in a sort of a technological world. 89 00:09:04,700 --> 00:09:13,340 So the Golden Age was an age with no technology, with no seafaring, with no agriculture. 90 00:09:13,580 --> 00:09:18,830 It was a sort of age where the relationship between humans and nature was somehow immediate. 91 00:09:19,310 --> 00:09:23,150 That's a very influential, uh, negative decline. But it's not the only one. 92 00:09:23,570 --> 00:09:30,290 We have at least another version very important to a very influential for talking, which is the one number four on the handout. 93 00:09:31,040 --> 00:09:36,740 On the handout where you do have a decline, especially a moral and spiritual decline. 94 00:09:37,130 --> 00:09:40,160 But this does not go hand in hand with a technological decline. 95 00:09:40,790 --> 00:09:49,760 In fact, uh, the the paradox is that, uh, in the Golden Age, that technology was actually more sophisticated in the later age. 96 00:09:50,390 --> 00:09:57,380 And that's the version that we, we find in very influential myth, which is the myth of the fall of Atlantis, 97 00:09:58,160 --> 00:10:06,860 which we can read nowadays, especially in Plato's Timaeus and in the Critias, a lost but yet fascinating dialogue in. 98 00:10:06,860 --> 00:10:13,220 Although in this myth, uh, the description of the Atlantis follows the pattern of a natural Paradise. 99 00:10:13,400 --> 00:10:18,860 Atlantis is a natural Paradise. Its habitants were no kind of primitive beings. 100 00:10:18,860 --> 00:10:22,600 They engage in agriculture. They engage in Milwaukee, walk my. 101 00:10:23,120 --> 00:10:27,500 And in fact, they were to a certain extent artists and, uh, builders. 102 00:10:28,860 --> 00:10:36,330 And therefore there was a society in Atlantis which was golden, but also was a society very rich. 103 00:10:36,750 --> 00:10:42,090 It's not the kind of pastoral, bucolic version that you see. Instead, you find in Hesiod. 104 00:10:43,810 --> 00:10:48,040 And, uh uh um. So two version of the Klein. 105 00:10:48,590 --> 00:10:52,090 I introduced them both because I will come back to this when to talk about talking. 106 00:10:52,090 --> 00:11:01,450 Okay. Because talking is able to take different ingredients again from the ancient soup, and we forge them into a different kind of artefact. 107 00:11:02,560 --> 00:11:06,639 That is one important implication of this decline. 108 00:11:06,640 --> 00:11:14,530 Narrative number five on the handout, which is found in both the versions of both the version, both the primitive and the non primitive, 109 00:11:14,530 --> 00:11:24,370 is to have something in common, which is the idea of a correlation between between decline and the gap between the human and the divine. 110 00:11:25,090 --> 00:11:32,920 If you see here on the handout, um, number five, the golden made man of the Hesiod, the tradition lived like gods. 111 00:11:33,220 --> 00:11:38,680 They were loved by the lesser gods, whereas in contrast, when they become the Iron Man, 112 00:11:38,710 --> 00:11:44,330 the men of the Iron Age, they have no longer an interaction with divine beings. 113 00:11:44,350 --> 00:11:49,390 So there is really a kind of a spiritual decline. That's also very clear in the myth of Atlantis. 114 00:11:49,960 --> 00:11:58,690 The early men of Atlantis had participated in a quota in a portion of divinity, whereas this portion of divinity, 115 00:11:58,690 --> 00:12:06,880 the portion of the divine, became faint and weak, and through been ofttimes blended with a large measure of mortality. 116 00:12:07,330 --> 00:12:10,479 So the ancient men were somehow immortal. They were almost demigods. 117 00:12:10,480 --> 00:12:14,440 And this is like an idea which is found quite often in the Greek tradition. 118 00:12:15,530 --> 00:12:21,679 This also explains why the main reason for the decline and eventual collapse of civilisation is, 119 00:12:21,680 --> 00:12:25,640 first of all, moral, spiritual and therefore also political. 120 00:12:27,290 --> 00:12:35,209 Again, I don't want to spend too much time on it, but I mean, these two versions of the decline primitive East and non primitive East with the 121 00:12:35,210 --> 00:12:40,040 common thread of a spiritual decline are quite often intermingled in the tradition. 122 00:12:40,220 --> 00:12:45,320 Okay, so even in the, um, the myth of Atlantis itself, uh, we have, you know, 123 00:12:45,330 --> 00:12:50,299 way two different versions in the same text because in contrast with the plant, this we have the case of Athens, 124 00:12:50,300 --> 00:12:55,760 which eventually proves to be the society, the civilisation, the, uh, that is better, 125 00:12:55,760 --> 00:13:02,330 morally better, which instead is more of a preview to be, uh, um, um, uh, nature. 126 00:13:02,870 --> 00:13:10,280 So in the ancient world, the decline in one aspect of natural or human life can be complemented by a progress in another aspect. 127 00:13:10,460 --> 00:13:14,540 So you can decline spiritually, morally, but you can progress technologically. 128 00:13:14,540 --> 00:13:19,249 Okay. So it's all a bit it's all a bit, uh, um, complex and complicated. 129 00:13:19,250 --> 00:13:24,320 And, uh, I could also refer to you our philosophy, where you have really like a combination of the two, 130 00:13:24,740 --> 00:13:30,260 the clear narratives and these also leads to another very important idea of the ancient world, 131 00:13:30,470 --> 00:13:35,990 which, if you think about talking, is also very prominent in talking, which is the idea of a cyclical framework. 132 00:13:36,290 --> 00:13:39,680 So life of an historian generates like a cycle. 133 00:13:39,860 --> 00:13:45,170 You start with the progress and then decline. It's a never ending cycle for which we cannot escape. 134 00:13:48,230 --> 00:13:51,860 Again, this for the people interested in comparative mythology. 135 00:13:51,870 --> 00:13:57,109 We find that this idea of a cycle of age is everywhere in the eastern tradition as well. 136 00:13:57,110 --> 00:14:01,820 And it's quite possible that the Greeks even imported it from the east at the very beginning. 137 00:14:02,540 --> 00:14:08,389 But even in this cyclical, uh, story, the trajectory is quite similar. 138 00:14:08,390 --> 00:14:16,550 The trajectory is decline. I do believe that there is a generally decline this outlook in Asian culture, 139 00:14:16,670 --> 00:14:23,090 from philosophy down to popular wisdom, which did feed Tolkien's imagination in his early years. 140 00:14:23,720 --> 00:14:30,140 And one of the things that did when it came to also a few years ago, it was to go to the Berlin Library and check the syllabus. 141 00:14:30,140 --> 00:14:38,060 The talking started for exams in 19, um 92, 11, 13, 13, 14, actually. 142 00:14:38,150 --> 00:14:42,559 And in fact, Hesiod was there, Catullus was there, Virgil was there. 143 00:14:42,560 --> 00:14:51,140 All the texts that, uh, imbued with this narrative of the Klein, uh, well presented, the texts that you talk, you back it very, very well. 144 00:14:51,470 --> 00:15:00,230 And in a way, it's interesting. The talking took his mouth exam in 1914, just at the, uh, just the year before the beginning of the First World War. 145 00:15:00,230 --> 00:15:09,320 So it is as if his imagination is little. Imagination was immediately then embodied in left field, uh, by the real imagination, 146 00:15:09,890 --> 00:15:13,700 or back to the real lsps the dead in the trenches of the First World War. 147 00:15:14,600 --> 00:15:16,339 It is not, therefore not surprising. 