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King Arthur and the Tolkien Lecture · Mythmakers

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Hello and welcome to MythMakers. MythMakers is the podcast for fantasy fans and fantasy
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creatives brought to you by the Oxford Centre for fantasy. My name is Julia Golding. I'm
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the director of the Centre and an author and today I am joined by special guest Gabriel
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Schaith. Now Gabriel, perhaps you could introduce yourself just a little to the listeners.
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Hi, thank you so much for having me Julia. My name is Gabriel. I teach online at
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Signal University which is an online university specialising in fantasy studies and as an MA
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in Tolkien studies as well. I did my PhD or as we call it an Oxford D refill in Arthurian literature
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at Oxford specifically at Pembroke College which is the college where Tolkien was for about 20
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years where he wrote the Hobbit and most Law of the Rings and I also work for Japanese charity
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in my spare time so I split my time between lots of different things at the moment and help out
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with various things as well based near Oxford and I love reading fantasy and talking about fantasy.
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So that's a little taster of the kind of area we'll be covering but we're talking in the week
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when you have just hosted the annual Tolkien lecture and I think a lot of people listening to
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this we're really interested to hear about the existence of this lecture who your guests in the
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past have been and who it was this year so perhaps we could start by talking a little bit about
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that. You're on the what the committee organising this are you and inviting people.
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Absolutely yes so about 10 years ago back in 2012 my friend and I who were both doing their PhDs
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at Oxford at Pembroke College in English realised that there was nothing in the college to ever say
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that Tolkien had been there. We found one painting which was actually donated by Tolkien to the
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college and that was it. That was the only hint that he'd been there. Meanwhile there was a
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Samuel Johnson building because Samuel Johnson had been there briefly as an undergraduate
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there were you know various other people commemorated all throughout the college so it felt like
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a bit of an oversight and we wanted to do something to commemorate Tolkien and back back in 2012
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it didn't feel like there was a huge amount out there doing that. I think there was a lot of
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appreciation for Tolkien's work but not necessarily a sense that academia had caught up with that.
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Not many people doing PhDs on Tolkien compared to today I mean and not many things sort of celebrating
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his work and by extension celebrating fantasy and science fiction you know they still kind of a
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bit of a sense that people were sort of looking down on it to some extent maybe I don't know if
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that was deliberate or not but we thought we really wanted to do something to commemorate Tolkien
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and also to celebrate fantasy and to promote it as a subject that is worth serious study. I studied
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Arthurian literature stories about King Arthur partly because I wanted to study fantasy but I needed
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to find a legitimate way in to that topic which is a bit silly you should just be able to study
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what you want to study. As much as I love Arthurian literature it felt a bit silly to have to
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sneak around to the topic of fantasy when there was so much fantastic incredible work being done
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in fantasy and science fiction and it was so worthy of study and people are studying it and
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were studying it back then as well but it just wasn't kind of as much on the surface publicly as
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we thought it should be. So we started up this lecture series in honor of J.R. Tolkien
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but the lecture itself is on fantasy literature fantasy very broadly defined a bit like in the Hugo
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Awards so it can include science fiction and can include speculative fiction. You know we don't get
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too engrossed in defining what is and isn't fantasy we invite leading professionals writers,
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editors, artists in the field of fantasy to talk about their thoughts on the field as broadly as
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that. So we had Kid Johnson give the first lecture back in 2013 and she's an amazing writer
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and an academic as well and then that was followed by Professor Adam Roberts from Royal Holloway
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University who is also an incredible writer and an incredible academic so there's a bit of a
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theme going there because we like to sort of mirror Tolkien a little bit in that he was
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an academic a scholar but also a fantasy writer of course and then we've had just so many brilliant
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speakers and Marlon James, Love Grossman, Terry Wendling who's also an editor and artist as well as
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a writer Susan Cooper who was taught by Sirs Lewis and J.R. Tolkien and isn't just one of the
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most important fantasy writers ever as well in her own right and recently on Monday we had
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Rebecca Afkwang give her speech which was delayed from 2020. She was supposed to give it in
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May 2020 of course the pandemic intervened she was actually in Oxford at the time doing her
