[Auto-generated transcript. Edits may have been applied for clarity.] All right. Good morning everyone. Welcome to the start of day two of the Bloomsbury Fantasy School.
Um, we are starting with the wonderful Carolyn Langton, who is going to give some opening remarks on the Oxford School of Fantasy.
And then we're going to proceed to the next two speakers for the main, um, first morning session.
So, um, thank you. So I touched a little bit on this topic in my opening remarks yesterday as to why Oxford is the home of fantasy.
Um, it's a claim we like to make in Oxford.
And, uh, Stuart and I have spent some years trying to promulgate this idea to the outside world and indeed,
um, the our successful sponsorship with Bloomsbury perhaps suggests that we have had some success in this.
So why can also make this claim? And as always in Oxford, the question that asks itself is, um, why doesn't Cambridge have a comparable tradition?
Um, it may be because Cambridge is much more science oriented university in the last hundred years,
but there may be some other reasons as well, which I'll be touching on.
So it's a long tradition from at least the mid-19th century, if we date the beginning of Oxford Fantasy from Lewis Carroll,
who was a mathematics done at Christchurch and who composed Alice in Wonderland and
the the follow up Alice Through the Looking Glass for the daughters of Dean little.
There are many writers who lived, taught, studied in Oxford and who were aware of the tradition.
And in some ways it's kind of mushrooming that although Lewis Carroll was out on his own, although Tolkien was,
um, somebody who more or less who picked up on the tradition from William Morris, as we heard yesterday.
Um, and of course, William Morris first encountered ideas about fantasy, particularly Arthurian fantasy, while he was a student here in Oxford.
Um, and there's more and more Oxford people began to write fantasy.
There were more and more people for future generations to be reading.
I also want to talk a little bit about first order and second order effects before getting on to medievalist fantasy.
So, um, does the medieval infrastructure of Oxford and the highly medieval English course, as it was up until the, I guess, about the 1950s?
Has that had some effect in creating the the kind of buzz this is Oxford fantasy?
Oh, I keep using this clicker, which doesn't seem to work.
So. So first of all, we have to talk about people who studied, who taught sorry in the university.
And I divided them up rather, um, arbitrarily in this way.
So we have Carol, who I'm, I've already talked about.
We have Tolkien, about whom we heard so much yesterday, including, um, his basic training as a classicist that Beth was talking about.
And we have C.S. Lewis as well. Um, and here perhaps one of the most important things to note is Tolkiens influence on the English syllabus.
So, um, during the course of the 1920s and 1930s, once Tolkien was firmly established in the faculty,
there were various moves within the English faculty to introduce such startling things as modern literature.
And Tolkien was very clear that.
English literature and English language study should look as much like the classics as possible.
And that meant lots of philology, lots of language work, lots of training in the ancient forms of the language and reading of the ancient literature,
and in the sense anybody who could read could probably make their way through a modern novel.
So they didn't need the same kind of tuition.
I rather doubt whether Ulysses is something you can just pick up and read like that.
But of course, that wasn't exactly on the syllabus at that particular point, since Lewis's interests were slightly later.
But I'm not going to say very much more about Lewis, because we're about to hear a whole lecture on him from Simon in a moment.
Then we have a whole slew of students and we have.
I think this is quite an interesting phenomenon here that we have, first of all, a set of, um, older generation.
Authors Diana Wyn Jones, Susan Cooper and slightly younger Philip Pullman, all of whom studied English in Oxford,
all of whom went through this medieval, um, course of training, and all of whom have, with the exception of Pullman.
So both of whom, I suppose I suppose, with Diana Wyn Jones and Susan Cooper,
have incorporated quite a lot of medieval material, particularly folklore and ballad, in their writing.
Philip Pullman, uh, was less of a medievalist and perhaps more of an early modernist.
So the guiding principle behind his writing, if you like, is a response to Milton, at least in, um, His Dark Materials.
Philip Pullman told me that he didn't.