148 00:15:16,340 --> 00:15:24,770 And now I move to number six on the handout, that narratives of decline are really omnipresent in wide ranging intelligence works. 149 00:15:25,700 --> 00:15:32,050 Think about the Lord of the rings. We have many allusions to the superiority of past generation and culture. 150 00:15:32,060 --> 00:15:38,990 You find them. Some of them are number six on the handout. These are very, very similar to the one you find in Homer or Virgil. 151 00:15:39,200 --> 00:15:46,220 Just quote one, for instance, from the for the very beginning of the of the prologue of the Lord of the rings, the hobbits have dwindled. 152 00:15:46,460 --> 00:15:51,410 They say in ancient days they were taller, so the hobbits were taller, an hour shorter, 153 00:15:51,410 --> 00:15:57,800 and all the creatures and peoples of middle earth clearly were taller and bigger in the ancient world. 154 00:15:59,380 --> 00:16:05,410 They. This decline is allusions, as I may call them, resonate to also with the landscaper, 155 00:16:05,620 --> 00:16:10,830 which, as you know well, is filled with the ruins of orange buildings. 156 00:16:11,080 --> 00:16:14,800 You can remember the tower of of Nazca, the statues of the Argonauts, 157 00:16:15,190 --> 00:16:21,120 and all these can be considered as if you want some vestiges of a lost civilisation. 158 00:16:21,130 --> 00:16:26,560 I quote a long vanished kingdom. There is this idea that the great kingdom is now all vanished. 159 00:16:28,020 --> 00:16:31,530 Also just that, as in Hesiod, humans, 160 00:16:31,530 --> 00:16:36,300 men in the Lord of the rings are falling ill and die much more easily than they are sisters 161 00:16:36,660 --> 00:16:41,580 who the numenoreans live much longer and really lead lives have been more similar, 162 00:16:41,580 --> 00:16:43,799 like the Zodiac men of the Golden Age. 163 00:16:43,800 --> 00:16:51,600 And they quote again from number six men who did not suffer miserable age, and when they died, it was as though they were overcome with sleep. 164 00:16:52,090 --> 00:16:55,649 If you remember that at the end of the Lord of the rings, a dragon dies the old way. 165 00:16:55,650 --> 00:17:00,120 If you want, I bring him back not just to the ancient kingdom, but also bring him back. 166 00:17:00,120 --> 00:17:08,610 The ancient lifespan of the Numenoreans. Also, artefacts and artworks in the Lord of the rings, uh, 167 00:17:08,640 --> 00:17:14,200 that are produced by the present generations can not really equal with the works of ancient mapped stars. 168 00:17:14,420 --> 00:17:15,930 Let me just read a couple of passages. 169 00:17:16,260 --> 00:17:25,379 This is what the dwarf Gloin says in metal Work we cannot rival our forefathers, many of whose secrets are lost on again referring to now, 170 00:17:25,380 --> 00:17:32,140 in the case of lore from page A6, a 60 or Lord was in these latter days fallen from its fullness of old. 171 00:17:32,190 --> 00:17:35,580 That's a comment on the lore that is now in the house of healing. 172 00:17:35,930 --> 00:17:41,210 If you in the Lord of the rings, with this kind of, uh, uh, question in mind, uh, 173 00:17:41,580 --> 00:17:45,149 trying to see the traces of a deck in this narrative, it's really everywhere, 174 00:17:45,150 --> 00:17:55,710 almost in every chapter, and you will somehow find the reference to this inevitable decline of mankind and history in general language itself. 175 00:17:55,770 --> 00:17:58,410 Uh, maybe that's even more interesting. Language itself. 176 00:17:58,650 --> 00:18:05,580 The language spoken at the time of the Lord of the rings, is just a call up to the shadow of an ancestral perfection. 177 00:18:05,580 --> 00:18:11,970 And the quote, uh, for one of my favourite passages in the old talking, which is the Bible's encounter with the dragon, and I quote, 178 00:18:12,180 --> 00:18:21,390 there are no words left to express is meant to cease main change the language they learn of elves in the days when all the world was wonderful to see. 179 00:18:21,420 --> 00:18:25,830 So the language of no man nowadays is not able to describe the fullness of reality. 180 00:18:25,950 --> 00:18:30,650 Ancient else could, but not men. Um. 181 00:18:31,070 --> 00:18:38,840 Uh. So we may even say that talking to the Lord of the rings is set in a sort of fictional late antiquity. 182 00:18:39,500 --> 00:18:46,220 If you're familiar with late antiquity for the third to the fifth century A.D., read the text that to the age. 183 00:18:46,460 --> 00:18:50,660 You really find a lot of allusion to this kind of perception of decline. 184 00:18:51,080 --> 00:18:56,300 Everything in the Lord of the rings is dominated by a sense that things are not going well. 185 00:18:56,600 --> 00:19:04,280 A sense of loss and decline from all points of view history, uh, language, literature, art and so on. 186 00:19:05,740 --> 00:19:08,500 And go even deeper into token sensitivity. 187 00:19:09,190 --> 00:19:18,020 It's therefore not surprising that Tolkien himself said that in a quote from the bottom of number six that uh uh uh uh um uh, no. 188 00:19:18,060 --> 00:19:24,310 So easy to. Yeah, that's all I quote from the 96, which I hope to put on the agenda, but it's a quote for later. 189 00:19:24,310 --> 00:19:34,420 96 Todd King said that the heart of making sense of the vanished past was the emotion which moved him supremely and found small difficulty in evoking. 190 00:19:34,750 --> 00:19:40,329 So talk he was, as himself said, was especially able to express this sense of the vanished past. 191 00:19:40,330 --> 00:19:47,230 So it seems, as the narrative decline of Asian origin is really at the core of Tolkien's literary sensitivity. 192 00:19:48,520 --> 00:19:52,950 Moving to number seven on the handout. Told Kings to turn to page page three. 193 00:19:54,010 --> 00:19:59,030 We can see the tokens declines and majority of decline is evident. 194 00:19:59,050 --> 00:20:05,360 Also the macro historical level which we find especially described in The Silmarillion. 195 00:20:05,740 --> 00:20:13,060 For the people who read The Silmarillion, do work. There is the idea that the history of Judah is divided into a series of ages. 196 00:20:14,050 --> 00:20:18,520 The age of the son, the first age, a second age, a third age, and now the fourth age. 197 00:20:18,700 --> 00:20:26,350 And it's every, every time it is said that each age is somehow inferior to the previous one in some respect. 198 00:20:27,640 --> 00:20:28,240 In each one. 199 00:20:28,240 --> 00:20:39,400 Also, just like in Asian narratives, uh, an age gradually degenerates to more corruption of, uh, less and less degree of divine interaction. 200 00:20:39,760 --> 00:20:49,630 And also a finally a catastrophic event, the destruction of Numenera, uh, and, uh, the, uh, destruction of the ring at the end of the Third Age. 201 00:20:51,340 --> 00:21:01,780 Another key notion within talk is declare Nizam, which again, it's somehow classical, not just classical is the idea of the full, uh, number, 202 00:21:02,050 --> 00:21:06,810 the second passage in number seven on the handout, the idea that uh, 203 00:21:07,180 --> 00:21:13,270 decline is also correlated with the idea of a moral fall is, of course, itself also classical. 