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masters and she had to evacuate the city in the middle of the night and then we had a kind of
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zoom symposium to make up for that in 2020 which was a lot of past speakers including
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our then future speaker Rebecca and that was called fantasy and times of crisis and that's a really
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interesting discussion that you can look at on YouTube if you're interested in that topic
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and then the following year we had a zoom lecture with Guy Gavreau K who again you know is an
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incredible fantasy writer but also has this history of working with Christopher Tolkien on the
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Silmarillion so that was a kind of nice link even though he didn't talk about that it was a nice
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link to have that and then finally we got to have the in-person lecture that was always intended
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for 2020 and Rebecca spoke on Monday which was the 23rd of May in person with a packed
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audience and we got to do all the great things that we can't do over zoom as much as I love
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things like this online teaching and online conversations that great but there's some things you
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can't do and we could have a kind of we could sort of hang out a bit more and exchange ideas a bit
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more freely and it was a brilliant lecture highly recommend you watch the recording if you haven't
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done so already it's on YouTube. Welcome to seeing the links into the show notes so people can
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find. Brilliant. Yeah do check it out. What I find with the Tolkien lectures is I get a lot out
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of it the first time but then if I keep on going back to it I keep on getting more and more out of it
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because they tend to be scholarly but accessible so there's a lot of quotations a lot of ideas
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and Rebecca had been thinking about this talk for at least two years and it's part it kind of
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responds to the panel discussion we had which is why write fantasy when there are about things
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happening in the world how much is this actually helping and she comes to some beautiful conclusions
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about the value of art and beauty and truth and all that good stuff but she expresses it so
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brilliantly and and I think in a very relatable way like a lot of the things she's talking about
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I've struggled with as well and along the way she gives really interesting insights into the
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public and publishing industry and the Q&A especially the the lecture itself is only it's about 35
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minutes long and then the rest of the video is the Q&A which expands on some of her ideas so do
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check it out and check out our previous videos as well got all the lectures previous lectures
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recording they're all really really useful and inspiring and full of great ideas.
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Yeah I mean one of the things I was interested in hearing her say is the what you could hear the
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weirdness in her voice of because she is Chinese-American heritage of having always to be
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of you know in some sense seen as a flag carrier and there was one particularly telling phrase
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about publishing predominantly white publishing white people in publishing sort of presenting
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writers from other communities as though they've saved them you know yeah here's our flagship
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person for this particular ethnicity and I just felt I sympathize with her so much when I heard
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I thought oh yeah that's I've got a good friend who was an editor of mine and also a writer Jasmine
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Richards who has come on one of our courses you know spoke on one of our courses I remember
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saying she she's from a black British person she said I want a kid living in Brixton just to be
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able to write about a dragon egg that they find not the experience of a black person living in
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Brixton who finds a dragon egg you know just bring them up from the responsibility of having to you
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know always feel that they're having to think about identity politics when they just want to tell a
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story so I'm looking forward to catching up with the rest of the lecture right so that's just
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brilliant I'm so pleased that you've made this move to honor Tolkien in his college
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but we're now going to have a quick look at our theory and literature because as you said when
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you look at the any inheritance of the literature that we've got even though people have been
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sniffy until fairly recently about fantasy literature they've been teaching it for yeah it's
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gallevers travels pilgrims progress bear wolf you know it's you can't really move without finding
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what we would call fantasy literature and of course in the heart of that is the Arthurian
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cycle the matter of Britain so how did you how did you get there and what are your main Arthurian
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writers that you follow as it were what's your where's your interest settled in that
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right well I mean I got I came to Arthur as a child as a lot of people do I remember going over to
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my grandparents house and watching the sword and the stone which the Disney film and my grandmother
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showed it to me and loved it and and then I played you know as King Arthur's one of King Arthur's
