1 00:00:04,070 --> 00:00:07,120 [Auto-generated transcript. Edits may have been applied for clarity.] Okay, ladies and gentlemen, I think we will make a start. 2 00:00:07,130 --> 00:00:10,970 Thank you very much for coming. Welcome back. Hope the lunch was good. 3 00:00:11,450 --> 00:00:18,110 Um, and a big welcome to all the people who are joining us online. It's about 500 at the moment, so we're reaching quite an audience. 4 00:00:18,440 --> 00:00:25,880 Um, this afternoon session is following on in the history of fantasy literature, and we're going to concentrate on medieval literature. 5 00:00:26,180 --> 00:00:29,150 So first of all, if I could introduce Gabriel Schenck. 6 00:00:29,510 --> 00:00:37,280 Uh, Doctor Schenck is the co-founder and Coco runs the annual Tolkien lecture series on fantasy literature at Pembroke. 7 00:00:37,700 --> 00:00:41,750 Um, he's a writer of fiction and non-fiction and has taught at Oxford University. 8 00:00:42,020 --> 00:00:46,790 And also it's Signum University. And if you don't know Signum, you should definitely look it up, 9 00:00:46,790 --> 00:00:52,070 because it's a way of sort of doing online courses, particularly around all kinds of speculative fiction. 10 00:00:52,460 --> 00:00:58,490 And Gabriel researches into fantasy literature and the inklings, and he's going to speak today a bit about Arthurian myths. 11 00:00:59,680 --> 00:01:03,100 Thank you very much. Good afternoon everyone. 12 00:01:03,820 --> 00:01:08,950 Over the next ten minutes, I'm going to tell you about Arthurian literature and how it overlaps with fantasy. 13 00:01:09,610 --> 00:01:15,250 I will argue that just because a text is messy and complex and crosses over into multiple genres, 14 00:01:15,400 --> 00:01:26,110 as Arthurian literature often does, it doesn't mean that it can also be an important example of fantasy by Arthurian literature. 15 00:01:26,380 --> 00:01:36,520 I just mean stories related to King Arthur about him, characters linked to him, or just set in a world in which he exists and is referenced. 16 00:01:37,840 --> 00:01:43,360 Arthur himself is a legendary king who probably never existed. 17 00:01:43,900 --> 00:01:51,610 I always feel like I'm breaking people's hearts when I tell them that, at least if there was a real historical figure behind the stories, 18 00:01:51,790 --> 00:01:56,710 then he would have been so different from what we mean by King Arthur that he might as well be unrelated. 19 00:01:57,790 --> 00:02:01,660 But whilst Arthur's historicity is uncertain, 20 00:02:01,840 --> 00:02:10,780 what is certain is that people have been telling stories about Arthur and his related characters for centuries, around a thousand years or more. 21 00:02:11,860 --> 00:02:18,850 And at this point, I could go into extreme detail about the dating of texts like Good Arthur and so on. 22 00:02:19,090 --> 00:02:22,930 Um, which is why there's a question mark up to a thousand years. 23 00:02:22,930 --> 00:02:29,050 But, um, the take home point to this point is just that people have been telling stories about Arthur for a very long time. 24 00:02:31,060 --> 00:02:41,530 Arthur's story is also not restricted to a single version, as Tracy D'Eon, author of the Legend Born series of young adult fantasy novels, writes. 25 00:02:43,170 --> 00:02:48,150 Author Rihanna is absorptive and has always invited invention and reinvention. 26 00:02:48,750 --> 00:02:58,170 Author exists in a network of narratives. There is no single story, no sacred text, no definitive version, no single voice. 27 00:02:58,830 --> 00:03:04,440 Instead, there are many versions of many legends, reimaginings and retellings. 28 00:03:05,790 --> 00:03:10,530 As such, Arthurian stories can take any shape and fit into any genre, 29 00:03:10,740 --> 00:03:16,230 including science fiction set in the far future, with Arthur waking from a long Sleep. 30 00:03:17,160 --> 00:03:23,490 Young adult dramas set in American high schools where Arthur has been reincarnated as a teenage girl. 31 00:03:24,360 --> 00:03:30,810 Even cosmic horror Reimaginings, in which Arthur and his knights battle creatures from a different dimension. 