204 00:21:13,270 --> 00:21:18,729 But for Christians like Tolkien was also tied to the dot in the biblical doctrine of the original sin, 205 00:21:18,730 --> 00:21:27,070 sending Zion from Adam and talking, in fact, in the letters quite often also to the notion of Eden, of Eden, of a lost Eden. 206 00:21:27,280 --> 00:21:34,810 You see here the classical in the biblical tradition, the kind of a mix together because Tolkien was imbued with both since a very young age. 207 00:21:36,660 --> 00:21:44,819 Uh, in a way, the fall that Tolkien describes is somehow biblical to a certain extent, but also is classic. 208 00:21:44,820 --> 00:21:46,920 And I do think that in many senses, 209 00:21:46,920 --> 00:21:55,860 the classical um ingredient is also important to extract the soup of the fall if you want in talking to give just one example. 210 00:21:56,760 --> 00:22:03,990 And, uh, I'm referring to the fourth passage, number seven on the handout in the story of Turin to remember, 211 00:22:04,290 --> 00:22:09,400 if you remember, for The Silmarillion, uh, I hope you know the story of Turin to. 212 00:22:09,560 --> 00:22:11,880 But most of you, I guess most of you are familiar with it. 213 00:22:12,300 --> 00:22:17,700 So if you're familiar with the story, it's quite clear how you have a long series of different influences. 214 00:22:18,090 --> 00:22:25,350 That is, the idea of an ancestor of a class and insist, which is quite typical of the ancient world. 215 00:22:25,350 --> 00:22:32,669 And if it's found, for instance, in the story of a deep Purcell, you remember in many ways Tolkien is a deep house, but it's also, of course, Nordic. 216 00:22:32,670 --> 00:22:37,690 And there is one particular case of the character of Sigurd that that is really, really similar in a way, to read. 217 00:22:37,710 --> 00:22:43,830 There's also a new signature, but also it's a new level. So you have got to level is maybe the main source if you want to. 218 00:22:44,070 --> 00:22:52,020 But the is not just Calabro. You really see a lot of different influences that like intermingle together into a single character. 219 00:22:53,520 --> 00:22:58,020 And there is one case in particular, one narrative of a fall, of course, 220 00:22:58,200 --> 00:23:07,020 of a decline by where the classical component is very explicit, and that's the one you find, number eight on the handout. 221 00:23:07,170 --> 00:23:10,050 That is to say, the fall of Numenera. 222 00:23:11,010 --> 00:23:19,380 The fall of Numenera was by Tolkien explicitly and emphatically connected to Plato's stories of Atlantis, so we know it. 223 00:23:19,410 --> 00:23:28,830 The very name itself evokes the myth of Atlantis in the latest toolkit, the first quite often to the Numenera Atlantis myth, and in fact, 224 00:23:28,830 --> 00:23:39,239 in a very early version of this myth of the story, the connection was very, very extreme in the sense that the first version of the story told. 225 00:23:39,240 --> 00:23:47,930 Can you imagine that to some time, travellers will go back to the island of Atlantis and the weakness, the Fall of Atlantis, 226 00:23:47,940 --> 00:23:54,660 a guide down a record that will then compliment to what Plato did in the writer in his own narrative. 227 00:23:55,020 --> 00:24:03,170 So at the beginning, it was not just a version of the story was exactly the same story, just simply retold through a different for Eliza. 228 00:24:03,450 --> 00:24:04,950 That is to say, Tolkien himself. 229 00:24:06,640 --> 00:24:15,070 In a later version of the myth, which is the one that we read now in the 1977 Silmarillion, the connection is not so explicit. 230 00:24:15,100 --> 00:24:18,940 That's not the island of Numenor. That's so. That's not the island of Atlantis. 231 00:24:18,970 --> 00:24:29,200 It's the island of Numenor. And yet the narrative parallelism remains remains striking, with similarities in the island's divine origin the landscape, 232 00:24:29,200 --> 00:24:35,620 the topography, the idea of a moral corruption, the nature of a catastrophe that befell the island, and so on. 233 00:24:36,340 --> 00:24:44,320 And it is therefore not surprising. Then Tolkien decided to keep eventually the allusive name Atalanta for Numenor. 234 00:24:44,980 --> 00:24:52,780 And what I find even more abuse is that token even gave an etymology saying, and they called for number eight on the handout. 235 00:24:52,780 --> 00:24:57,849 It is a curious chance that the Stem talents using Quenya in Elvish for leaping, 236 00:24:57,850 --> 00:25:03,009 sliding, falling down for decline, or which Atlantis is anomaly in Quenya. 237 00:25:03,010 --> 00:25:06,460 Now formation shouldn't so much resemble Atlantis. 238 00:25:07,000 --> 00:25:08,950 So I really love this passage, 239 00:25:08,950 --> 00:25:17,919 because Tolkien is claiming that the connection between the Numenor and Isle of Atlantis and the Isle of Atlantis is just a curious chance. 240 00:25:17,920 --> 00:25:21,850 Okay? It's not just that they want it, I mean it just a curiosity biological connection. 241 00:25:22,600 --> 00:25:32,500 But in fact, the narrative model G of the World Atlantic confirms how the tale of Numenor is prototypical of Tolkien's omnipresent decline ism, 242 00:25:33,010 --> 00:25:36,550 but also would say of its classical ancestry. 243 00:25:37,490 --> 00:25:45,740 And yet what I find interesting and is leading to the second and final parts of my talk, is that you can still claim that this was just a chance. 244 00:25:45,770 --> 00:25:49,190 Okay. That's it. I really want it. Why is that? 245 00:25:49,220 --> 00:25:53,720 I mean, what's the point of making this claim? That's I will try to answer this question in the final ten, 246 00:25:53,720 --> 00:26:03,290 15 minutes and also thereby say something more comprehensive about what we could call the told Keynes idea of classical conception, 247 00:26:03,290 --> 00:26:05,659 what is called Keynes idea of classical conception. 248 00:26:05,660 --> 00:26:12,110 And I think that everything can be referred back to this claim that it was just a curious etymological chance. 249 00:26:12,920 --> 00:26:17,900 But let me move now to number nine on the handout and just say a few more, 250 00:26:18,770 --> 00:26:27,110 something more about exactly how Tolkien conceived his own version of the tale of Atlantis. 251 00:26:28,100 --> 00:26:38,120 As I said before that, uh. Uh, at the very beginning, you really thought of the tale as, uh, the tale told by, uh, time time Traveller. 252 00:26:38,120 --> 00:26:40,480 And let me just read the quote from letter 257. 253 00:26:40,940 --> 00:26:47,059 I began an abortive book of time travel, which was to be the presence of my hero in the dawn of Atlantis. 254 00:26:47,060 --> 00:26:50,120 So that's only the very beginning for the people you are aware of. 255 00:26:50,120 --> 00:26:57,730 It was this kind of conversation with C.S. Lewis, and he said, okay, you're going to write to space travel, which there will be peril. 256 00:26:57,760 --> 00:27:06,980 And in the other books. And then I would like to time travel in the time, time that was exactly this is on version of the Dawn of Atlantis. 