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knights with my friends afterwards and then when I did my masters at Durham I did a fantastic course
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called narrative transpositions and we read Homer and we read Mallory and we read various other authors
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big you know epic volumes yeah and yeah we read Mallory so so Thomas Mallory wrote this book called
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the Mort d'Artha the late 15th century it was about 1470 and there was published 1485 and it's a
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enormous book in the background somewhere there but it's a bit about this big and he collates all
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these different sources I always feel like I should back up whenever I talk about King Arthur just
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specify he probably wasn't real sorry to disappoint but I think the literature is so much more
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interesting than the reality if he had been real he would have been like a kind of Celtic warlord
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and there's actually some really good fiction written about that setting so Rosemary Sarkloff I think
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is the absolute best of that sword at sunset there's a beautiful novel which is kind of like the
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historical Arthur but most of what we mean by King Arthur actually is medieval retellings of Arthur
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so Jeffrey of Monmouth being pretty much the earliest written down
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so I'm terrible dates off the top of my head but we're talking about kind of 11th to 12th century
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that sort of time and then 13th century French writers come in and Welsh writers in the collection
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known as the Mabinogion French writers such as Cretti and the Toire Marie de France and they kind
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of create more of a kind of romantic chivalrous exciting adventurous Arthur bit more of what we
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might recognise as fantasy elements as well and then Mallory sort of collates a lot of these sources
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together puts them all into this enormous book the Mort D'Artha which I read during my master's
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it was you know it's a big book it's 600 700 pages but I loved it and it was I think a lot of people
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with Mallory discover to their surprise that it's not dry it feels very real the characters feel real
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there's a lot of lists in it there's a lot of kind of the results of tournaments and things like that
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so there are bits you can sort of skim read but there's also the sense that these are real characters
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and most of the time they're not actually the stories aren't actually about Arthur Arthur's in the
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background get Arthur the beginning Arthur at the end most of the stories about Arthur's nights
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and sorceresses and dragons and quests and so on so it's great fun and it really helped me understand
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it was a kind of missing link in my love for fantasy because I grew up with talking and Lewis
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non-earned middle earth and I could see the roots of that in Arthurian literature specifically in
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Sir Thomas Mallory and just we should just say here that it's title is a bit of a misnomer because
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the Mort D'Artha is the death of Arthur you get far more than just Arthur's death
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yes exactly and it's not French as well so that confuses people too so it's an English it's written
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in English written in middle English you can you can still understand the original you know as
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well we we don't know exactly how Mallory wrote it but we have Kexton's printed version
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which came out shortly after Mallory wrote it and then there are kind of updated editions that
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update the spelling and so on which are much easier to read um yeah there's there's a big debate
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about the title some people think that Kexton gave it to the title of the Mort D'Artha because
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he got confused as he just was thought the name of one section was the name of the entire thing
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but other people have argued that actually the Mort D'Artha is a good title for the whole thing
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because although it's not all about the death of Arthur it's all leading up to that point
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although people see the Arthur in legend as essentially a tragedy which you know you can
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certainly make that argument I'm not sure I personally agree but yeah so it's an incredible work
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I do recommend slogging through it there's some beautiful beautiful things inside
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and it was really eye-opening for me and then when I went to do my PhD I was looking around for
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topics and I remember um I was listening to the soundtrack of I think it was a 1998 TV movie
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called Merlin starring Sam Neal and it has this amazing soundtrack and I was on the YouTube
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comments page for the soundtrack and someone who wrote in a comment saying I wish I could live
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back in this time and I was thinking this is weird because this time never existed especially not
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in the time depicted in Merlin which has magic and so on but they wanted to live in another
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time even though it didn't exist they're in nostalgic for something that never existed and I
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thought this is a fascinating phenomenon and I then that led me to I think I actually that led
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me to do my masters and William Morris at Durham um William Morris wrote kind of very early fantasy
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late pro-Zero amount is such as the would be on the world and the well at the world's end
