1 00:00:04,010 --> 00:00:07,579 [Auto-generated transcript. Edits may have been applied for clarity.] Right onto our second speaker and this time for a longer presentation. 2 00:00:07,580 --> 00:00:11,960 I'm very pleased to welcome Welcome Pond West from Regent's Park College here at Oxford. 3 00:00:12,410 --> 00:00:18,950 Edward Bond teaches Old and Middle English literature. Uh, he's a researcher in Old Norse as well. 4 00:00:19,310 --> 00:00:25,310 Um, and he's going to be taking up the wider subject of the importance of medieval literature to the fantastic. 5 00:00:25,790 --> 00:00:28,490 Thank you both. Well, thank you for having me here. 6 00:00:30,440 --> 00:00:38,480 I wanted to start the discussion with by by mentioning a letter of J.R.R. Tolkien's and what she was 7 00:00:38,840 --> 00:00:44,629 and what she he advises that if one of your children is to ask you whether dragons are still real, 8 00:00:44,630 --> 00:00:49,790 you don't answer. No, you answer instead. Oh, I don't think there are dragons in England anymore. 9 00:00:50,840 --> 00:00:59,360 And I wanted to start with this because I like the sensitivity to hoping that you don't, um, ruin the possibility of the fantastic for your children, 10 00:00:59,630 --> 00:01:03,980 but also specifically with the fact that it locates the fantastic in one of two places, 11 00:01:03,980 --> 00:01:09,080 either a long time ago there are not dragons in England anymore, or somewhere else altogether. 12 00:01:09,080 --> 00:01:11,540 Geographically, they aren't in England. 13 00:01:12,210 --> 00:01:16,990 I'm going to start with the point about them being elsewhere geographic, because I'm not going to spend very long on it, and that's that. 14 00:01:17,030 --> 00:01:21,530 There's a long history of locating the fantastic in places other than here. 15 00:01:21,980 --> 00:01:26,059 Um, in the medieval period writings of John Mandeville and Marco Polo, 16 00:01:26,060 --> 00:01:30,290 though he really did visit the East, he added many fantastical elements to his stories, 17 00:01:30,590 --> 00:01:37,760 or the stories of Prester John or John, who was thought to have existed variously in India or somewhere in the Orient, 18 00:01:37,760 --> 00:01:41,090 or perhaps out in Mongolia, or down even in Ethiopia. 19 00:01:41,480 --> 00:01:46,250 I'll attest to ideas of there being fantastical places somewhere away from us that 20 00:01:46,250 --> 00:01:51,020 are vastly more interesting and perhaps magical than what we encounter every day. 21 00:01:51,950 --> 00:02:01,549 I want to touch on those to mention that medieval people did have some idea of locating the fantastic someplace other than where they were before, 22 00:02:01,550 --> 00:02:07,370 kind of moving on mostly to the chronological distance between between us and the fantastic. 23 00:02:07,850 --> 00:02:12,530 I like Tolkien's quote both as a jumping off point to mentioning this as a theme in medieval literature, 24 00:02:12,530 --> 00:02:19,309 but also as a theme in modern writing because of the way it impacts the way we look at the fantastic. 25 00:02:19,310 --> 00:02:24,030 Now, Gabriel mentioned that. There we go. 26 00:02:24,300 --> 00:02:31,620 The one of the most popular traits and modern fantasy is to locate it in a kind of medieval past, 27 00:02:31,620 --> 00:02:35,730 or a fantastical otherworld with a highly medieval aesthetic. 28 00:02:36,480 --> 00:02:40,140 And I want to start with these three thinkers. Not if I'm going to dwell on very long, either. 29 00:02:40,500 --> 00:02:46,950 Over on the left, you have Max Faber, who popularised ideas about the disenchantment of the modern world. 30 00:02:47,370 --> 00:02:51,929 And the middle. You have Carl Jung, who really also popularised disenchantment in slightly different ways. 31 00:02:51,930 --> 00:02:56,190 And over there is the Canadian Roman Catholic philosopher philosopher Charles Taylor, 32 00:02:56,580 --> 00:03:00,840 who I've been getting lots of questions about in my time at Oxford and who previously I'd never heard of. 33 00:03:00,960 --> 00:03:08,190 But apparently he's really popularised the idea of disenchantment. All of them sort of pin the loss of enchantment in the world on. 34 00:03:08,700 --> 00:03:13,139 Well, certainly Faber and Taylor pin it on the Protestant Reformation, 35 00:03:13,140 --> 00:03:18,660 the idea that suddenly you have a choice of deciding what is true and no things are no longer accepted. 36 00:03:18,660 --> 00:03:24,330 Simply metaphysical properties of things are no longer given, they're no longer accepted without question. 37 00:03:24,570 --> 00:03:29,020 And this is thought to have begun the process that led to things like, um, 38 00:03:29,100 --> 00:03:33,690 enlightenment thought and modern science and other aspects of modern thought that separate 39 00:03:33,690 --> 00:03:39,059 us from the medieval and since standard historical periodisation into the medieval period, 40 00:03:39,060 --> 00:03:45,450 broadly around the time of the Reformation. This rings true with the way that we characterise the fantastic by medieval a little bit. 41 00:03:45,450 --> 00:03:53,189 So I thought they're a nice place to start. Um, young in the middle talks really more on how disenchantment applies to us not seeing 42 00:03:53,190 --> 00:03:57,120 the significance in the sort of the metaphysical significance behind things. 43 00:03:58,460 --> 00:04:00,770 Because all of them popularise the talk of disenchantment, 44 00:04:00,770 --> 00:04:06,070 and because it all seems to send us back to the Middle Ages for what we look for and what makes good fantasy. 45 00:04:06,080 --> 00:04:14,450 I thought they would also be good thinkers to bring into this discussion, particularly in how they impact our looking at medieval. 46 00:04:15,480 --> 00:04:19,400 The medieval aesthetic and medieval talk, and further thinkers have followed in their their thoughts. 47 00:04:19,400 --> 00:04:23,660 Several more I hear about frequently at Oxford men like Eamonn Duffy and Brad Gregory, 48 00:04:23,660 --> 00:04:30,830 who also talk of disenchantment beginning with the Reformation, an idea that I'm sure Tolkien had some sympathy for as a Roman Catholic himself. 49 00:04:31,700 --> 00:04:37,610 Um, but I also wanted to move from them to the medieval period with this quote from Chaucer. 50 00:04:37,760 --> 00:04:44,690 And I think this ties in nicely with Gabriel's presentation and the old days of King Arthur, of which the Britons speaking with great honour. 51 00:04:45,080 --> 00:04:50,730 All was this land fulfilled of fairy, the elf queen with her jolly campaign or sorry company. 52 00:04:51,380 --> 00:04:54,550 I was trying to do the modern English pronunciation, and because I'm nervous, I. 53 00:04:54,850 --> 00:05:01,430 I bungled all of them. Uh, this was, um, danced full often and many a green mead. 54 00:05:01,610 --> 00:05:05,390 This was the old opinion, as I read, I speak of many hundred years ago. 55 00:05:05,630 --> 00:05:09,230 But now can no man see none elves no more. For now. 56 00:05:09,230 --> 00:05:13,430 The great charity and prayers of limb to limb tours and other holy friars. 57 00:05:13,880 --> 00:05:20,090 So medieval folk and to some extent associated disenchantment with the coming of Christianity. 58 00:05:20,750 --> 00:05:28,490 Um, so some common themes that tie their view of an enchanted past together with ours, even as we look to their presence as our past. 59 00:05:29,970 --> 00:05:34,590 Other separations from the enchanted past have occurred throughout history. 60 00:05:34,710 --> 00:05:39,870 Herodotus looks back at the building of the pyramids in Egypt is something that must have been absolutely fantastical. 61 00:05:39,900 --> 00:05:46,979 He's writing in the fifth century BC. Homer looks back at a time when gods and men took part in the same sociopolitical conflicts. 62 00:05:46,980 --> 00:05:51,240 And he's writing probably if if there is a Homer at all in the eighth century BC. 63 00:05:51,690 --> 00:05:57,749 Um, the book of Genesis and the Bible looks back at a time before Noah's flood when there were Nephilim, whatever that means. 64 00:05:57,750 --> 00:06:03,420 Possibly giants walking the earth. So it's not exactly new to the modern period. 65 00:06:03,420 --> 00:06:08,399 There might be something very distinct about the enchantment we think we've lost. That does throw us back to the Middle Ages, 66 00:06:08,400 --> 00:06:13,320 but you can look at fantastic literature from really throughout the sweep of history 67 00:06:13,320 --> 00:06:16,680 to look at people thinking that something's been lost from previous time period. 68 00:06:17,550 --> 00:06:22,020 Um, sometimes that which has been lost is something that is worth mourning, 69 00:06:22,020 --> 00:06:25,350 and sometimes it's something that we're very grateful to have gotten rid of. 70 00:06:25,980 --> 00:06:29,880 Um, medieval literature will feature a little bit of both. 71 00:06:30,390 --> 00:06:35,700 So I want to start with one. That's not a stance that's not clearly good or bad, at least at first glance. 