257 00:27:08,670 --> 00:27:16,590 But even at this early stage, if you read the drafts of this very early stage, it's quite clear how tall it was, not just rewriting the platonic myth. 258 00:27:16,740 --> 00:27:21,450 So it was not an adaptation, you see. And it's not like talkies adapting again, right? 259 00:27:21,720 --> 00:27:31,370 Adapting the myth of Atlantis. Rather, it felt the need to integrate this myth in his own authorial mediation. 260 00:27:31,380 --> 00:27:36,030 So was putting himself into the narrative somehow. So it's not just enough to say, okay. 261 00:27:36,030 --> 00:27:40,559 And now, in the 2020 century, giving a new version of the myth of Atlantis. 262 00:27:40,560 --> 00:27:50,850 No, I'm bringing myself inside. I bring in my own vocalising authorial perspective into the tale, if you want. 263 00:27:51,480 --> 00:28:01,379 Also talking. Change the names, change the details, and inserted clearly his own creative idiosyncrasies and concerns into the story. 264 00:28:01,380 --> 00:28:06,030 And in a way that's kind of represented by the very fact that decided to vocalise. 265 00:28:06,360 --> 00:28:12,030 That is to say, to tell the story from the point of view of an English man of the 20th century, if you want. 266 00:28:12,330 --> 00:28:17,610 That's a nice image to see, to introduce the how talking conceived classical reception explicitly. 267 00:28:19,170 --> 00:28:26,190 It's quite clear that for the very beginning, therefore, talking felt the literary urgency to create something distant from its source, 268 00:28:26,670 --> 00:28:30,450 which eventually explain why he decided to abandon the story of Atlantis. 269 00:28:30,990 --> 00:28:35,190 And the quote again from letter 94. My effort. 270 00:28:35,430 --> 00:28:42,660 After a few promising chapters, Randy, it was too long away round to what I really wanted to make. 271 00:28:43,050 --> 00:28:50,610 That is to say, not an adaptation of Plato's Tale of Atlantis, but rather a new version of the Atlantis legend. 272 00:28:51,270 --> 00:28:57,059 So if you want to use a bit of a graph, I mean, if this is the myth of Atlantis and this is talking I mean, 273 00:28:57,060 --> 00:29:00,450 in the first stage we got a derivation that I derivation. 274 00:29:00,450 --> 00:29:04,350 So talking is rewriting the plot of the Tale of Atlantis. 275 00:29:04,770 --> 00:29:12,450 Whereas in this passage just right, the framework is different. There is one one event, one event which is the Atlantis legend. 276 00:29:12,990 --> 00:29:17,580 And then there is, um, Plato's version and Tolkien's version. 277 00:29:18,120 --> 00:29:22,590 Of course, the two are somehow related, but Tolkien's like going back to the original event. 278 00:29:22,830 --> 00:29:32,060 It's not like going through the mediation of the platonic event, and that's already like a bit of a step from a framework of a classical reception, 279 00:29:32,100 --> 00:29:38,580 which you said is very common in the at this time, which is simply like we kind of adapt the ancient text to a new audience. 280 00:29:40,040 --> 00:29:43,940 In the passage of just quote, there is a key adjective which is new. 281 00:29:44,210 --> 00:29:50,330 It's a new version, which I think is at the foundation of Autolycus literary theory of adaptation. 282 00:29:50,960 --> 00:29:57,680 It is quite related, I think, to what Tolkien says again and again in his literary manifesto, which is the tale, 283 00:29:57,680 --> 00:30:05,840 as they say on fairy stories, where he's talking says again and again, the whole point of creating art is to do something new. 284 00:30:06,620 --> 00:30:12,260 Creative fantasy is mainly trying to do something else, make something new. 285 00:30:13,330 --> 00:30:17,290 That's really like the idea of not just the fantasy, but also with these classical reception. 286 00:30:17,320 --> 00:30:23,590 Let's say is still connected with this basic urge of the artist to make something new. 287 00:30:25,910 --> 00:30:29,059 Tokens urge for little newness, 288 00:30:29,060 --> 00:30:34,020 therefore explains why he decided that Gacy's original intention to integrate the of 289 00:30:34,070 --> 00:30:39,350 Numenera in his own legendarium is all mythology in a way which is a new mythology. 290 00:30:39,650 --> 00:30:44,660 It's a mythology which is clearly influenced by Nordic mythology, classical mythology. 291 00:30:44,660 --> 00:30:50,270 But it's a new mythology is different. And later in Isaiah, if you turn the page number ten on the handout, 292 00:30:50,750 --> 00:30:59,209 he was even bolder in affirming and claiming is authorial freedom and originality in the use of myth of Atlantis. 293 00:30:59,210 --> 00:31:04,940 And I quote the legends of Numenera, the Atlantic myth. 294 00:31:05,300 --> 00:31:11,900 Uh, and I highlight my own use for my own purposes of the Atlantis legend, 295 00:31:12,590 --> 00:31:18,350 but not based on special knowledge, but on a special personal connection with this tradition. 296 00:31:19,590 --> 00:31:23,969 So you see, in the course of the second quarter, I think of time for it, 297 00:31:23,970 --> 00:31:30,320 which you will see the same kind of emphasis of the ownership to a certain extent to the spatial, spatial, personal concern. 298 00:31:30,840 --> 00:31:39,090 Nominal is my personal alteration of the Atlantis myth and tradition and accommodation, key world accommodation of it. 299 00:31:39,420 --> 00:31:47,700 To my general mythology, of all the mythical or archetypical images, this is the one most deeply seated in my imagination. 300 00:31:48,180 --> 00:31:50,969 You really? See, I was kind of gruff. 301 00:31:50,970 --> 00:31:57,810 We will say before talking is not interested in Plato, but is interested in the archetype and he's going down into the archetype. 302 00:31:58,830 --> 00:32:03,330 Not also how in the passages I've just read. Tolkien stresses that personally. 303 00:32:03,630 --> 00:32:08,040 It's a personal thing. The personal entity of this literature. 304 00:32:09,320 --> 00:32:17,450 In this kind of emphasis on the personality or in other letters, we see the emphasis on the individual, the peculiar, the particular, the spatial. 305 00:32:17,780 --> 00:32:27,079 The other, and the key words of the kind of very important elements in Tolkiens literary theory, which applies to both the production of this text, 306 00:32:27,080 --> 00:32:33,080 but also to the reception and quote from number 11 on the handout, and another passage from On First Stories, 307 00:32:33,410 --> 00:32:37,040 which I think is very beautiful and very relevant to what I'm trying to say. 308 00:32:37,940 --> 00:32:43,550 Literature and a quote walks from mind to mind and is does more genitive. 309 00:32:44,530 --> 00:32:52,950 It is at once more universal. And more importantly, particular if he speaks of bread or wine or stone or tea. 310 00:32:53,220 --> 00:32:58,920 It appeals to the whole of this things, to their ideas, to the event, to the original archetype. 311 00:32:59,250 --> 00:33:09,840 Yet that's really the paradox here with each year, so the recipient will give them to them a peculiar parcel embodiment in his imagination. 