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and and then for my PhD I thought well I'll just keep on going down this track and look at King Arthur
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as a way of understanding fantasy and so I focused on revival Arthurian literature um from the
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19th century and the 20th century King Arthur kind of went away in the 18th century when we all
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sort of became very rational for about a hundred years and then he was republished the more
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Arthur was republished in 1816 in two new editions and there was about 186 year hiatus
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when you couldn't get a new copy of the more Arthur and then it came back two new editions in 1816
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third edition in 1817 just it's never stopped being popular since then there was an explosion of
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interest in King Arthur then you get you know King Arthur plays King Arthur chocolate King Arthur
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hotels and then into the 20th century King Arthur movies King Arthur Dean Parks it's just everything
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goes kind of crazy King Arthur so it's really a fascinating period of study that's what I
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focused on in my PhD research and I've just finished giving a course at Sigma University called
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the return of King Arthur which is about this period as well why did Arthur come back
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what does it mean for Arthur to come back because essentially he always comes back every new
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edition every new retelling is a is a return and every time the Arthurian story is told it's told
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differently so you won't hear me saying this is the story there is no single story it's a playground
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for authors to explore ideas Tennyson did that TH white did that Tracy Dion recently in the legend
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born series is doing that as well every author brings something new to it new perspective and so
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that's what's really enjoyable about reading Arthur in literature really enjoy about studying it
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as well I've done that I did it for kids a few years ago at the university press I did young nights
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at the round table which was the sort of my take on it was that the Fey World was a kind of Arthurian
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world and that it was about changelings and the children over there were a bit like they're in
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North Korea they were told that humans were the enemy so it's kind of flipping the Arthurian story
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looking at it from the Morgan the Face eye anyway um why do you think Shakespeare didn't write
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you know the the tale of King Arthur because he's they obviously had the Spencer Fairy Queen at the
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time which was like you know a huge book in his own era but there was never the play yeah I mean
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unless he wrote it and it's lost I mean for a long time the birth it would be a great story well
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yeah there is a there's a novel called the tragedy of Arthur which is about that about the idea
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that he did write a play and it was rediscovered and then everyone who the author is but it's
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quite a good novel and at the end the author's reconstructed the entire play obviously made it up
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but if you want to read what a Shakespeare play about King Arthur would look like you can read
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the tragedy of Arthur um but yeah it's a really good question because Shakespeare drew on a lot
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of folklore and history as well um I mean King Lear is you know maybe his
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his closest equivalent uh I mean John Milton also didn't write about Arthur he thought about it
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and it ended up writing Paradise Lost Instead I think with Shakespeare A he was writing
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enough other stuff he was quite busy so he maybe just didn't get around to it um he may have felt
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it had already been done um he mean he would have had the Fairy Queen but he would have had access
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to Le Mord Arthur as well I should think um and Le Mord Arthur's quite Catholic um it was quite a
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lot of masses in this there's a lot about the Holy Grail which is the cup that Christ used
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so maybe um he didn't want to go down that route um he does mention Arthur a few times uh there's
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about two or three mentions of Arthur and about two mentions of Merlin, full-starth um there's a
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character who appears in a few of Shakespeare's plays mentions Arthur uh so you know Shakespeare
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definitely aware of him um but it's I think the there's a lot of plays from that period about Arthur
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that were lost a lot of plays full-stop that were lost and there's some really interesting
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work being done I went to a talk recently by De Phil at Jesus College, Oxford who was working on
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early modern Arthurian plays and sometimes we only have the titles so there's a whole kind of
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world in that era um that we don't know about but it's a fascinating question to think
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why didn't Shakespeare write about it? So it skips a couple of the bigons like Shakespeare and
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Milton in a considerable way but the one that I am land on next is Tennyson if I missed anybody out
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before that um not not really I don't think okay that's good because otherwise I'll
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sue Cambridge and Oxford for migration right okay so I'm okay um so in Tennyson you've got a
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poetic approach to Arthur with Idols of the King and that comes along with a whole
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craze for Arthurian names if you just look at the names of um particularly for women just the whole