72 00:06:36,060 --> 00:06:43,230 And that's an Anglo-Saxon poem called The Ruin. You'll probably be familiar with the arrival of the English into these islands, 73 00:06:43,500 --> 00:06:47,460 right around the time that the Roman legions were withdrawing, sometime after 412. 74 00:06:47,760 --> 00:06:53,790 The exact details are not entirely known to us, but the English did encounter the ruins of Roman buildings, 75 00:06:54,270 --> 00:06:58,860 and this one seems to have provoked a special and a special degree of existential dread. 76 00:06:58,860 --> 00:07:04,200 And the poet, um, who looks upon the, uh, the ruins as a rat leeches. 77 00:07:04,200 --> 00:07:10,740 There is this whale stone where the bracken burps, that a birthstone burrows into your work, 78 00:07:11,940 --> 00:07:15,360 looking back at what he believes to be the ancient work of giants. 79 00:07:15,750 --> 00:07:21,690 Because who else could have composed, sorry, constructed something so extraordinary as the Roman ruins? 80 00:07:21,810 --> 00:07:24,959 That's some kind of art form that's been lost to the Anglo-Saxons. 81 00:07:24,960 --> 00:07:26,880 So we think probably mostly built in would. 82 00:07:28,190 --> 00:07:34,700 The Giants as a theme may very likely connect back to that same mention of the Nephilim in the Book of Genesis. 83 00:07:34,730 --> 00:07:39,500 It's not 100% clear from this poem, but another bit of Old English writing you'll be more familiar with. 84 00:07:39,830 --> 00:07:44,899 Where it is much clearer is Beowulf, where Grendel is descended from Cain, 85 00:07:44,900 --> 00:07:51,350 and Cain and his progeny are thought to have been wiped off of the face of the world in the same flood that destroyed the Nephilim. 86 00:07:51,350 --> 00:07:56,540 And so there's sort of an implication when giants are mentioned as among the offspring of Cain, 87 00:07:56,810 --> 00:08:00,469 that that fleeting reference to the sons of God marrying the daughters of men, 88 00:08:00,470 --> 00:08:02,840 and there were giants on the world in the time in Genesis, 89 00:08:03,170 --> 00:08:08,090 could be a reference to all the descendants of Cain, among whom are also mentioned Orkney, us and of us. 90 00:08:08,780 --> 00:08:12,109 Um. So other fantastical creatures. 91 00:08:12,110 --> 00:08:15,320 And of course, Grendel is a shock to the community and [INAUDIBLE], right? 92 00:08:15,350 --> 00:08:18,980 He is emphatically not supposed to exist anymore. 93 00:08:19,670 --> 00:08:26,290 So there are elements of the fantastic coming back into the medieval imagination as an element of the past that's not supposed to exist, 94 00:08:26,300 --> 00:08:30,290 not as a piece of the past up there they're longing for in wishing they still had. 95 00:08:31,740 --> 00:08:37,860 Which I think is an interesting counterpoint to some of our talk of fantasy work, provokes a longing for some kind of a lost past in us. 96 00:08:39,240 --> 00:08:44,639 Both approaches to the past are evident in Beowulf, though, um, we might talk, I think, 97 00:08:44,640 --> 00:08:52,020 at great length about the role of a lost past talked about throughout the poem, certainly its relationship with the theme of death. 98 00:08:52,920 --> 00:09:02,680 Um, the poem begins with shield shavings funeral, which is a spectacle, and throughout the poem we're encountered, we encounter, um, 99 00:09:02,910 --> 00:09:06,350 great descriptions of extraordinary wealth, lots of gold, uh, 100 00:09:06,390 --> 00:09:11,459 seems to have characterised the medieval English understanding of their their pre-Christian past. 101 00:09:11,460 --> 00:09:20,820 Gold and rings, and Lord is giving rings, Hale wrote, is a spectacular hall, also covered in gold and covered in and with an extraordinary tile floor, 102 00:09:20,820 --> 00:09:26,670 evocative more of the Roman ruins than of the what we think Anglo-Saxon wood buildings looked like. 103 00:09:27,090 --> 00:09:31,590 Um, but we also know from the narrator that Hale wrote, is doomed to be destroyed by fire. 104 00:09:31,590 --> 00:09:38,219 So there's a lingering notion that much of the wealth and much of the extravagance of this lost world will all be lost. 105 00:09:38,220 --> 00:09:43,320 And that's going to happen sometime between the poem and the time that the reader is listening to it. 106 00:09:43,470 --> 00:09:50,040 And nowhere is this more evident than in the quote that I've put here, which is toward the end of the poem, 107 00:09:50,520 --> 00:09:57,270 which describes Bale's death and the fear that the guests have, knowing that their Lord has gone, 108 00:09:57,270 --> 00:10:04,030 that they might soon be gone, to the idea that the extraordinary strength and and, um, and in battle, 109 00:10:04,030 --> 00:10:08,280 the physical battle that's being lost with people like Bale from the past is something that does leave. 110 00:10:08,940 --> 00:10:12,540 Leave, um, their people open to utter destruction. 111 00:10:13,110 --> 00:10:19,620 So there is something to be longed for and mourned at some aspects of the past and some other aspects of the fantastical past that are, 112 00:10:19,620 --> 00:10:27,120 um, entirely terrifying. And I like the fact that we we get both themes, and we certainly do in modern fantasy, too. 113 00:10:28,020 --> 00:10:35,520 Um, I wanted to continue on by talking of the theme of where we'll go next. 114 00:10:37,370 --> 00:10:40,520 Where exactly the Phantom's the fantastic is hiding. 115 00:10:41,150 --> 00:10:44,540 If it has gone at least from England now, or in this case, Ireland. 116 00:10:45,050 --> 00:10:48,470 I'll make a reference to two Irish medieval Irish texts here. 117 00:10:48,710 --> 00:10:50,540 I want to issue a quick apology. First. 118 00:10:50,540 --> 00:10:57,529 I'm aware after the time that I've lived in England that there is either a sizeable or otherwise very passionate 119 00:10:57,530 --> 00:11:03,290 demographic of English people who either have Irish ancestry or otherwise really passionate about Ireland. 120 00:11:03,290 --> 00:11:08,150 And I'm aware that nothing infuriates you more than an American saying anything about Ireland. 121 00:11:08,960 --> 00:11:13,400 And I would like to, if you're sharpening your pitchforks, if I could just ask for your grace going forward. 122 00:11:13,670 --> 00:11:18,170 I also, um, I'm going to be trying to pronounce the names in these texts according to the 123 00:11:18,170 --> 00:11:21,469 reconstructed pronunciations from Middle Irish and not according to modern Irish. 124 00:11:21,470 --> 00:11:27,709 So if they sound bad, it is partly because I'm not doing a very good job, but also because I'm not following modern Irish pronunciation systems. 125 00:11:27,710 --> 00:11:34,340 So another reason to maybe ask for your grace. Well, actually, first, yes, this one in modern Irish should be called the lyric of all. 126 00:11:34,850 --> 00:11:39,440 But in Middle Irish it's called the LaVar Cavallo with the emphasis on the first syllables. 127 00:11:40,280 --> 00:11:45,980 I want to start with this one. It translates roughly to the book of the Seasonings of Ireland or the takings invasions. 128 00:11:46,280 --> 00:11:51,400 And it's a pseudo history, and we'll talk more about pseudo histories in a moment. It's a pseudo history of Ireland written. 129 00:11:51,410 --> 00:11:55,490 It's heavily influenced by learned and Christian Latin writings in the medieval period, 130 00:11:55,790 --> 00:12:01,249 and it posits a history of Ireland that sort of weaves what remains of their folklore, 131 00:12:01,250 --> 00:12:07,970 pre-Christian and otherwise, into the long history of Ireland, that grafts into the learned Christian histories of the world, 132 00:12:08,270 --> 00:12:15,020 roughly aligning with the six ages of the world and positing different phases of invasion in Ireland's history, 133 00:12:15,380 --> 00:12:19,970 first with the descendants of a man named Cheshire and then a man named Portland, 134 00:12:20,450 --> 00:12:24,470 and then a man named Nevis before the arrival of a peoples called the Fair Bollig, 135 00:12:25,040 --> 00:12:29,840 and then finally the poor and modern Irish or Tuatha and Middle Irish. 136 00:12:30,140 --> 00:12:35,510 The fourth, a da, which means the God peoples, later revised into the north Jamie Dornan, 137 00:12:35,870 --> 00:12:43,640 the children of the goddess Danu these are the people who are thought to represent the pre-Christian deities of Ireland, 138 00:12:43,850 --> 00:12:50,629 and they're the ones driven into a sort of underground otherworld by the arrival of the descendants of a man named Miel Espana, 139 00:12:50,630 --> 00:12:56,240 which just translates to the Spanish soldier, the mythical founder of the good Delic, 140 00:12:56,240 --> 00:12:59,480 or Gaelic peoples, a word we'll have to come back to in a minute. 141 00:13:00,530 --> 00:13:07,280 Um, and I mentioned this book because that basic theme of the tour de and being driven underground 142 00:13:07,280 --> 00:13:12,910 into a kind of otherworld that exists alongside our own or alongside that of Irish Gael, 143 00:13:12,920 --> 00:13:17,299 them as being a place of locating the fantastic from the past. 144 00:13:17,300 --> 00:13:22,850 Yes, but in a currently kind of a new holding pen and otherworld that is kind of neither here nor there, 145 00:13:22,850 --> 00:13:27,620 but kind of there and kind of locational and different features of the landscape, 146 00:13:27,620 --> 00:13:33,830 especially Neolithic tumulus, like the heavily revised Newgrange picture there on the lower left, 147 00:13:34,820 --> 00:13:40,250 um, one of many sites where mortals from from our world are thought to be able to contact. 