312 00:33:10,530 --> 00:33:15,839 Beautiful passage that really says how this the importance of the newness and the 313 00:33:15,840 --> 00:33:20,190 individuality in the person and not only applies when a new writer produces a new text, 314 00:33:20,370 --> 00:33:23,610 but also when we go and read the Lord of the rings each single time. 315 00:33:23,790 --> 00:33:31,140 So every other and literary event at the level of the production and the of the reception is always new and individual. 316 00:33:33,400 --> 00:33:40,480 At the same time. And that's also something that Tolkien says in the passage that just read this personal element of literature. 317 00:33:40,600 --> 00:33:44,490 It's my own for my own use. It's a special personal use. 318 00:33:44,500 --> 00:33:48,940 So it's a personal thing. Yet it's just one of two poles. 319 00:33:49,300 --> 00:33:58,000 We have another polar, no less, no less important, which is what Tolkien refers to as the universal or traditional. 320 00:33:58,570 --> 00:34:07,480 You got the particular individual, you got a version of the The Tale of Atlantis, which is Tolkien's all the embodiment of creation. 321 00:34:07,660 --> 00:34:12,550 But then you got the universal or interlocking and times the pattern or the motive. 322 00:34:13,660 --> 00:34:21,069 This contrast, this tension, almost dramatic tension of polarities, the personal and the universal is, 323 00:34:21,070 --> 00:34:25,149 of course, something that the literary authors said need to be talked about many, 324 00:34:25,150 --> 00:34:30,160 many times at this time in his time there was especially a great poet to a little critique, 325 00:34:30,160 --> 00:34:36,520 Tsilia told a very influential text, which is called tradition and the individual talent on this topic somehow. 326 00:34:37,000 --> 00:34:43,300 But it's quite clear how talking is given in a ways on that particular individual and yet also universal action. 327 00:34:43,720 --> 00:34:48,580 And there is especially an image which I put your number 11 on the end of the final passage, 328 00:34:48,580 --> 00:34:52,780 second passage, which I think helps to disentangle what was talking. 329 00:34:52,780 --> 00:34:56,320 So understanding of the polarities between the two different ideas, 330 00:34:56,410 --> 00:35:02,380 the individual and the universe and, and the quote from number 11 who can design a new leaf? 331 00:35:03,630 --> 00:35:06,480 Arthur wants to do something new. Who can design a new leaf? 332 00:35:07,050 --> 00:35:12,540 The patterns from batter to unfolding and the colours from spring to autumn were all discovered by men long ago. 333 00:35:13,170 --> 00:35:18,749 Again, the want to discuss what he's referring to, but it's clearly a debate going on in the inn at that time. 334 00:35:18,750 --> 00:35:22,079 So which is basically everything has already been said. 335 00:35:22,080 --> 00:35:27,210 So every new literary author cannot but repeat what was said in the ancient world. 336 00:35:27,540 --> 00:35:31,950 That's something that even my even ancient poets, like Terence said at the very beginning of his poem. 337 00:35:32,310 --> 00:35:38,730 New long form dictum, dictum supreme. Everything has already been said, but the old king says that is not to. 338 00:35:39,840 --> 00:35:47,430 Spring, of course, is not really less beautiful because we have seen or heard of other like events, like events. 339 00:35:47,970 --> 00:35:51,660 So like similar events, never from Walt's beginning to the world. 340 00:35:51,660 --> 00:35:58,560 So in the same event it is an event. So what I really like, it's an event similar to all the other events, but it's a new event. 341 00:35:59,220 --> 00:36:04,140 Each leaf of oak, ash and thorn is a unique embodiment of the pattern. 342 00:36:04,540 --> 00:36:13,200 A for some, this very maybe the embodiment, the first ever seen recognise the oaks that have put forth leaves for countless generations of men. 343 00:36:13,620 --> 00:36:16,880 So you see, it's a little event which is always new at all stages. 344 00:36:16,890 --> 00:36:21,870 It's also the time of the recipient. When we look at the leaf, it would be always something different. 345 00:36:22,650 --> 00:36:30,070 So if we kind of decode the analogy, we can say that according to Tolkien, every new personal little event, 346 00:36:30,840 --> 00:36:38,130 that is to say The Tale of Numenera, but also every new experiential event, Tolkien's dream of Atlantis. 347 00:36:38,580 --> 00:36:46,140 So Tolkien's experience in the world is a unique embodiment of an archetypical motive the decline. 348 00:36:46,290 --> 00:36:53,340 Things always collapse. The decline in a fallen human affairs of stock is said in the letter was affected to. 349 00:36:54,840 --> 00:37:00,780 Each embodiment, each leaf is related to all its previous and future embodiments. 350 00:37:01,290 --> 00:37:12,980 The Atalanta is linked, of course, to Plato's myth of Atlantis and how they relate, not they by direct influence, by, we may say, transitive property. 351 00:37:12,990 --> 00:37:18,899 That is to say, both Atlantis myth and talking are different attempts to tell the same event, 352 00:37:18,900 --> 00:37:25,170 to refer to the same event, the same pattern of the leaf a yet the terms of this relationship. 353 00:37:25,260 --> 00:37:29,850 That's also quite interesting in theoretical terms as regards the classical conception. 354 00:37:30,120 --> 00:37:36,010 So the relationship between these two cannot be easily explained in genealogical terms, 355 00:37:36,270 --> 00:37:41,610 neither, for that's what we do nowadays in our walk with a simple frame of intertextuality. 356 00:37:41,820 --> 00:37:46,380 For the people who have done no one into festivities, I am myself a intertextual critic. 357 00:37:48,330 --> 00:37:56,159 Sometimes this is not really good enough to explain how texts relate to each other, not even kin information, that is to say, source criticism. 358 00:37:56,160 --> 00:38:01,200 Trying to find for the source really completely answers through these influence. 359 00:38:01,230 --> 00:38:07,550 In a way, the inference remains unknown. In any way. 360 00:38:08,090 --> 00:38:12,350 There is an important implication that I will discuss in the final five minutes. 361 00:38:12,350 --> 00:38:15,800 I will ask you to jump a bit to number 13. 362 00:38:16,820 --> 00:38:21,440 Uh, so 12 on the handout, which is, uh, the father talking. 363 00:38:21,440 --> 00:38:26,480 Somehow this prefers to be a big diagnostic about this relation. 364 00:38:26,750 --> 00:38:34,430 It says, I know that many people, we spend many decades after my death to, um, to try to, to, uh, 365 00:38:34,880 --> 00:38:40,280 reconstruct the sources of my work, which is what we do, which is what they've been doing in a way for the whole time today. 366 00:38:40,400 --> 00:38:48,530 And yet that was not enough. In a way, the two tokens two attitude in front of this strange connection between different text. 367 00:38:48,980 --> 00:38:58,010 Was the one that he was referring to by, uh, saying that the, um, etymological connection between Atalanta and Numenera. 368 00:38:58,040 --> 00:39:01,210 Well, just a close chance. So you see, they what's. 369 00:39:01,310 --> 00:39:06,500 It's a curious chance. There is an element which is a bit mysterious, which cannot be fully control. 370 00:39:06,680 --> 00:39:13,790 Eh, probably, if you want to use psychoanalytical term and maybe other MongoDB related to something which goes deeper in the mind, 371 00:39:14,180 --> 00:39:18,050 in the heart of human beings with the archetypical experience of of human beings. 