32 00:03:32,040 --> 00:03:37,500 All of these could be described as speculative and therefore in a very broad sense, as fantasy. 33 00:03:37,980 --> 00:03:42,480 But some Arthurian texts are closer to fantasy than others. 34 00:03:43,980 --> 00:03:50,310 Now, fantasy literature, as we've already heard this morning, is harder to define than Arthurian literature, 35 00:03:50,790 --> 00:03:54,660 but we can easily pick out some of its commonly shared components, 36 00:03:55,470 --> 00:04:01,170 such as magic a vaguely defined, medieval esque setting, 37 00:04:01,170 --> 00:04:10,800 not necessarily European supernatural creatures such as elves, dragons, griffins, etc. characters or quests. 38 00:04:11,370 --> 00:04:15,480 Uh, often in the context of a fight between good and evil. 39 00:04:16,590 --> 00:04:20,760 This isn't my attempt to do a perfect definition of fantasy. 40 00:04:20,760 --> 00:04:24,210 This is just some components. Um, to get us started. 41 00:04:26,070 --> 00:04:31,620 Arthurian texts can also that also contain these elements and could be easily considered. 42 00:04:31,770 --> 00:04:39,330 Fantasy texts include. The aforementioned Legend Born series by Tracy Dillon began in 2020. 43 00:04:39,720 --> 00:04:43,710 And Lev Grossman The Bright Sword, published in 2024. 44 00:04:45,630 --> 00:04:53,370 But once, the Once and Future King is another example, and the one I'm going to spend the rest of my time exploring with you. 45 00:04:56,060 --> 00:04:59,420 White was an English writer born in 1906. 46 00:04:59,660 --> 00:05:07,280 Died in 1964 who published a novel about King Arthur's childhood titled The Sword in the Stone in 1938. 47 00:05:08,260 --> 00:05:13,090 He followed this with sequels, continuing to follow Arthur's story as he becomes king, 48 00:05:13,360 --> 00:05:20,230 establishes his Knights of the Round Table, and navigates court drama, including his wife's affair and his son's rebellion. 49 00:05:21,370 --> 00:05:26,740 The Witch in the woods was published in 1939. The Ill Made Knight in 1940. 50 00:05:27,010 --> 00:05:30,310 And finally The Once and Future King in 1958. 51 00:05:31,420 --> 00:05:37,299 This last one was a four part novel, which combined new versions of the first three books, 52 00:05:37,300 --> 00:05:42,100 with a fourth concluding part taking readers up to Arthur's final battle. 53 00:05:44,000 --> 00:05:53,090 White deliberately resists a specific time period as his setting, instead setting his work in a vaguely medieval period. 54 00:05:54,230 --> 00:06:00,770 As the scholar Elizabeth Brewer notes, white starts The Sword in the Stone in an implied 12th century, 55 00:06:00,950 --> 00:06:04,430 but seems to move forward several centuries by the end of the novel. 56 00:06:05,970 --> 00:06:14,880 He also includes numerous anachronisms, including Eton College, founded in 1440, port, a drink from the 17th century, 57 00:06:15,240 --> 00:06:20,760 and even an illustration which included a Nazi swastika and a communist hammer and sickle. 58 00:06:21,120 --> 00:06:24,150 I see, and here. So this is from the first edition. Um. 59 00:06:24,420 --> 00:06:29,250 Uh, where you see elements from White's time in 1938. 60 00:06:29,580 --> 00:06:37,260 Uh, put into this kind of vaguely medieval, 12th century, 15th century period about, um, King Arthur. 61 00:06:38,820 --> 00:06:47,850 And in doing this we followed the approach of Sir Thomas Malory, um, in his own Arthurian work, written and published in the late 15th century. 62 00:06:48,870 --> 00:06:57,240 As white wrote in a letter in 1939, I am trying to write of an imaginary world which was imagined in the 15th century. 63 00:06:58,200 --> 00:07:05,340 I'm taking the 15th century as a provisional forward limit, and often darting back to the positively Gaelic past. 64 00:07:06,120 --> 00:07:11,040 Mallory and I are both dreaming. We care very little for exact dates. 65 00:07:12,860 --> 00:07:16,670 Now, this isn't always the approach of Arthurian writers. 