He like studying English. He didn't like studying it at his particular college very much.
Unfortunately, that college was this college.
Um, so we will not say any more about, um, Philip, this obliging remarks about his tutor,
who is anyway no longer with us, um, but as well as this kind of little cluster of English students,
we also had Alan Garner, who was maudlin, studying classics, at least,
although he didn't complete his degree, and he was around the same time as Diana Wyn Jones and Susan Cooper.
Whether their paths have a cross, I don't know.
Um, but his interests were not shaped by the English faculty syllabus in this way, but rather by his own reading and his,
uh, his own reading, his own understanding of the landscape and traditions where he lived and still lives,
of course, but also by this rigorous classics training which allowed him to to frame his own responses to to place within a larger literary tradition.
But more recently, we've had a group of writers who are not studying English literature, uh, Samantha Shannon,
who will be with us this afternoon, of course, did study English at Saint Anne's, but more recently.
So she, I think, had a less rigorous grinding through philology and perhaps a more interesting and creative, more literary experience.
Um, Rebecca Kwan was here a few years ago doing a master's in Contemporary Chinese Culture.
Um, Katherine Rundell is also an English literature person, again situated somewhere between this time,
the Wyn Jones Susan Cooper generation and, um, Samantha Shannon's generation.
So I think she would have studied a slightly different version of the English syllabus from what we have now.
Um, but nevertheless, rather like Philip Pullman, her interests are in the early modern period as well.
And then we have Sarah Majorana, who we'll be hearing from this morning, two,
who is working in global, um, studies at Saint Anthony's looking at politics and culture.
So the kind of on group of the English faculty on the imagination of these writers is beginning to diminish.
And perhaps that's a very good thing. So finally, I want to just turn to the question of the city itself.
What is it about Oxford that inspires people, particularly to turn to medievalism?
Um, Oxford still has a medieval town plan that basic cross roads centred on Carfax and with the the main roads going down the High Street,
Carfax, Cole Market, Queen Street. It still has its city walls.
If you go to the Turf Tavern, you'll see dividing the turf from New College.
What remains of the medieval city walls? It has a picturesquely ruined castle up there on on the mound.
And it has. These are not necessarily medieval features, of course, but it has its rivers.
It has the canal, it has the River Thames, it has the River cha.
Well, it has its weirs. And I think the Wiz, which represents in some ways a site where water is moving yet not moving,
where these placid bodies of water suddenly become quite dangerous.
You shouldn't try not ever to punt over a where, um, that's a handy tip.
So later on this week, perhaps, um, it's full of alleyways with mysterious lighting if you walk around the Radcliffe Camera by night.
So if you go down Cutts Street, you'll see no longer gaslights,
but nevertheless old style lamp posts of the kind that we associate now with Louis the Lion, the witch and the wardrobe.
It's still has cobbled streets, notoriously again run the Radcliffe Camera, but also in Merton Street, the Botanical Gardens.
Again, this is not a medieval feature, but it's something which has figured very largely in the work of Philip Pullman as a place that represents
in little the kind of Garden of Eden in contrast to the the bustle of the modern industrial city.
I've mentioned the canal along with the rivers, but the the canal too, is extremely important for Pullman.
And that idea of a community that's living alongside the industrial city and the university, but a community of freethinking people.
If you go and walk by the canal, you'll see all the houseboats down there,
and you'll encounter people who are not just tourists passing through there.
Some of them will be on fun barge holidays, but many of them are people who are living there for because they like that particular existence.
And finally, we've got the expanse of Port Meadow as well.
Um, medieval, insofar as it's been established for a thousand years, but also huge open space.
Again, something that's, um, absolutely central to Philip Pullman's imagination.
And so that's enough for me, I think, on Oxford.
But I hope that at lunch time or tea time or, uh, when we finish tomorrow,
you'll have the opportunity to go out and explore it with the eyes of fantasy if it's here nowadays.
Thank you.