372 00:39:18,990 --> 00:39:32,010 So, to sum up, Tolkien considers his own literary endeavour as consisting producing a new personalised version of an archetypical theme or motive. 373 00:39:33,180 --> 00:39:38,670 This can also involve the alteration or accommodation of an earlier text, that is to say, 374 00:39:38,850 --> 00:39:44,340 a pattern of reception a yet rather than a source in a traditional sense. 375 00:39:44,670 --> 00:39:52,890 This is caused by Tolkien as just another earlier version of the same universal transcultural archetype. 376 00:39:54,070 --> 00:40:02,560 It is at this inner, deep level of literature, a human experience that all can suggest the real influence is found. 377 00:40:03,480 --> 00:40:10,410 Just like in the life of a tree. A new leaf is more influenced by its underlying pattern rather than by a leaf from a previous year. 378 00:40:11,370 --> 00:40:15,390 How this relationship works at this latter most superficial level is often unclear, 379 00:40:15,750 --> 00:40:20,220 and not, to me, is less uninteresting, at least according to talking. 380 00:40:21,060 --> 00:40:27,390 And this is also why, in contrast, in the quote, it is the particular use and recall from number 13. 381 00:40:27,810 --> 00:40:31,410 This is the particular use in a particular situation of any motiva. 382 00:40:31,650 --> 00:40:39,330 It is most interesting thing to consider. It is also to in uh, in talking on vision the classical reception. 383 00:40:40,290 --> 00:40:44,340 Thank you very much. Um. 384 00:40:48,630 --> 00:40:53,630 Before I leave you. Sorry, guys. Just a final thing. So you see that, uh, I had actually planned to go forward. 385 00:40:54,110 --> 00:40:59,550 Yeah, I had that for five points to make, which I cannot make because it's very late, and I would like to do a Q&A, 386 00:40:59,910 --> 00:41:06,450 but, uh, I will leave you to delve into it, which is basically to, um, which I would basically tell you, uh, 387 00:41:06,510 --> 00:41:14,520 in which I was trying to kind of explain what was the exactly Tolkiens particular use of the narrative decline in especially this can be answered, 388 00:41:14,520 --> 00:41:19,050 I think, by thinking about how this the decline narrative is associated with the ads. 389 00:41:19,380 --> 00:41:25,200 But it you see, there is a picture of my recent book, so you can read to explore more if you're interested. 390 00:41:25,770 --> 00:41:29,360 Thank you. All right. 391 00:41:29,360 --> 00:41:36,050 We have about between 10 and 15 minutes for questions. And I think we will start on this session with one from online if you have one. 392 00:41:37,350 --> 00:41:41,220 Okay, so anyone in the room. Would you like to ask Giuseppe a question? 393 00:41:41,970 --> 00:41:46,709 Sorry, I didn't mean to. Okay, discussion, but I'm so thrilled looking, doing this work. 394 00:41:46,710 --> 00:41:53,910 And I was so happy to see the book appearing because, again, scholars often forget that Tolkien started his life as a classicist. 395 00:41:54,330 --> 00:42:00,570 Salem. Maybe it's in the book, which I haven't read yet, but maybe you could use this time to explain this. 396 00:42:00,900 --> 00:42:08,310 Um, very crudely, I always understood that Lewis, who comes from classical background as well, 397 00:42:08,460 --> 00:42:14,460 still sort of classical tradition as, uh, kind of dominant in higher up the native tradition. 398 00:42:14,700 --> 00:42:21,330 Whereas for Tolkien, I think it's the other way round. Um, in a way, it's a little bit counterintuitive. 399 00:42:22,290 --> 00:42:30,210 Can you mean explain why, uh, the native tradition was, more importantly, was it just pure nationalism or like. 400 00:42:30,440 --> 00:42:34,700 Yes, I, I must say not too sure that that is taught, to be honest. 401 00:42:34,710 --> 00:42:41,340 Okay. I do I do agree that there is this sort of idea that Tolkien was more, uh, um, and in a way his work related that way. 402 00:42:41,340 --> 00:42:46,580 It is true that at the centre point, uh, he moved on from the classics, uh, but uh, 403 00:42:47,150 --> 00:42:51,870 uh, the idea that he forgot, forgot, uh, is classical thing is just a bit of a myth. 404 00:42:51,990 --> 00:42:57,150 Okay? To be honest, I don't think it's really true. I mean, there are a couple of passages from the letters, okay? 405 00:42:57,280 --> 00:43:01,769 These are extrapolated and then becomes the building of a of a big, uh, idea. 406 00:43:01,770 --> 00:43:02,819 But this is not really true. 407 00:43:02,820 --> 00:43:10,710 And I can tell you something which I discovered in the modern library just a couple of months ago, which is a text that you wrote in 1959. 408 00:43:10,950 --> 00:43:14,800 Okay. That's a text which is called Latin for the lady. 409 00:43:14,820 --> 00:43:20,820 Okay. It's a very long text. We're basically talking that goes on for a long time. 410 00:43:20,820 --> 00:43:24,090 Saying that Latin is the best language ever invented is a great language. 411 00:43:24,090 --> 00:43:28,799 And then it shows and it gives a very interesting history of, uh, uh, the, uh, 412 00:43:28,800 --> 00:43:34,640 of the Anglo-Saxon people and so on that one of the things he says there is that actually the old point for the Anglo Saxons, 413 00:43:34,650 --> 00:43:38,430 that they were Latinised and that the only people in the history of Western Europe. 414 00:43:38,520 --> 00:43:44,159 Okay, we may disagree with what he says, but clearly Tolkien was uh, uh, 415 00:43:44,160 --> 00:43:48,479 remained a classicist in is that even if it was a professor of English literature, Anglo-Saxon. 416 00:43:48,480 --> 00:43:56,250 But we need to forget that we did not forget that he made that move after ten years of being a classicist. 417 00:43:56,250 --> 00:43:58,620 So my students that were here in Oxford, I mean, 418 00:43:58,650 --> 00:44:05,250 certainly I have a much less knowledge of the ancient world that Tolkien had, uh, uh, in, uh, at the end of months. 419 00:44:05,250 --> 00:44:08,640 I mean, they were all classicist. I mean, that generation was all classicist. 420 00:44:09,180 --> 00:44:13,049 I think Tolkien, as always, wanted to move on. 421 00:44:13,050 --> 00:44:17,340 In a way, Turkey moved on, but they moved on was not like, uh uh, I don't really believe so. 422 00:44:17,340 --> 00:44:18,480 I really I'm very happy to be. 423 00:44:18,630 --> 00:44:24,060 I don't really believe that he thought that the Anglo-Saxon annulled the concrete, and it was more important than others, in a way. 424 00:44:24,270 --> 00:44:27,360 And even if the Lord of the rings, something people have been, uh, 425 00:44:27,360 --> 00:44:30,780 pointed out again and again, nowadays you have a lot of influence of modern literature. 426 00:44:30,810 --> 00:44:35,549 The hobbits are nothing to do with the classics have nothing to do with the Nordic saga. 427 00:44:35,550 --> 00:44:41,040 The hobbits are really more than characters coming from the novels of Dickens set and the others. 428 00:44:41,040 --> 00:44:44,759 Okay, so the Lord of the rings, and that's certainly the case. 429 00:44:44,760 --> 00:44:50,999 Lewis himself noted in his earlier review, is a book where which is able to bring together a lot of different things. 