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you know lane and all of this suddenly this is a really common name people using it was obviously a
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real craze in Victorian society so did you what's your feelings of you mentioned you went to William
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Morris but what do you think about the Tennyson pro uh poetry? I love Tennyson I adore Tennyson
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Idols of the King or Idols of the King depending on how you you said is not everyone loves it um
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some some people have some issues with some of the idols um such as Gwenevere and just to explain
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their 12 kind of separate narrative poems that are written in blank verse so they're really
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they're quite easy to read for poetry you know it's not rhyming um it's just kind of a flowing
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story and the the Idols vary a lot so some of them are kind of intimate sort of domestic dramas um
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kind of one-to-one like um Berlin in Nimmoway some of them are kind of more like epics um the coming of
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Arthur the passing of Arthur some of almost like fairy tales there's elements in the passing of
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Arthur that is like a fairy tale the repetition of the Excalibur going into into the the lake and so on
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so even within go in three times yeah exactly three times and the and the number nine turns up
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a lot in the text as well so even within a single section there's a lot of variety which I think
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makes them fascinating incredibly beautiful I think incredibly beautiful verse um and I think
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he really captures the spiritual side of the legend as well um and it was interesting teaching
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Tennyson recently at Signum because some people really were very moved by Tennyson um by Idols
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the King and the religious elements some people were a bit more turned off by that so there's
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something in Arthurian literature for everyone if you've read a bit of Arthurian literature and you
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think that's not for me just find something else because uh I mean it was interesting hearing
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you talk about your story you can take so many different approaches to it you can take so many
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different angles um and I think one thing that I want to remind people about Tennyson is that he
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was kind of radical for his time because he became poet laureate and is quoted and studied in school
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he becomes this establishment figure but he was taking a big bold risk writing about Arthur and he
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was very anxious about that it took him a long time to write Idols the King it was really his life's
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work um he wrote the first lines when he was in his early 20s and he was working up on it still
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up to his death bed um in his late 80s I think so it was a great labor of love for him and the first
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thing he published was a kind of framing device for what would later become the passing of Arthur
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and the framing device is that someone found this poem and the author had burnt all the other parts
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of it because it wasn't good enough because why should man remodel models why go back to the past
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you know we can't bring back the past so why should we even try and this is Tennyson's sort of
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anxiety about what am I even doing why I should be writing about contemporary things why am I writing
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about someone you probably never even existed but I'm glad he did persevere with that because then
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that becomes a standard thing no one's going to say why are you writing about King Arthur
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anymore because of the work that he did but it's worth remembering that that was that was bold
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and radical at its time um to sort of establish that and help establish the what later becomes
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the fantasy genre as well so we had a podcast devoted to William Morris with Dr. Ingrid Hanson
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who's an expert on Morris and we were talking in that about the defense of Gwynnevere which is
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obviously a really fascinating development of the Arthurian themes which William Morris usher
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in but we should also mention that William Morris with his connection to the arts and craft movement
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and the pre-raffelite movement kind of they're all part of the same movement really um very much
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gives us the iconography which we can all summon up if I just say think of a Arthurian lady you
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immediately think of those you know drop wasted gowns and the you know thick hair
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yeah all of that uh the look is very much a pre-raffelite look which is still carried over
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to understandings of fantasy now so um we've touched on William Morris I think he also did an
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addition of Mort Arthur didn't he with fantastic um from the at least he's done some prints Arthurian
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prints would he yeah possibly from the council court um publishes I'm not sure I've seen that
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actually um but there's I mean Aubrey Beardsley has did um prints which are kind of quite similar
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I mean that aren't no though rather than pre-raffelite but they're sort of um quite arresting as well
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and and um I think uh Morris did certainly did prints for some of his Arthurian poems
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okay maybe that's what I'm thinking of then yeah I'm not if you haven't heard of it I'm