148 00:13:40,250 --> 00:13:45,469 The tool, also called the sheath sheath mounds are the the hidden people. 149 00:13:45,470 --> 00:13:51,830 This is a word often translated as fairies, and I bring this up because it's another element of the fantastic past, 150 00:13:51,830 --> 00:13:54,020 but because it exists now alongside our own, 151 00:13:54,320 --> 00:14:01,100 it gives us another access to the fantastical that's not simply far away in a geographic sense, but it's far away in a surprisingly near sense. 152 00:14:01,820 --> 00:14:05,650 And. That's about all I'm going to say about this text for now. 153 00:14:07,240 --> 00:14:10,000 But moving forward from that, we will return to that theme shortly. 154 00:14:10,030 --> 00:14:16,570 I also want to talk of past efforts to reclaim elements of an enchanted power, of an enchanted past, 155 00:14:17,140 --> 00:14:25,450 the idea that something from that past is worth reclaiming and worth, um, making part of our culture again for the sake of enchantment. 156 00:14:25,780 --> 00:14:30,070 So I arrive another Middle Irish text us from the 12th century called the Ogle of Missionaries. 157 00:14:30,790 --> 00:14:36,340 And this text is a it's I'm really only going to talk about it's frame story. 158 00:14:36,700 --> 00:14:39,519 The frame story is a story of culture. 159 00:14:39,520 --> 00:14:48,280 McClarnon and Oshima Finn, who are the last surviving members of, uh, Finn McConnell's uh, war band called The Sea. 160 00:14:49,750 --> 00:14:54,670 The story begins with them going about Ireland and visiting all the other last survivors of the Finn, 161 00:14:54,850 --> 00:15:00,400 all mourning the end of the age in which Finn McCall and his band, uh, wandered about having great adventures. 162 00:15:00,970 --> 00:15:05,370 And now that age is coming to a close and everything is get growing dimmer and darker, 163 00:15:05,380 --> 00:15:09,160 the world is less fantastic, and everybody is finally dying off. 164 00:15:09,670 --> 00:15:16,600 Uh, Finn and Ashing have been kept alive, sort of miraculously, for far more centuries than what's normally natural. 165 00:15:17,170 --> 00:15:24,850 But then the sun rises and everything becomes bright again, because over the hill comes Saint Patrick, pictured lower left. 166 00:15:25,450 --> 00:15:29,120 Um Saint Patrick meets Finn Michael and Austin Mac Finn. 167 00:15:29,140 --> 00:15:31,780 It turns out that the reason they've been kept alive all these centuries is so they 168 00:15:31,780 --> 00:15:35,470 can tell him all the stories of the fantastic past and of Finn and his war band, 169 00:15:36,040 --> 00:15:38,619 and that they can give him to Saint Patrick and guide him about Ireland as 170 00:15:38,620 --> 00:15:41,680 they teach him about the landscape and how the law ties in with the landscape, 171 00:15:41,980 --> 00:15:46,780 so that he can then carry that lower forward. He is now representative of the new Christian era in Ireland, 172 00:15:47,650 --> 00:15:53,080 and now Irish Christians can repurpose that lore and keep telling the stories and the fantastic and stay with us through the storytelling. 173 00:15:53,680 --> 00:15:58,600 Over there on the right is a picture of Austin or Austin and modern Irish and Ocean and Scott's garlic. 174 00:15:58,600 --> 00:16:05,200 And that illustration is actually from, uh, James McPherson's reimagining of the Austin stories and the 19th century. 175 00:16:05,200 --> 00:16:09,280 So we can't get away from, uh, different later revisions of the story just yet. 176 00:16:09,760 --> 00:16:17,299 But, um. A reminder that just as there are no two texts that are quite alike in the transmission history of the glove, 177 00:16:17,300 --> 00:16:21,410 so to the stories get reinvented time and time again, as Gabriel was telling us earlier. 178 00:16:22,340 --> 00:16:29,590 Um. So that moves us into things that I hope will tie a little bit more to Oxford. 179 00:16:29,590 --> 00:16:30,999 So I don't know how many of you are from here. 180 00:16:31,000 --> 00:16:35,290 And tying to the landscape here seems like an important thing to take from the angle of and apply to our. 181 00:16:35,770 --> 00:16:38,020 So our, our lecture here, uh, 182 00:16:38,800 --> 00:16:44,740 I mentioned pseudo history as a moment ago and really the paragon of all pseudo histories in the medieval period would be, 183 00:16:44,920 --> 00:16:49,360 uh, Geoffrey of Monmouth, who may or may not have been Welsh, who may or may not have known Welsh, 184 00:16:49,660 --> 00:16:55,000 but he certainly claims to have been reviving a bit of Welsh history by turning putting it down into his own pseudo history, 185 00:16:55,000 --> 00:16:57,909 which he claims to have derived from a book, 186 00:16:57,910 --> 00:17:05,350 an ancient book of the Britons and the British tongue given to him by Um Walter of Oxford, the Archdeacon here. 187 00:17:05,620 --> 00:17:14,349 Geoffrey may have even written this, and and what's in the now defunct Saint George's College, which was probably somewhere around Oxford Castle. 188 00:17:14,350 --> 00:17:19,390 Somewhere around the the old tower there. This is not certain, but it was at least popularly believed here. 189 00:17:20,020 --> 00:17:30,080 And, um. Geoffrey takes a wide range of folklore sources and classical sources, and possibly some things just of his own invention, 190 00:17:30,500 --> 00:17:36,180 and weaves a fantastical history for Britain, from the arrival of a mythical founder figure named Brutus. 191 00:17:36,200 --> 00:17:41,920 I'll come back to just a minute and just a moment to the final demise of the Britannica speaking peoples, 192 00:17:42,590 --> 00:17:46,400 um, hegemony over the islands under Arthur at the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons. 193 00:17:47,830 --> 00:17:55,810 What's really interesting about this to me is that in the talk of re enchantment and finding something from the past that gives us access to, 194 00:17:56,050 --> 00:18:02,740 to sort of enchanting the present, I'm intrigued by one of Jeffrey's main inspirations, which is Virgil's Aeneid. 195 00:18:02,890 --> 00:18:03,910 Picture there in the lower left. 196 00:18:04,450 --> 00:18:12,370 Um, Virgil takes all of Homer's work and decides to situate Rome's enchanted past in the same mythical world as the Iliad and the Odyssey. 197 00:18:12,670 --> 00:18:13,780 But in doing that, 198 00:18:13,780 --> 00:18:21,850 he tries to sort of repurpose it going forward into something that promises that Rome is going to rise to the same heights that Troy once held. 199 00:18:22,300 --> 00:18:29,740 So there is a sense in which he's looking back at the fantastic of the past and looking forward at the promised fantastic of the future, 200 00:18:31,090 --> 00:18:34,450 in which I think is an intriguing way to try to, um. 201 00:18:35,710 --> 00:18:41,500 Go about the project of using the past as re enchantment and the fact that Jeffrey draws from this. 202 00:18:41,500 --> 00:18:44,230 I think it's also very interesting because whether or not he was Welsh, 203 00:18:44,470 --> 00:18:50,830 certainly promising a return to some kind of a lost Britannic past seems to be part of the hope expressed in his work. 204 00:18:51,440 --> 00:18:53,169 Uh, and two things to say about that. 205 00:18:53,170 --> 00:18:59,830 The first is that Brutus, the mythical founding figure of Britain, is much like Innes, the protagonist of the Iliad, 206 00:19:00,310 --> 00:19:07,060 uh, a refugee descended from the Trojans who's escaped and is bringing civilisation to a new place. 207 00:19:07,660 --> 00:19:12,760 And also much talked about in the scholarship is what is the probability that 208 00:19:12,760 --> 00:19:16,810 Geoffrey wrote this in a way to legitimise the Norman aristocracy in Britain, 209 00:19:17,020 --> 00:19:20,740 who had sort of vague connections to the Britons through their close proximity to Britain? 210 00:19:20,860 --> 00:19:22,540 They brought over a lot of Breton lights with them. 211 00:19:22,540 --> 00:19:28,060 To the Breton spoke a botanic language not entirely unlike Welsh, but not entirely like Welsh either. 212 00:19:28,480 --> 00:19:36,040 And so this ties them into the same sort of lost Trojan and ostensibly Christian past that, 213 00:19:36,040 --> 00:19:39,459 um, would give them a legitimacy, possibly over the Anglo-Saxon conquered. 214 00:19:39,460 --> 00:19:43,180 So you can tie re enchantment now, to some extent to political ventures. 215 00:19:43,630 --> 00:19:48,430 I'm not entirely clear how much this should be attributed to Jeffrey and his own intentions, 216 00:19:48,430 --> 00:19:54,340 but the fair bit of ink has been spilt over the way it's been used since Jeffrey in the early centuries especially. 217 00:19:58,610 --> 00:20:07,080 Sorry. It's often been treated as real history. 