430 00:44:51,000 --> 00:44:55,530 You got the Anglo-Saxon, that is to say, the wrong people, the really Anglo-Saxon people, 431 00:44:55,710 --> 00:44:58,230 the old English people that know the people, the Roman people. 432 00:44:58,410 --> 00:45:04,500 But already the Numenoreans are not exactly just, uh, uh, Anglo-Saxon is any more complicated than that. 433 00:45:04,860 --> 00:45:08,490 And I would say that even for Lewis himself, I mean, I don't think that following him, 434 00:45:08,640 --> 00:45:12,060 I don't really see this big difference between the two with, you know, way. 435 00:45:13,600 --> 00:45:19,540 Thinking about it as two different things. So basically, you know, the one subset, I do think that we are wrong. 436 00:45:19,540 --> 00:45:24,340 I see do I do I do think we are wrong. And this depends again on many factors. 437 00:45:24,520 --> 00:45:27,610 Again, there are couple of passages in the letters. 438 00:45:27,610 --> 00:45:31,180 What he says seems to suggest that the novel The Killer was more interested for me in a way. 439 00:45:31,330 --> 00:45:34,809 But of course there is much more in the in the published letters. 440 00:45:34,810 --> 00:45:39,440 There's much more in the corpus, but also that it depends on the history of perception of Turkey, 441 00:45:39,460 --> 00:45:44,850 which is that the only people that for 20, 30, 40 years had the courage to walk on Tolkien. 442 00:45:44,860 --> 00:45:53,170 We have medievalist, which is all great, but Thomas sheep and others were all medievalist, so by their own nature they had no way to um. 443 00:45:54,160 --> 00:45:59,110 Use the kind of perspective, but I think that's just one ingredient in a much more complicated soup. 444 00:45:59,940 --> 00:46:06,220 Um, with what you're talking about, with talk and sort of personal versus traditional ideas. 445 00:46:06,370 --> 00:46:15,129 Do you ever get the sense that he's sort of it's some of it is unconscious to him, like he's that it's not that he's choosing his relations. 446 00:46:15,130 --> 00:46:19,600 It's like he seems to feel this sort of compulsion. I read a bit about it's like Dreams of Atlantis. 447 00:46:19,630 --> 00:46:22,810 Is there sort of like a yes? The answer is yes. 448 00:46:22,810 --> 00:46:26,680 I think the word unconscious is one of the most common objectives in the lighthouse. 449 00:46:26,680 --> 00:46:30,340 And so, especially in the passages where I tries to explain, is an experience, uh, 450 00:46:31,210 --> 00:46:37,720 quite often refers to the idea of unconsciousness, um, in the sense that, uh, I guess one could explain in different ways. 451 00:46:37,720 --> 00:46:44,550 So I don't think the talking will be ready to use a sort of a psychoanalytical framework to explain that. 452 00:46:44,710 --> 00:46:47,770 So, I mean, it does refer in a couple of unpublished letters to younger. 453 00:46:48,040 --> 00:46:52,240 So he was clearly aware with Jung and with the idea of Jung's archetypes and so on. 454 00:46:52,780 --> 00:46:57,129 But in the passage of, uh, um, fairy stories, he's very, very adamant that for him, 455 00:46:57,130 --> 00:47:02,380 the dreams he's talking about are not exactly the freedom Feldman deems that there is a 456 00:47:02,380 --> 00:47:08,350 difference in size between the dreaming of fantasy literature and the dreaming of psychoanalysis. 457 00:47:08,350 --> 00:47:11,049 If you want. Again, it would be wrong to distinguish between the two. 458 00:47:11,050 --> 00:47:14,650 But I feel like, uh, what is certainly a common thread is the idea of unconsciousness. 459 00:47:14,650 --> 00:47:20,260 That is to say that the that the author is not in full control of what he's doing when he's writing, 460 00:47:20,260 --> 00:47:25,510 so his rational mind is higher if you want higher level of the mind is not 461 00:47:25,510 --> 00:47:28,600 the one that displays most of the thing that goes on at the level of writing. 462 00:47:28,930 --> 00:47:32,079 He really says very often. 463 00:47:32,080 --> 00:47:36,580 He says, I wrote the Lord of the rings, and then I edited it, and then I also was, in a way, 464 00:47:36,580 --> 00:47:43,510 the first reader of my own work told he really finds himself not just a writer, as a reader at a very, very early stage. 465 00:47:43,870 --> 00:47:51,150 And this is kind of a combination of the two is also interesting because he allows allows us to connect someone like Ptolemy, 466 00:47:51,160 --> 00:47:58,240 we, the even postmodern thinker. So thinkers like Bakhtin about talked about the idea of the death of the author. 467 00:47:58,270 --> 00:48:00,099 In that sense, Tolkien was an author, 468 00:48:00,100 --> 00:48:06,790 was not in full possession of his own literary work in the kind of imagery used to explain that is exactly the image of dreaming, 469 00:48:06,790 --> 00:48:11,469 that is to say, the image of something which is remains unconscious to the higher. 470 00:48:11,470 --> 00:48:17,260 If you will mind again, it would be to discuss why, in this sense is not Freud, it's not the subconscious. 471 00:48:17,500 --> 00:48:21,820 I would prefer unconscious rather than subconscious, but that's a maybe a bit too complicated. 472 00:48:22,180 --> 00:48:28,089 So speaking of online questions, uh, before I ask the reader outside the questions, 473 00:48:28,090 --> 00:48:35,830 I have to say to our online audience where, sorry for not being able to provide a handout at this moment, I got many emails. 474 00:48:36,370 --> 00:48:46,030 Um, but we do have, um, actually, one question is very easy, and it's basically what was the name of the 1959 Tolkien text you referred to? 475 00:48:46,840 --> 00:48:50,919 Uh, and the other one is a more fleshed out question. 476 00:48:50,920 --> 00:48:58,389 And, uh, it refers to a narrative of decline so that our, um, a viewer asks, uh, 477 00:48:58,390 --> 00:49:05,680 whether it is related to the physical embodiment of decline or can it also mean an imaginary decline the narrative can have. 478 00:49:06,250 --> 00:49:12,100 So I think, yeah. So the first question, the quest is called the Latin for the Latin, still unpublished. 479 00:49:12,100 --> 00:49:15,969 As you know, there are plenty of unpublished material in the Tolkien Archive, 480 00:49:15,970 --> 00:49:21,010 which is great because it means that for we've been busy for a few other decades, I will come out. 481 00:49:21,010 --> 00:49:23,080 Uh, there is a new one coming out very soon. 482 00:49:23,170 --> 00:49:31,809 In fact, in the next couple of weeks, uh, which is called the Bovada of fragments, which is a, um, a sort of satirical piece on traffic in Oxford. 483 00:49:31,810 --> 00:49:35,530 So very, very relevant, I would say, to the current discussions. 484 00:49:36,130 --> 00:49:43,540 As for the people who live in us, for they will understand. On the second question instead, is on the physical or the imaginative decline. 485 00:49:43,660 --> 00:49:47,530 Again, we should discuss what exactly think the climate means. 486 00:49:47,530 --> 00:49:51,970 But, uh, certainly the climate is, first of all, physical. Yes, there's something about physical decline. 