66 00:07:17,420 --> 00:07:24,860 Some, such as Rosemary Sutcliff in Sword at Sunset, published in 1963, and Marion Zimmer Bradley and Mists of Avalon, 67 00:07:25,010 --> 00:07:32,780 published in 1983, set the narratives in a consistent time period, and it's close to a realistic setting as possible. 68 00:07:33,230 --> 00:07:38,990 The post-Roman early Middle Ages, which, if Arthur was real, is around the time he would have lived. 69 00:07:40,080 --> 00:07:45,810 We might say these texts are closer to historical fiction, even though they also contain some magic. 70 00:07:47,210 --> 00:07:52,460 But by not attempting to write realistically or even have a consistent time period. 71 00:07:52,730 --> 00:08:02,480 White creates what he says in his own words, is an imaginary world which brings this author in work closer to other fantasy texts. 72 00:08:04,310 --> 00:08:07,760 He also includes magic, particularly in The Sword in the Stone, 73 00:08:07,760 --> 00:08:15,649 where Merlin turns the young Arthur into a variety of animals to teach him lessons about good leadership and supernatural creatures, 74 00:08:15,650 --> 00:08:26,240 including griffins and unicorns. Here we see Merlin as depicted in the Disney animated version from 1963, using spell to pack items away into his bag. 75 00:08:27,590 --> 00:08:34,640 White's characters also go on quests, namely the quest for the Holy Grail and Arthur's quest to turn his knights 76 00:08:34,910 --> 00:08:39,920 desire to fight and be strong into positive causes rather than into conflict. 77 00:08:40,550 --> 00:08:43,040 And this is all in the context of good versus evil. 78 00:08:44,180 --> 00:08:52,490 So if you return to this list of common components in fantasy, we can see that the Once and Future King contains all of them, 79 00:08:52,880 --> 00:08:56,660 making it easy to see how it could be considered a fantasy text. 80 00:08:57,830 --> 00:09:01,280 But it's not as simple as just calling it fantasy and moving on. 81 00:09:02,270 --> 00:09:10,220 A lot of these components magic spells, supernatural creatures, and quests are found more at the beginning of the novel, 82 00:09:10,700 --> 00:09:16,160 and the sword in the Stone and fade as the novel progresses through the other three parts. 83 00:09:18,280 --> 00:09:25,290 In the Once and Future King, the time period becomes more consistently 15th century, and even the fight between good and evil takes a back seat. 84 00:09:25,300 --> 00:09:30,970 After a more philosophical discussion of why humans go to war is is introduced at the very end. 85 00:09:32,300 --> 00:09:38,600 This is why the scholar Anna Lou Pack described The Once and Future King as the book that grows up. 86 00:09:39,980 --> 00:09:45,350 We could say that it starts as fantasy and ends up being closer to historical fiction or epic. 87 00:09:46,690 --> 00:09:52,210 But we don't need to do that. We don't need to choose a single category for this novel, or indeed any novel. 88 00:09:52,840 --> 00:09:57,910 The author and fantasy author Lev Grossman said this about White's work. 89 00:09:59,510 --> 00:10:04,370 The sword in the Stone set, the standard by which I judge all historical fiction. 90 00:10:05,150 --> 00:10:12,410 It is also the most perfect story of a childhood ever committed to paper, and it is only the first part of the Once and Future King. 91 00:10:13,490 --> 00:10:19,220 White took hold of the ultimate English epic and recasts it in modern literary language. 92 00:10:20,750 --> 00:10:26,060 The sword in the Stone was published in 1938, the year after J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit, 93 00:10:26,570 --> 00:10:31,370 and I often wonder why white isn't considered one of the founding fathers of modern fantasy, 94 00:10:31,670 --> 00:10:36,920 the way that Tolkien and Chris Lewis are perhaps one day in the future he will be. 95 00:10:38,150 --> 00:10:46,760 As Grossman says, White's work can be seen as historical fiction, children's story, epic, and a foundational text in the fantasy genre. 