218 00:20:08,880 --> 00:20:15,990 That said, there's also been a very real degree to which it's been also sort of treated as pseudo historical in the very early period, 219 00:20:15,990 --> 00:20:21,360 it certainly popularised or did not originate the practice of claiming Trojan ancestry for your country. 220 00:20:22,740 --> 00:20:28,680 And, um, as other other groups that go on to do and inspired a number, a number of other pseudo histories. 221 00:20:28,950 --> 00:20:33,959 And what's interesting to me about the pseudo history of created especially for this is that, um, 222 00:20:33,960 --> 00:20:41,460 it posits a kind of ancient platonic past that's either Christian or looks forward to Christianity and some kind of, um, mystical way. 223 00:20:41,760 --> 00:20:48,000 And into that past, you can kind of throw, uh, a variety of stories that just needed to be deposited somewhere. 224 00:20:48,940 --> 00:20:57,160 And that have allegorical resonances with Christianity in a way that evokes the fantastic and the medieval mind. 225 00:20:57,450 --> 00:21:03,579 And so I use it to introduce the next. I particularly enjoy this one, but I'm going to switch the two slides around. 226 00:21:03,580 --> 00:21:06,630 Sorry. So, Sir Orfeo is a fun one. 227 00:21:06,640 --> 00:21:11,590 This is a medieval romance and it's in Middle English, but it advertises itself as a Breton ley. 228 00:21:11,950 --> 00:21:18,730 So the sort of turn to Geoffrey right quick, because Geoffrey did in fact popularise this, this sort of lost botanic history. 229 00:21:19,090 --> 00:21:24,970 This helped trigger an interest in the Arthurian legend that existed before, but really, really got going, especially after him. 230 00:21:25,690 --> 00:21:29,230 It was especially popular in the court of Henry the Second, for reasons I will come back to. 231 00:21:29,590 --> 00:21:31,290 Henry the Second's wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine, 232 00:21:31,320 --> 00:21:36,639 also found it very popular in her court in France and looked for Breton storytellers come to tell her stories, 233 00:21:36,640 --> 00:21:42,550 stories about this sort of lost Britannic past. Breton ladies become very popular in French, especially the influence of Marie de France. 234 00:21:42,970 --> 00:21:47,060 And then lots of English writers started calling all sorts of things Breton was. 235 00:21:47,460 --> 00:21:52,180 So, Orfeo, you will probably already guessed, but you'll guess even more now. 236 00:21:52,270 --> 00:21:56,050 It's a story of a king somewhere in the fantastic Britannic past, 237 00:21:56,290 --> 00:22:00,580 whose wife is stolen away by the King of Fairy Land, and he has to go and get her back. 238 00:22:00,760 --> 00:22:04,480 If that's not ringing a bell, that's the story of Orpheus and Eurydice from classical mythology, 239 00:22:04,690 --> 00:22:10,140 which has undergone a process of being reimagined as an actual king rather than a god. 240 00:22:10,150 --> 00:22:14,860 And that way you can sanitise it for Christian taste. And it's not deities we're dealing with. 241 00:22:15,220 --> 00:22:22,910 It's some kind of, um, real life hero who had to have some kind of interaction with the Fairy Otherworld. 242 00:22:22,930 --> 00:22:28,990 So once again, we're locating a sort of fairy otherworld in a place that is both near and far away. 243 00:22:29,320 --> 00:22:32,770 But also, we're putting this in the ancient past, where things were already more mystical. 244 00:22:32,770 --> 00:22:35,380 So you have different layers of how the fantastic is being built up. 245 00:22:36,560 --> 00:22:41,300 I wanted to start with this because since we have changed Hades into the fairy Otherworld, 246 00:22:41,780 --> 00:22:47,540 this description of all the near dead people in the Fairy Otherworld and Orpheus goes down to find his wife. 247 00:22:48,080 --> 00:22:55,280 Um, whether they have their without heads or the The Falcon Luck manuscript mentions women who died in childbirth, 248 00:22:55,280 --> 00:23:00,130 to which I should have picked from that manuscript. So you could see more, because that's another fascinating dimension. 249 00:23:00,140 --> 00:23:07,250 But all people who have been killed but aren't quite dead yet. So the fairy world can exist in some sort of halfway place between living and the dead, 250 00:23:07,250 --> 00:23:12,409 which I find, I find very interesting for the sake of reimagining death for these purposes. 251 00:23:12,410 --> 00:23:16,969 And it allows us to play with the allegorical dimensions of life and death in a way that, 252 00:23:16,970 --> 00:23:22,420 uh, that evokes the fantastic, but that doesn't necessarily demand any finality. 253 00:23:22,430 --> 00:23:29,180 And sure enough, whereas in the classical myth of Orpheus and Eurydice see, Orpheus looks back and can't get his wife out of the dead. 254 00:23:29,180 --> 00:23:32,720 And so Orpheus, he succeeds, and everybody lives happily ever after. 255 00:23:32,750 --> 00:23:39,979 So it is an entirely different world, uh, a different story, but set in, in this world of sort of hypothetical pre, 256 00:23:39,980 --> 00:23:49,150 pre Anglo-Saxon Britain where everything was still more mystical as a much less heavy theme from the text. 257 00:23:49,160 --> 00:23:53,000 I wanted to bring up this one too, and this is a popular. 258 00:23:53,990 --> 00:23:59,740 Component of fantasy. Even now, I think this describes just how lavish the fairy otherworld is. 259 00:23:59,750 --> 00:24:06,230 There are columns of burnished gold, and everything is made of precious stones, and there's light everywhere, whether it's day or night. 260 00:24:06,620 --> 00:24:15,140 The idea that the fairy otherworld is. Is filled with, with finery has one that will appear. 261 00:24:15,170 --> 00:24:18,979 Time and again. And fantasy. I think one of the more interesting modern places, it appears, 262 00:24:18,980 --> 00:24:24,950 is that J.R.R. Tolkien and Lord of the rings and C.S. Lewis in the Narnia books seem to really love descriptions of food, 263 00:24:25,580 --> 00:24:29,230 and I think this is maybe, maybe a survivor of the same kind of theme. 264 00:24:29,240 --> 00:24:32,580 It's finery in a in a different sense, but but a really enjoyable one. 265 00:24:32,580 --> 00:24:39,680 And this harkens back to, I think, to the descriptions of finery and, and the imagined pre-Christian past of the Anglo-Saxons and Beowulf. 266 00:24:40,220 --> 00:24:43,400 So I want to be sure to leave that there. We can come back to that in a moment. 267 00:24:48,180 --> 00:24:52,500 How am I for time? Okay. So, uh. 268 00:24:54,890 --> 00:24:58,430 I'll do this one quickly, just to be sure. Second, wait in the Green Knight is other fun one, 269 00:24:58,430 --> 00:25:03,409 and it is also set in a much more obviously Arthurian part of the Arthurian past, in which it really is Arthur's court. 270 00:25:03,410 --> 00:25:06,770 And it's Arthur's nephew who goes out on on an adventure. 271 00:25:07,760 --> 00:25:15,919 Importantly, I do like the way that it starts. Arthur won't eat until he's heard stories of adventure from his courtiers, which I have. 272 00:25:15,920 --> 00:25:18,799 I've read articles and I've met scholars here who insisted. 273 00:25:18,800 --> 00:25:24,590 That means that Arthur's kingdom is already fading away, and he's looking back to his younger glory days at the beginning of the story. 274 00:25:24,590 --> 00:25:33,200 And he's longing for them. The fact that his nephew Gawain is able to sort of bring them a story is, um, of course, the conceit of the whole romance, 275 00:25:33,200 --> 00:25:37,880 but the fact that it does start that way seems interesting, too, if subfloor and anything else I've mentioned before. 276 00:25:38,270 --> 00:25:40,809 But I also like the fact that the that the other world, 277 00:25:40,810 --> 00:25:49,130 the fantastic verse and to his hall sort of unexpected and in a way that that that trips everybody up a little bit, 278 00:25:49,760 --> 00:25:52,400 uh, asking for somebody to cut off of is cut off his head. 279 00:25:53,150 --> 00:26:02,900 And, um, there's an element of the strange emerging into what's otherwise, uh, the everyday setting of the course, which is also described lavishly. 280 00:26:02,900 --> 00:26:06,530 So I guess we do still have the fantastic past as the setting. 281 00:26:06,980 --> 00:26:14,200 Um, and that notion, again, that the fantastic and sort of come into your everyday space in this case is not necessarily a bad thing. 282 00:26:14,210 --> 00:26:20,810 It is to test going and to just sort of call him to a, to a higher sense of chivalry and knighthood. 283 00:26:20,810 --> 00:26:23,180 And it does wind up testing and it does find him wanting. 284 00:26:23,690 --> 00:26:31,610 But I like the fact that we now have the fantastic intruding on the everyday, or at least a highly fantastic reimagining of the everyday, 285 00:26:31,820 --> 00:26:35,570 just to play with the continued themes of which way back and forth we have the 286 00:26:35,570 --> 00:26:40,220 fantastic intruding from other places or or ordinary people having to go to it. 287 00:26:41,390 --> 00:26:48,980 So we'll I'll skip past that really quickly and return, I think, to something else potentially Oxford related, if only somewhat. 