487 00:49:52,780 --> 00:49:55,450 And for someone like Tolkien to experience the Second World, 488 00:49:55,630 --> 00:50:01,180 First World War and the Second World War, and so is on the physical decline from an early age. 489 00:50:01,180 --> 00:50:06,700 I mean, something that we sometimes we forget. But, um, Tolkien was, in a way wounded in the First World War. 490 00:50:06,700 --> 00:50:08,979 And he came back. He was very ill for many months. 491 00:50:08,980 --> 00:50:17,530 He had to stay in the ospital, and he kept for all his life, uh, um, uh, very, very, very, very weak, as we know. 492 00:50:17,530 --> 00:50:21,399 They got ill again and again, but also clearly was wounded psychologically. 493 00:50:21,400 --> 00:50:29,200 I mean, the kind of Thomas that suffered in the First World War where, uh, and there was a strain of depression in his mind, 494 00:50:29,200 --> 00:50:33,159 which clearly can be somehow traced back to the trauma that he had to face in his early life. 495 00:50:33,160 --> 00:50:38,469 But but in kind of, in more, um, thinking, more imaginative terms. 496 00:50:38,470 --> 00:50:44,740 I mean, talking says in a letter that any story of made by men must be about the fall. 497 00:50:44,800 --> 00:50:53,230 So certainly Tolkien thought that, uh, this kind of idea of a fall or decline is somehow present in any possible story. 498 00:50:53,230 --> 00:50:58,850 The. Human minds can produce. Why is that? Again, physical decline is one thing, 499 00:50:58,850 --> 00:51:06,710 but I think talking will say that there is something even deeper which relates to what talking calls the sense of nostalgia for a lost Eden, 500 00:51:07,070 --> 00:51:15,049 for something that in a way, uh, and again, this could be speaking religious terms, the doctrine of the follow, the original sin and so on. 501 00:51:15,050 --> 00:51:23,870 But maybe even more general in psychological terms, this idea that, uh, who we are now and it's not exactly how we were supposed to be, 502 00:51:23,870 --> 00:51:27,390 this perception that we have made for greater things, that the things that were. 503 00:51:27,400 --> 00:51:31,360 But somehow in the past, I feel that's a kind of a general, uh, 504 00:51:31,370 --> 00:51:36,560 experience that the human imagination will say Venice, too, expressed from the very beginning. 505 00:51:36,830 --> 00:51:44,000 Thank you. Um, I'll try to keep this very quick. Just, um, I'm noting that you had said that the answers to you wanted to talk more about and just 506 00:51:44,000 --> 00:51:49,640 thinking about the the narrative of the client specifically and what a powerful thing it is, 507 00:51:49,700 --> 00:51:54,079 uh, in regard to how we think about ourselves and our culture. And of course, talking is aware of this. 508 00:51:54,080 --> 00:52:02,540 And you've heard earlier about how talking is very resistant to having a lot of grace specifically associated with Faulkner and, 509 00:52:02,540 --> 00:52:08,599 um, wondering about sort of how this use that our work and this sense of sort of like, 510 00:52:08,600 --> 00:52:12,960 well, if it was older and simpler, this veteran household thing might have, uh, 511 00:52:13,040 --> 00:52:19,769 wanted us to understand about the rings in regard to the sort of parallels, uh, of how that traditional, uh, sensibility. 512 00:52:19,770 --> 00:52:22,850 Yeah. Thank you. That's a big question. 513 00:52:22,880 --> 00:52:29,540 Again, I will try to make it very short, but if you think about the characters in the Lord of the rings, I got a question for yourself. 514 00:52:29,560 --> 00:52:33,810 Who do you think of the characters in the Lord of the rings that are most directly needs to, 515 00:52:33,860 --> 00:52:38,030 in a way that are more prone to think in life in times of decline? 516 00:52:42,110 --> 00:52:49,460 Oh yeah. Yes, yes, I agree with that. If you think about the ads and talk, they are all about obsessed with the memory. 517 00:52:49,730 --> 00:52:55,220 They want to move around. They have the little places, the little kingdoms, the lawyer and, and and Rivendell. 518 00:52:55,460 --> 00:52:57,980 When time doesn't flow away, doesn't pass away. 519 00:52:58,010 --> 00:53:05,720 The else that's talking explicitly says in the letters are the best embodiment of the sense of nostalgia for a vanished past. 520 00:53:06,050 --> 00:53:09,800 And they are obsessed with it. Donkey would say to the pointer. 521 00:53:09,980 --> 00:53:14,390 And that's something that he explicitly says to the point of becoming embalmers. 522 00:53:14,570 --> 00:53:20,540 They are embalmers. So the they are embalming because you see, if there is decline, then what we are supposed to do. 523 00:53:21,110 --> 00:53:27,409 And of course, our temptation is to be a conservative again, the want to go into politics now, but conservative in a general sense. 524 00:53:27,410 --> 00:53:31,310 So things are going bad. So what are we supposed to do to keep things as they are? 525 00:53:31,850 --> 00:53:35,600 And that's really what you are subduing. If you think about it, that's very problematic. 526 00:53:35,900 --> 00:53:44,570 And there is one moment in the all of the drawings where the sort of a clash of perspectives really come to us to flesh if you want to, 527 00:53:44,570 --> 00:53:47,690 which is in the dialogue between the Gallagher and Frodo, 528 00:53:47,690 --> 00:53:50,209 because Gallagher, Frodo is there and she says, 529 00:53:50,210 --> 00:53:58,760 and he says to take the ring for Galadriel to keep the ring will be to keep things exactly as they are, at least in appearance. 530 00:53:59,390 --> 00:54:05,270 And she says, no, and I pass the test. But I know that by passing the test, I allow logging to be destroyed. 531 00:54:05,570 --> 00:54:08,809 Log. It is destroyed in at the end of the Lord of the rings. 532 00:54:08,810 --> 00:54:13,160 The past will go away. The elves will be the last. Because that's basically the history. 533 00:54:13,160 --> 00:54:22,730 What the history of our, um, wants. But if you think about it, I mean, the gold, the long, it is the golden age wood is the golden wood. 534 00:54:22,970 --> 00:54:26,870 But the gold of the Logan does not completely disappear. What happens to the gold? 535 00:54:26,870 --> 00:54:32,749 It goes to the Shire. And in fact, the following year we got all the new little hobbits with blonde hair. 536 00:54:32,750 --> 00:54:37,610 Okay. And clearly there is a connection there. So that is the gold that was moved from the log in. 537 00:54:37,610 --> 00:54:42,780 And that's the kind of Tolkien's perspective, which is it is a long, quite long answer, buddy, 538 00:54:42,850 --> 00:54:48,410 which is like you take a narrative of the climb, which is something that says something about who we are, but not everything. 539 00:54:48,650 --> 00:54:53,850 So every single experience of mankind is bad or good. 540 00:54:54,110 --> 00:55:00,049 Eventually it's sort of integrated into a larger all, every single leaf if you want to, because then part of a tree. 541 00:55:00,050 --> 00:55:04,630 So you do have the narrative decline. You do have the answer and talk a love the answer. 542 00:55:04,850 --> 00:55:08,480 But the elves are not the kind of the best people to look at, okay? 543 00:55:08,660 --> 00:55:14,090 Even the elves themselves need somehow to go up. I need to accept that the perception of history is not complete. 544 00:55:15,640 --> 00:55:20,230 Well. Thank you. We have to end this talk now. But please, a round of applause for Giuseppe Bertini.