96 00:10:48,500 --> 00:10:51,379 Perhaps the fact that it can be classed in so many different categories, 97 00:10:51,380 --> 00:10:55,010 and is part of the long and varied tradition of people telling stories about King Arthur, 98 00:10:55,520 --> 00:11:01,250 which means that the once future king hasn't been given the attention it might deserve as a fantasy text. 99 00:11:02,930 --> 00:11:12,410 So in conclusion, when considering fantasy. Don't ignore Arthurian literature, even when it is a bit messy and complex like the Once and Future King. 100 00:11:13,070 --> 00:11:18,900 If you do, you might not only miss out on some great stories, but also, uh, 101 00:11:18,980 --> 00:11:24,740 you might not only miss out on some great stories, but also unnecessarily limits what you mean by fantasy. 102 00:11:25,250 --> 00:11:26,030 Thank you very much. 103 00:11:30,400 --> 00:11:39,730 I think this is why we speak with Grossman about why it should be considered in the same category as the founder of modern fantasy. 104 00:11:41,590 --> 00:11:47,770 Yeah, I mean, the whole concept of the founder of modern fantasy is incredibly complex, and I'm not sure I agree with that concept. 105 00:11:47,800 --> 00:11:54,610 Right, right. So, I mean, as as Professor Roberts said this morning, you know, you can trace so many roots back to so many different places. 106 00:11:54,610 --> 00:11:58,569 So it depends what you mean by modern fantasy. I certainly think he's incredibly important. 107 00:11:58,570 --> 00:12:05,680 And people should read the ones The Future King and not be put off by the fact that it kind of doesn't quite fit perfectly into any particular genre. 108 00:12:06,880 --> 00:12:13,090 Um, and I think I also, it's really interesting to think of the ways that it fits alongside things like, 109 00:12:13,090 --> 00:12:16,540 uh, Chronicles of Narnia, uh, and the Lord of the Rings The Hobbit. 110 00:12:17,410 --> 00:12:21,460 Um, in fact, I mean, um, it was Milton Waldman. 111 00:12:21,550 --> 00:12:30,070 Uh, uh, who would have advised Bill Collins not to publish The Once and Future King in 1941, which is when white originally tried to get it published. 112 00:12:30,430 --> 00:12:36,130 Um, and then later on tried to bring Tolkien's work over tolerance for publication in 1950. 113 00:12:36,370 --> 00:12:44,110 Um, so you can see, uh, the way that people at the time was sort of seeing the once future King and the Lord of the rings was quite similar. 114 00:12:44,380 --> 00:12:49,690 Uh, and so I think today, uh, we should sort of read them in the same. 115 00:12:50,140 --> 00:12:55,240 Um, or if someone's reading Lord of the rings, you should also read the one speech King and vice versa. 116 00:12:55,480 --> 00:13:00,190 Um, we shouldn't sort of split them apart just because one's author and one's, of course, in quotes, fantasy. 117 00:13:00,310 --> 00:13:04,180 So I guess that's what I would say. Thank you, thank you. Uh oh. 118 00:13:04,180 --> 00:13:07,690 I've not seen that insight. 119 00:13:08,140 --> 00:13:18,400 Oh, thank you. Thank you very much. I think that it's for, um, genealogy from Malory through Spenser to Tennyson. 120 00:13:18,400 --> 00:13:24,670 And then why? I mean, you can do, um. I mean, Spencer's doing quite a different thing, but then so is Tennyson and Malory. 121 00:13:25,090 --> 00:13:30,460 Uh, and indeed White's. I mean, white's sort of going back to Malory, but actually, you know, apart from the fact that he, 122 00:13:31,480 --> 00:13:36,280 uh, blurs timelines, he's he's also doing very different things as well. 123 00:13:36,310 --> 00:13:43,900 Um, so I think, I think the, the project of sort of tracing like a line between these different authors is possible, 124 00:13:44,680 --> 00:13:47,530 but in my opinion, sort of misses the point of Arthurian literature, 125 00:13:47,530 --> 00:13:52,839 which is that it is messy and different, and every author is sort of responding to a previous author or authors, 126 00:13:52,840 --> 00:13:57,700 but also doing their own thing as well. Um, which isn't to say that you can't do it. 127 00:13:57,700 --> 00:14:03,850 I just that's just my, uh, my approach is I don't think we should be too smooth and to linear about it. 128 00:14:04,890 --> 00:14:07,920 Thank you. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you.