288 00:26:51,250 --> 00:26:55,600 The use of the fantastic past for socio political aims. 289 00:26:57,670 --> 00:27:02,049 Something I know would be of concern now and in or in any time period. 290 00:27:02,050 --> 00:27:05,100 But I wanted to talk about some of the ways that it can happen in the medieval period, too. 291 00:27:06,040 --> 00:27:08,320 I mentioned the Oxford connection first and foremost, 292 00:27:08,650 --> 00:27:15,040 because one of the key ways the Arthurian legend becomes popular is because of the tendency to of English kings, 293 00:27:15,040 --> 00:27:18,160 especially Norman kings, to get crosswise with the papacy in the medieval period. 294 00:27:18,550 --> 00:27:22,390 Over there on the right, that's a picture of the murder of sort of Saint Thomas Becket. 295 00:27:23,830 --> 00:27:29,670 It seems like a good place to start because he was. His death was ordered by King Henry the Second, who ruled from here in Oxford. 296 00:27:29,710 --> 00:27:33,180 If you want to go see a historical marker, the marks for his palace used to be. 297 00:27:33,180 --> 00:27:40,860 It's over there by the Ashmolean. And he probably kept his mistress Rosamond, in, um, Godstone Abbey, just up the river from here. 298 00:27:40,860 --> 00:27:42,690 So many connections to Oxford. 299 00:27:43,020 --> 00:27:51,210 But one of the uses of the Arthurian legend, or one of the the things that makes it so handy to have this sort of fantastical past, 300 00:27:51,750 --> 00:27:58,810 is the way in which it can be sort of leveraged to give the English kings a bit of legitimacy in their strife against the papacy. 301 00:27:58,830 --> 00:28:00,959 Worth noting that the Henry's son, 302 00:28:00,960 --> 00:28:09,660 John also had some issues of the papacy in his dispute over the ordination of Archbishop Stephen Langton and his following excommunication. 303 00:28:10,380 --> 00:28:14,730 But one of the the in the broader nexus of stories that all get funnelled into 304 00:28:14,730 --> 00:28:19,350 Arthurian and into this sort of mythical past of a pre Anglo-Saxon England. 305 00:28:19,380 --> 00:28:27,270 One of the key stories is the arrival of Joseph of Arimathea, the man who lent Jesus his tomb, uh, on this island, 306 00:28:27,570 --> 00:28:34,260 ostensibly either bringing Jesus as a child or later bringing Jesus blood in the form of the Holy Grail. 307 00:28:34,260 --> 00:28:37,470 And this is integral to many different versions of the Arthurian legend. 308 00:28:37,830 --> 00:28:42,719 But the idea that there is some ancient semblance of the Christian church here that 309 00:28:42,720 --> 00:28:48,000 predates the arrival of of Rome's influence through the Augustinian mission at Canterbury, 310 00:28:49,110 --> 00:28:52,050 um, and especially tied to Glastonbury. Pictured there on the left, 311 00:28:52,410 --> 00:28:58,620 gives at least the literary imagination of the time a way of framing England's past as something that 312 00:28:58,620 --> 00:29:03,870 shares in the same deep connections to Christian history that Rome can claim for its own legitimacy, 313 00:29:04,350 --> 00:29:10,710 and the fact that this ancient British past also claims Rome's secular legitimacy from Troy is just a great double whammy. 314 00:29:11,190 --> 00:29:18,900 Um, this happens in the myths, in the midst of controversy surrounding investiture, which again gets back to Archbishop Stephen Langton, 315 00:29:19,080 --> 00:29:25,140 but also conciliar ism with the question of how much role does Rome have in determining the course of the Church of England? 316 00:29:25,920 --> 00:29:29,729 What is so important about this to the reception of the wider Arthurian legend? 317 00:29:29,730 --> 00:29:35,910 The medieval period is that because Arthur gained some legitimacy both through his kingship and his descent from Troy, 318 00:29:35,910 --> 00:29:40,890 and also from some kind of connection to Joseph of Arimathea, um, 319 00:29:41,340 --> 00:29:46,770 he can become sort of a figure who represents both divine and political justice all the same time. 320 00:29:47,340 --> 00:29:53,850 It's important to note, too, that many of his meagre and milder attributes in some versions of the legend, uh, 321 00:29:54,180 --> 00:29:57,930 always sort of characterised by the fact that the Virgin Mary is painted on a shield, 322 00:29:58,200 --> 00:30:03,809 seemed to contribute to this overall notion of him being a sort of a, uh, somewhat holy kind of king. 323 00:30:03,810 --> 00:30:08,040 Obviously, there are many flaws to that oversimplification, and we'll come back to in a minute to. 324 00:30:09,330 --> 00:30:15,629 But it helps to position any claims, any claims of connecting the Norman monarchy to this kind of figure, 325 00:30:15,630 --> 00:30:21,390 or at least pasting this kind of fantastical pass on to England in a way that that 326 00:30:21,390 --> 00:30:27,780 is especially useful for conceiving of England as a holy place that may have some, 327 00:30:27,780 --> 00:30:33,330 some kind of distinction from the church, which is sort of above or otherwise free from Norman justice. 328 00:30:33,600 --> 00:30:38,579 You can flee to a church and gain sanctuary if you're trying to run from Norman Justice, for example. 329 00:30:38,580 --> 00:30:42,450 So finding a way to unite the two in your imagination is handy. 330 00:30:43,530 --> 00:30:49,860 We will come back to that in a minute. I won't dwell a whole lot on Thomas Malory, 331 00:30:51,240 --> 00:30:59,400 but particularly I'm interested now also in reclaiming this kind of mystical past of a grand and semi holy England. 332 00:30:59,850 --> 00:31:02,339 I've given a quote not from Malory, but from Caxton here, 333 00:31:02,340 --> 00:31:07,890 because that shows you how Malory has been received by later generations, more so than simply what he wrote himself. 334 00:31:08,640 --> 00:31:10,920 This is a bit of hand-wringing over the fact that, um, 335 00:31:11,760 --> 00:31:16,770 Caxton wants people to read the Arthurian legend so they can learn how to behave well from the good behaviour in the Arthurian legend. 336 00:31:16,780 --> 00:31:20,010 It's more nuanced than just that. He dismisses the bad behaviour in it, too. 337 00:31:20,370 --> 00:31:25,889 But the fact that there was a time period when chivalry was a real thing is of some importance. 338 00:31:25,890 --> 00:31:31,350 Legend would have that, um, Thomas Malory wrote much or possibly all of the morte d'Arthur from prison. 339 00:31:32,250 --> 00:31:39,570 Whether that's true or not, I hear is a really controversial question, because the identity of who Thomas Malory is is hotly contested. 340 00:31:39,870 --> 00:31:42,449 Or was there multiple Thomas Malory from the time period? 341 00:31:42,450 --> 00:31:46,500 And some people believe it's a pseudonym, and some people believe that it's a misattribution. 342 00:31:47,280 --> 00:31:51,719 But, um, the what certainly seems to be the case is that whoever he was, 343 00:31:51,720 --> 00:31:56,400 he lived sometime toward the end of the Wars of the roses, when England was at war with itself. 344 00:31:56,580 --> 00:32:02,550 And so it's at least very realistic to imagine that looking back at a lost time period of finery and chivalry and good behaviour 345 00:32:02,910 --> 00:32:09,300 was something he associated with watching England rip itself apart and longing for a past that may or may or may not have existed. 346 00:32:09,540 --> 00:32:15,420 But that certainly was better than the presence, which is, I think, the thing we all have and we, uh, romanticise the past. 347 00:32:15,780 --> 00:32:20,189 And whether or not that's really Mallory's intention, it certainly seems to be Paxton's intention. 348 00:32:20,190 --> 00:32:26,320 And for many centuries, Caxton edition of Malory was. Our primary source for the text before the rediscovery of the Winchester manuscript. 349 00:32:27,130 --> 00:32:34,300 Um. That's really the main point I want to look at with Malory for now is that longing for a 350 00:32:34,300 --> 00:32:39,970 past that was nobler is also seems to be closely tied with our ideas of the fantastic. 351 00:32:40,310 --> 00:32:43,780 The scholars have noted that Malory and his use of the sources for other bits. 352 00:32:43,780 --> 00:32:46,780 The Arthurian legend has actually removed a lot of fantastical elements. 353 00:32:47,230 --> 00:32:52,180 Whether this is really to play up the fact that the the morals of the past were more fantastic or not, 354 00:32:52,180 --> 00:32:55,540 as is debated, but as at least a lingering possibility. 355 00:32:57,130 --> 00:33:02,200 So in talking of retrieving the past. I thought I mentioned another Oxford connection. 356 00:33:02,680 --> 00:33:08,890 The man in the lower left is William Morris, and Morris Automotive was based over there on, I think, Holywell Roads, the name of it. 357 00:33:09,370 --> 00:33:12,850 And I mention this because in 19th century, 358 00:33:13,240 --> 00:33:22,190 as as much of European society was rapidly moving towards the cities and also rapidly, um, industrialising. 359 00:33:22,570 --> 00:33:26,590 There was a widespread view that some aspect of the past was being lost all over again. 360 00:33:27,040 --> 00:33:28,000 The recurring theme now, 361 00:33:28,630 --> 00:33:36,280 and this also coincides with the hope of finding sort of a rekindled interest in the past by looking at England's shared medieval identity. 362 00:33:36,730 --> 00:33:42,970 So William Morris is a great example of of trying to bring forward this kind of re enchantment in his art. 363 00:33:43,270 --> 00:33:46,929 This is looks sort of like a medieval tapestry, but it's not. It's one of Morris's designs. 364 00:33:46,930 --> 00:33:48,260 But he also produced, uh, 365 00:33:48,280 --> 00:33:57,130 textiles that evoked medieval art and is a founding member of both what we call the Pre-Raphaelite movement and also the Arts and Crafts movement, 366 00:33:57,250 --> 00:34:00,280 with varying forms of Arts and Crafts movement, 367 00:34:00,280 --> 00:34:07,180 specifically with varying forms of of textiles and of wallpapers that all have prints inspired by medieval tapestries and medieval art. 368 00:34:07,450 --> 00:34:13,930 Trying to bring something to the industrialised world that evokes the the and chairman of the past. 369 00:34:16,430 --> 00:34:20,659 Again, the medieval period is the one that's chosen for this, which plays really well, I think, 370 00:34:20,660 --> 00:34:26,870 with Gabriel's talk of the centrality of the medieval identity to our modern ideas of fantasy. 371 00:34:27,680 --> 00:34:36,200 I want to take a quick sidestep and talk about medieval cosmology, which I think is a bigger topic than we can say a whole lot about. 372 00:34:36,590 --> 00:34:43,310 But the idea, this old geocentric notion of the universe in which all of the different layers of, 373 00:34:43,460 --> 00:34:49,070 of the universe that are marked out by the different seven heavens sort of interlock like a Russian matryoshka, 374 00:34:49,580 --> 00:34:55,670 one of those nesting dolls, and they all sort of spin and grind against each other in the way that the moving stars or the 375 00:34:55,670 --> 00:35:00,829 planets rise and fall and the heavens impacts the way different elements interact with each other. 376 00:35:00,830 --> 00:35:09,049 And different personalities change here on Earth. The way that plays together with where medieval thinkers located angels and located different 377 00:35:09,050 --> 00:35:13,010 spirits and different forces and located different levels of heaven you could rise to, 378 00:35:13,280 --> 00:35:18,530 gave the world kind of a sense of no ability. And I think a lot of times when we talk about re-engineer, 379 00:35:18,530 --> 00:35:22,429 what we're longing for is a sense of mystery and the lack of nobility that we 380 00:35:22,430 --> 00:35:25,549 think is lost in the face of modern science thinking can understand anything. 381 00:35:25,550 --> 00:35:31,370 I think the reality is you can play either one in kind of either direction, but the no ability back then seems to me, 382 00:35:31,520 --> 00:35:34,610 seems to be more closely aligned with kind of a mystical or a metaphysical. 383 00:35:34,610 --> 00:35:39,620 No ability, I suppose a modern scientific, if you would be more of a middle of mechanistic. 384 00:35:40,070 --> 00:35:45,260 No. And so I think especially now, as you get people who are interested in the fantasy, 385 00:35:45,260 --> 00:35:49,280 who then fall back to reading medieval literature and find it very interesting to read 386 00:35:49,280 --> 00:35:52,790 things like Dante or you move through different seven the different layers of heaven, 387 00:35:52,790 --> 00:35:57,290 especially in Paradiso, and learn about their significance and their relationship to life here on earth. 388 00:35:57,290 --> 00:36:04,550 That does provide a kind of enchantment, not unlike, um, the other fantastical elements we've been looking at. 389 00:36:04,700 --> 00:36:06,200 So I wanted to make a brief aside to it. 390 00:36:06,200 --> 00:36:10,760 I want to mention this quote by C.S. Lewis, because I know we associate him with a lot of modern fantasy, too. 391 00:36:11,300 --> 00:36:12,110 And, um, 392 00:36:12,500 --> 00:36:18,560 it's that I have made no serious effort to hide the fact that the old model has term for the way everything fits together in medieval thought. 393 00:36:18,980 --> 00:36:22,549 The old model delights me, as I believe it delighted our ancestors. 394 00:36:22,550 --> 00:36:28,400 Few constructions of the imagination seem to me to have combined splendour, sobriety and coherence in the same degree. 395 00:36:29,000 --> 00:36:33,530 It's possible that some readers have long been itching to remind me that it has a serious defect. 396 00:36:33,560 --> 00:36:35,570 It was not true. Um. 397 00:36:36,670 --> 00:36:44,139 Which I think is a something worth kind of bring it to mind too, as we think of the relocation of the fantastic increasingly into other worlds, 398 00:36:44,140 --> 00:36:48,660 not necessarily other worlds that are accessible like those of medieval Ireland, 399 00:36:48,670 --> 00:36:53,499 accessible through the sheathed mounds but now entirely relocated to other books. 400 00:36:53,500 --> 00:36:56,560 Things like Tolkien's Lord of the rings, Lewis's Narnia, what have you. 401 00:36:57,130 --> 00:37:03,550 Um, and I wanted to bring that to mind just because it's, it seems related to our concepts of enchantment, 402 00:37:04,060 --> 00:37:08,740 and it's certainly related to the way we now look at the Middle Ages is one of enchantment, 403 00:37:08,740 --> 00:37:13,090 even if probably they didn't view it as quite the same thing as the fantastic. 404 00:37:14,020 --> 00:37:17,350 So we don't talk to about re enchantment through the study of folklore. 405 00:37:17,380 --> 00:37:19,410 This is one that I find very interesting. 406 00:37:19,440 --> 00:37:27,430 I won't take too much of your time on it, but overall over on the right we have Yakub and Vilhelm Grimm, who you know from compiling fairy tales, 407 00:37:27,760 --> 00:37:33,250 but the they're compiling fairy tales again at a time when society was industrialising and everybody's moving to the cities, 408 00:37:33,550 --> 00:37:36,580 and folklore was something that everybody was afraid is going to be lost. 409 00:37:37,540 --> 00:37:41,840 This initiates sort of an interest in compiling folklore everywhere you get, people like Osborne said. 410 00:37:41,860 --> 00:37:48,849 And Mo, whose, um, Norwegian folk tales are pictured there on the left, who go about Norway gathering up folk tales. 411 00:37:48,850 --> 00:37:55,480 There you get Croft and Croker and and to some degree Yates over in Ireland, who do the same thing with Irish mythology, 412 00:37:55,810 --> 00:38:03,490 going about different regions of Europe and gathering up those folk tales in the hope that you can rekindle some kind of lost identity of the past. 413 00:38:03,490 --> 00:38:07,330 Something now mystical, that's been lost with the rise of industrialisation, 414 00:38:07,360 --> 00:38:13,450 seems to me not unrelated to the way we receive the concepts of the medieval fantastic and the way we imagine everything from that, 415 00:38:13,660 --> 00:38:22,330 from those folk stories to be set in the Middle Ages. So I wanted to briefly touch on the fact that the distinct form of this and Ireland. 416 00:38:22,330 --> 00:38:28,030 Again, my continued apologies, but there we have, um, from the Celtic Revival depictions. 417 00:38:28,030 --> 00:38:32,830 The tour had two of her J on the right and of the Druids with the mistletoe on the left. 418 00:38:33,070 --> 00:38:39,820 The fact that you could sort of reincarnate scholarly ideas of what the Druids might have been like and really play them up for romantic purposes, 419 00:38:40,330 --> 00:38:44,950 something that was not has not been as well received when it was done amongst the Germanic speaking peoples, 420 00:38:44,950 --> 00:38:49,300 because that led to things like Faulkners operas and far nastier things later. 421 00:38:49,360 --> 00:38:56,139 But the degree to which trying to sort of reincorporate some of the same charm and into daily life, that also seems noteworthy to me, 422 00:38:56,140 --> 00:39:02,590 and the way it plays together with trying to sort of recover lost ideas about what a nation's identity might be, 423 00:39:02,890 --> 00:39:08,920 will come up again in just a moment, especially as we tie everything back up of the Arthurian legend in a moment. 424 00:39:08,920 --> 00:39:14,230 But first, I'm also interested and reincarnated. That's here at Oxford again and religious settings. 425 00:39:15,010 --> 00:39:18,940 I mentioned finery is an important facet of enchantment and medieval writing. 426 00:39:19,330 --> 00:39:24,330 Well, I can think of no more entertaining example because you can go walk through it, uh, 427 00:39:24,370 --> 00:39:33,579 that the Oxford Movement was an effort to try to re enchant Anglicanism by by trying to add elements of medieval belief back into it, 428 00:39:33,580 --> 00:39:38,580 especially sometimes that were illegal. We don't want to talk too much about it because I'm not a theologian. 429 00:39:38,580 --> 00:39:43,719 I'm not here to learn about theology, but the way it aligns with aesthetic movements to try to bring back Gothic 430 00:39:43,720 --> 00:39:47,170 architecture from the medieval period and bring back a little of not bring back, 431 00:39:47,170 --> 00:39:52,690 but use lots of the Arts and Crafts movement, um, wallpapers and curtain hangings and things like that. 432 00:39:52,990 --> 00:39:57,220 Keble College here was built during that. Look at all the gold everywhere. Beowulf would die. 433 00:39:57,670 --> 00:40:04,930 Um, it's, uh, efforts to make things in Oxford look medieval, when in fact they weren't are really the main thing I wanted to look at, 434 00:40:04,930 --> 00:40:10,930 but also the way that does play together with trying to tie back to the medieval past and the context of religion. 435 00:40:10,930 --> 00:40:18,009 And I particularly am interested in the way some of these thinkers, especially Daubney and, um, 436 00:40:18,010 --> 00:40:22,930 let's sorry, let me make sure I have the other guy's name right here on the lower, lower corner. 437 00:40:24,540 --> 00:40:31,499 Oh, I don't have it off the top of my head, but they actually sort of repurpose a lot of the old arguments about Glastonbury and Canterbury 438 00:40:31,500 --> 00:40:35,970 and their arguments that the Anglican Church is a special third branch of apostolic succession. 439 00:40:36,330 --> 00:40:40,559 And they did actually claim that the Anglican Church was founded by Joseph of Arimathea. 440 00:40:40,560 --> 00:40:48,389 So you do see the return of a lot of medieval ideas of enchantment in the 19th century in ways that still inform our ideas about fantasy now, 441 00:40:48,390 --> 00:40:50,040 and the fact that you can go see them at Oxford. 442 00:40:50,610 --> 00:40:54,990 There are great many medieval looking buildings here that are in fact Victorian to date at that time period. 443 00:40:55,770 --> 00:41:04,890 So I also wanted to end just very briefly with TV, but I won't take we don't have very much time, so I'll just briefly run through it. 444 00:41:05,250 --> 00:41:12,780 I mentioned the love of finery and fantasy, and I mentioned the way that with Tolkien and Lewis it seems to appear and the love of food. 445 00:41:13,110 --> 00:41:18,240 And one of my favourite things about white is his love of describing clutter and the way you find fantasy there. 446 00:41:18,690 --> 00:41:22,680 And since it does bring us back to the Arthurian legend, I thought it would be a fun place to end. 447 00:41:23,400 --> 00:41:27,270 And this is a I'm not going to read the whole thing because it was many pages long. 448 00:41:27,270 --> 00:41:30,839 But when Arthur first meets Merlin and goes into his house, there's a fantastic. 449 00:41:30,840 --> 00:41:33,990 And I mean that in both senses of the word description of all the clutter in there. 450 00:41:34,350 --> 00:41:39,690 And so among the things and the list of Vernons clutter is extensive numbers of taxidermied animals, 451 00:41:39,690 --> 00:41:44,489 including a caulking drill, which is an old word for a crocodile, and then a long list of birds. 452 00:41:44,490 --> 00:41:47,280 And my favourite little mention is a reputed phoenix. 453 00:41:47,280 --> 00:41:51,870 But then the narrator says, of course it couldn't have been a phoenix, because everybody knows there can only be one at a time. 454 00:41:52,620 --> 00:42:00,179 And then long descriptions of leather bound books, some of them chained, and also the smell of must and solid brownness, 455 00:42:00,180 --> 00:42:08,370 which was most with which was most secure, which I thought was a nice description of the the feeling of going into an old library, 456 00:42:08,550 --> 00:42:15,000 and then things like y of animals crawling around, fly fishing lures and astrolabe to make reference back to the medieval model of the heavens, 457 00:42:15,000 --> 00:42:18,660 but also a Bunsen burner to make reference forward to the modern concept of science. 458 00:42:19,200 --> 00:42:26,489 And Encyclopaedia Britannica, just to round out our anachronisms, paint boxes and a finally a talking owl. 459 00:42:26,490 --> 00:42:32,670 What I like about this is the way you can sort of access the feeling of the fantastic by exploring all these basically educational, 460 00:42:32,670 --> 00:42:38,129 but still mundane items, always with a little hint. There's something fantastic hiding around the corner or a pew to Phoenix. 461 00:42:38,130 --> 00:42:42,090 Oh, but it's not real. Oh an owl. Oh it is, it is real. It does talk, you know. 462 00:42:42,540 --> 00:42:47,670 And I like that way of accessing the fantastic through fantasy. 463 00:42:48,900 --> 00:42:51,060 How are we for time? Should I just end it? Two minutes. 464 00:42:54,680 --> 00:43:01,219 Yeah, I think I think I'll cut it there because I think I think the last few things were already better said by Gabriel. 465 00:43:01,220 --> 00:43:04,220 So I think that's a better, a better note to end on. 466 00:43:04,220 --> 00:43:15,590 Anyway. Um, so thanks very much for your time. Thank you very much. 467 00:43:15,590 --> 00:43:20,420 Bond and and Gabriel as well. That's exactly what we were looking for in terms of setting the scene. 468 00:43:20,870 --> 00:43:24,950 The importance of medieval literature to fantasy and the appropriations. 469 00:43:25,370 --> 00:43:32,010 So I think we've got time for questions. Um, first of all, shall we look to the room? 470 00:43:32,030 --> 00:43:36,220 Does anyone have a question or comment? I wondered if I could ask. 471 00:43:36,230 --> 00:43:41,690 You talked a lot about the I think you talked some kind of the medieval ideas of, um, 472 00:43:42,560 --> 00:43:48,680 looking back to the past as being quite linked to nationalism and that idea of national identity. 473 00:43:49,160 --> 00:43:56,750 Um, do you think that can sometimes be quite harmful and especially in like a modern culture where with kind of thinking about, 474 00:43:57,260 --> 00:44:03,770 um, Britain's impact on the rest of the world and how that sometimes justified through medievalism. 475 00:44:04,770 --> 00:44:11,429 Yeah, I. I deliberately skirted around some of that for fear that it would be insensitive to say some of it directly, 476 00:44:11,430 --> 00:44:14,909 but is it which actually might have the opposite effect. 477 00:44:14,910 --> 00:44:18,479 So I probably should have thought about the importance of saying some of it. 478 00:44:18,480 --> 00:44:21,780 So I guess I'm glad you asked, because I mentioned with, uh, the, um, 479 00:44:21,900 --> 00:44:29,280 the collection of folklore and the way in Germany that led to things like the rise of honours operas, and you've had some fairly nasty opinions. 480 00:44:29,280 --> 00:44:37,200 But I guess to be more, more blunt, um, Faulkner's operas became a real, a real core piece of Nazi, um, iconography. 481 00:44:37,200 --> 00:44:45,360 Is that a bad word? Um, and there's been a real pushback against that kind of study of the Germanic languages and the Germanic past. 482 00:44:45,810 --> 00:44:48,900 That has been, I think, much more thorough. 483 00:44:48,930 --> 00:44:55,440 There's not been quite the same political need for one with the medieval Irish stuff, because Ireland hasn't been out conquering anybody. 484 00:44:56,310 --> 00:45:00,810 And um, but yeah, so the short answer is that, yeah, it can be. 485 00:45:00,810 --> 00:45:07,709 And I mean, you could argue and the ins and outs of the political scene between Henry the Second and the Pope are a distant from us now. 486 00:45:07,710 --> 00:45:12,900 But, I mean, it was being used for things that I'm sure some found harmful the time to perhaps for different reasons. 487 00:45:12,900 --> 00:45:19,950 But, um, yeah, it could all be weaponized if used in cautiously, but I would hope that everybody in here plans to use it cautiously. 488 00:45:19,950 --> 00:45:28,080 So, uh, we have one question. Uh, you connected the story of Sir Thomas Becket to the use of a fantastical past to achieve political aims. 489 00:45:28,320 --> 00:45:34,020 Could you talk a little more about how saints and pilgrim stories connect to the medieval base for contemporary fantasy? 490 00:45:36,800 --> 00:45:44,120 Yeah, I wrote a thesis on it, so I should have. I should have a better answer, but I was just stumped by the number of things that came to my head. 491 00:45:44,120 --> 00:45:49,159 Because you have you have sort of a competition between them, don't you? And that in Rome really sort of at this time period, 492 00:45:49,160 --> 00:45:55,700 around the time of Henry the Second and John Rome would have more of an influence on, on the fantastical component of the saints. 493 00:45:56,030 --> 00:46:02,059 And then I don't want to posit a clear and like sharp distinction against the Arthurian stuff, because I think that's not exactly true. 494 00:46:02,060 --> 00:46:07,340 This is versions play a really big hand and, um, and popularising the Arthurian legend. 495 00:46:08,120 --> 00:46:13,340 And it's especially in its spread up in Scandinavia, um. 496 00:46:14,930 --> 00:46:21,430 Around Bergen. So there's a lot of there's a lot of cross pollination between the two. 497 00:46:21,970 --> 00:46:26,740 So I start with Beckett. Is that the right thing to do? Because with Beckett, a quick on the really popular science life. 498 00:46:27,250 --> 00:46:36,010 Um, but positing an entire separate history in which there is sort of a fantastic and highly Christianised or Christianised history that 499 00:46:36,010 --> 00:46:44,710 looks sort of like science lives does create a bit of extra tension just in legitimising or or sort of magically legitimising. 500 00:46:44,740 --> 00:46:48,190 I don't know that anybody really believe that so much as it was just a popular theme in the literature. 501 00:46:48,700 --> 00:46:51,339 Uh, the British crown, that was the main point I was trying to get at. 502 00:46:51,340 --> 00:46:55,219 But the fact that you do have a lot of really virginal type characters in the Arthurian legend, 503 00:46:55,220 --> 00:47:01,180 it seems to be an influence from, if not specifically, the Cistercians, certainly the role of saints like Galahad, Percival. 504 00:47:01,180 --> 00:47:09,880 And even though Arthur has an affair with a sister and is married and such, his depictions, especially in Malory, can be often very meek and mild. 505 00:47:10,680 --> 00:47:14,140 You get back to the fact that Geoffrey always hasn't, with Mary painted on a shield, 506 00:47:14,500 --> 00:47:19,840 trying to capture something saintly about him does seem to be one of the aims of the story, 507 00:47:19,840 --> 00:47:24,669 in that you can find a lot of room for just fun and character complexity and complexity for talking about sin. 508 00:47:24,670 --> 00:47:29,470 And the way that does play off hagiographic themes is important because he's of course not really fulfilling any of them. 509 00:47:29,650 --> 00:47:34,160 But in a sense, he's kind of. Broadcasting them all the same. 510 00:47:34,550 --> 00:47:38,810 It's in broken form. So it's not a great answer to your question. 511 00:47:38,810 --> 00:47:45,020 But there's, you know, the hagiographic component is, I think, very real, probably one that isn't very much talked about anymore. 512 00:47:45,020 --> 00:47:50,960 So now I'm wondering if that's what the lecture should have been about after all. But. I just hope that was helpful. 513 00:47:51,020 --> 00:47:55,129 Yeah. No, I was just thinking of pre conquest lives of the Saints. 514 00:47:55,130 --> 00:47:56,840 So right now for each of them. 515 00:47:57,290 --> 00:48:05,510 Um, and if you is one of the common plot plot structures in that which he's drawing from other sources is once the saint is martyred, 516 00:48:05,720 --> 00:48:10,280 usually for a martyr, then it's the miracles afterwards, because that's what that's what earns you money. 517 00:48:10,280 --> 00:48:16,729 If you've got a saint that's going to sort of blind or sort of somehow disable the 518 00:48:16,730 --> 00:48:21,140 thieves trying to get into their tomb or something and perform post posthumous miracles. 519 00:48:21,530 --> 00:48:26,689 That's the people that are the ones that people want to come and see on pilgrimage, and they'll come on pilgrimage and they'll give you money, 520 00:48:26,690 --> 00:48:32,090 etc. so it's a common plot structure post, post death, that that's where the fantasy comes in. 521 00:48:32,240 --> 00:48:35,809 Or fantastical elements. There we go. Thank you. Sorry. 522 00:48:35,810 --> 00:48:40,790 Can I just follow up on that? Also, you've got a whole bunch of, uh, dragon bashing saints. 523 00:48:40,790 --> 00:48:47,990 Like, I want you to become more creative, aren't you? And of course, when, uh, Jack, I was like, oh, you know, that episode is really apocryphal. 524 00:48:48,500 --> 00:48:52,909 Everyone else, like, let's ignore him. Let's just throw in the Dragon episode, all right? 525 00:48:52,910 --> 00:49:02,060 And then you've got, uh, some icons and George and all that. But, um, I was listening to you, and it occurred to me something I never thought before. 526 00:49:02,540 --> 00:49:10,970 Um, you know, when you have an experience called the fairy, the otherworld, it's supposed to be dangerous, right? 527 00:49:11,150 --> 00:49:17,420 We see the absolute answer, or, you know, you kind of said, yeah, they all lived happily ever after. 528 00:49:17,750 --> 00:49:21,530 But, uh, Nate, you were teaching never speaks again. She's a zombie. 529 00:49:21,560 --> 00:49:23,300 Like, it's a terrifying. And. 530 00:49:23,600 --> 00:49:29,210 And then, of course, with surgery in the night, you know, once he's got the experience, he's kind of permanently marked with that experience. 531 00:49:29,720 --> 00:49:35,840 And then I kind of didn't really see that until Tolkien talks about Fury as, um, 532 00:49:35,840 --> 00:49:40,190 you know, something quite dangerous and something which kind of affects you. 533 00:49:40,670 --> 00:49:49,549 Um, and I'm wondering maybe from your experience and maybe Stuart and Caroline and others, do we have this in the more recent fantasy, 534 00:49:49,550 --> 00:49:55,370 because suddenly we've got the idea that magical fairy or whatever can be both good and bad. 535 00:49:55,820 --> 00:49:59,180 But do we have this, like, you know, we don't go. 536 00:49:59,180 --> 00:50:07,700 That's dangerous. Um, well, I mean, the example that springs to mind is when I mentioned about Nora and, um, Maurice with the. 537 00:50:09,080 --> 00:50:14,809 Because they get sucked into the elven world, don't they? And that is a place of danger in that strange case. 538 00:50:14,810 --> 00:50:17,960 So that would be the one I'd immediately. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. 539 00:50:18,620 --> 00:50:26,760 Yeah. So. Yeah, I would say that it's it obviously does go through the 19th century as well. 540 00:50:27,270 --> 00:50:31,320 The perilous fight. We've we've mentioned that already and it may come up in a bit about, you know, 541 00:50:31,440 --> 00:50:36,270 the perilous realm is is talking called it the fact that you could get dragged off into a, 542 00:50:37,050 --> 00:50:40,800 an underground cavern of fairy land or the woods or whatever. 543 00:50:40,800 --> 00:50:43,890 And as Caroline mentioned, time completely changes there. 544 00:50:44,100 --> 00:50:45,989 But you may never get away from the enchantment. 545 00:50:45,990 --> 00:50:52,350 So it does run through particularly folklore and fairy tale, and it has been picked up in modern modern tales. 546 00:50:52,410 --> 00:50:57,540 Yeah, and I would. Sorry. Just so the elves in The Hobbit are not particularly nice either. 547 00:50:58,050 --> 00:51:02,129 They they're probably based on Ser or Fiona as well, because, you know, they capture the dwarves. 548 00:51:02,130 --> 00:51:06,730 They won't let them out. They're all. Yeah. Keith Miller. 549 00:51:06,830 --> 00:51:11,790 Yeah. How modern is modern for for your questions purpose. 550 00:51:12,420 --> 00:51:18,980 I'm thinking maybe 2020 first century is like, you know, our view of these things changed us. 551 00:51:18,990 --> 00:51:22,860 Uh, like, our view of religion changed a lot of of society changed. 552 00:51:23,430 --> 00:51:26,489 Um, like, I'm struggling to think of a more recent example. 553 00:51:26,490 --> 00:51:34,920 Probably, uh, except for an entity wise Encyclopaedia Ferris, where there's like a scholar who goes to whatever North country. 554 00:51:34,920 --> 00:51:42,600 And so, you know, these guys are dangerous and it's like, you know, reading features at all, like they're they're just plain dangerous. 555 00:51:43,260 --> 00:51:46,530 But this is for the purposes of of the book. 556 00:51:47,610 --> 00:51:50,879 Lord, um, is the premise of Fairy core, isn't it, 557 00:51:50,880 --> 00:52:00,570 that the world of the fairies is both alluring and it has all of the the splendour of the fairy king's kingdom and all fair. 558 00:52:00,570 --> 00:52:08,220 And indeed you get it in folk tale all the time that the the place of the fairies is where you want to go, and they want to keep you there. 559 00:52:08,730 --> 00:52:19,889 And escaping is really, really hard. Um, with fairy core, the return to the, the, uh, the contemporary world, 560 00:52:19,890 --> 00:52:26,400 or the normal world as it were, is usually quite temporary, partly because these series. 561 00:52:26,400 --> 00:52:30,570 So you've always got to go back again for your next fix of the fairy world, I think. 562 00:52:30,960 --> 00:52:38,070 Um, although Goblin Market, um, the Christina Rossetti's poem doesn't mention the word fairy. 563 00:52:38,070 --> 00:52:45,570 Nevertheless, it's absolutely chock full of that kind of fairy, particularly the trope of fairy food and how dangerous it is. 564 00:52:47,040 --> 00:52:48,600 I'm just writing a book about fairies. 565 00:52:50,390 --> 00:52:58,709 Well, my my knowledge of modern fantasy, sort of, uh, I've exhausted for this talk, so, uh, but I'll give a plug for tomorrow. 566 00:52:58,710 --> 00:53:05,040 I think Felix Taylor is talking about Arthur Machen, and he writes some weird tales about the little people, 567 00:53:05,370 --> 00:53:10,320 about resurfacing in the 19 tens, 1920s, and they're not particularly nice. 568 00:53:10,680 --> 00:53:17,660 So. Um, so I would just like to really thank again, Gabriel and Bond for a wonderful session on medieval. 569 00:53:17,810 --> 00:53:18,520 Thank you very.