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then I'm probably wrong um so then moving on into the 20th century uh also on these podcasts we've
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spent a couple of um a couple of times we've thought about Charles Williams of course rights
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his extraordinary um Arthurian poems centered around Taliass in the bard figure but before we
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get to Charles Williams who's writing in the 1930s is there anybody else who bridges us in the Edwardian
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period carrying the Arthurian flame forwards yeah there's lots I mean not not necessarily big names
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um there was a lot of very good drama um sort of fun to see at the 1890s Edwardian era
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there was a big kind of blockbuster performance of King Arthur the Lighting Theatre
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starring Sir Henry Irving who was the first actor ever to be knighted with Bram Stoker the author
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of Dracula as the stage manager and Ellen Terry as Gwynneville so these are you know the biggest
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names in the 19th century stage what a production team that would have been amazing amazing and
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you can still read the um the script and there's lots of kind of photographs and stuff of the
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performance and stuff so that's kind of fascinating one to think about although you really need
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to have been there I feel um the script isn't quite good enough but you get the sense of the scale of
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it um another author I've I really really highly right is Clemens Houseman who was the sister of
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AE Houseman and she incredible writer um highly recommend her um Douglas Anderson has included her in
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tales before talking as kind of roots of modern fantasy um he's what he's one of the world experts
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on on Houseman uh and she wrote a novel called The Life of Sir Agleville De Galas she's spent about
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16 years writing it um I taught it recently in this course um it was published I think 1906
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around that time taught it in the Signum University course and the students the reaction
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of the students was um quite a few of them said when they started it first 10 50 pages they were
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thinking why are we reading this and then about 100 pages in they were thinking this book is
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changed by life like it is just extraordinary um it's so intense there's so much in it
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it's written in this kind of old sort of Mallory style it's very kind of close to Mallory's
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Lamort Datham and actually even quotes Mallory verbatim within the narrative without you even
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realizing what Houseman is doing but it is this really intense psychological journey um about a
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minor character in Arthur's court Sir Agleville so that's a really fascinating one and I think
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that one needs to be read more and known more um and then 1930s I mean you have the beginning of
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T.H. Whites the Once of Future King so the Sword and the Stone comes out in the late 1930s um and
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that's kind of the next big thing really uh the sword the the Once of Future King is a really big
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important epic um but yeah Charles Williams fits in around that time too I've just spent some time
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thinking about that book because I was reading H's for Hawk but yeah um which is a book about
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training training at Hawk by Helen McDonald and she is basically partnering throughout with
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her thoughts about T.H. Whites and um because he also wrote a book about training at Hawk
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and it was particularly interesting to read her take on the bits when Wart the the boy who
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becomes the Once of Future King is turned into animals and how this is it's a very good companion
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piece if you're thinking of how do I get into the Once of Future King I would imagine this is a very
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good way of approaching it because it picks out things about the way that Arthur is used to
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reflect on contemporary issues that everybody has and identity issues for T.H. Whites um yeah absolutely
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yeah I mean so McDonald makes the case that that white was a deeply unhappy man um and that's
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fair enough I mean I've been to Whites archives which are weirdly enough in Austin Texas and the
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ransom center and they've got all of his journals and diaries and letters and so on so I've read
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through all his journals whilst he was writing The Once of Future King and he was suffering he was
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he was a bit tortured he was very isolated very lonely um he was a repressed homosexual he
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um you know uh was given some very bad psychological advice about repressing his homosexuality um
32:38
he was kind of feeling very cut off from the rest of the world and he was in Ireland at the time
32:44
the rest of the world well his country England was going to war um and he felt like you know he
32:53
should really help out with that but he didn't know how to and he was kind of a bit useless at the
32:59
jobs that would be important for the war efforts so he's kind of yeah he feels very cut off in Ireland
33:06
and he channeled a lot of his pain into this incredibly beautiful and moving and powerful story
33:15
um which he also sees as a tragedy so I mean it there's lots of fun things in The Once of Future
33:23
King and it is an extremely funny series of books especially the first one but there's also
33:30
pain and um sadness in there as well I think I think McDonald's sort of brings that out in
33:36
ages for hawk um because that's a book about grief as much as anything else yeah and maybe that's
33:42
what's so fascinating about the Arthurian cycle as it does have this melancholy it feels very
33:48
for those of people who know they're talking that talking is basically part of what's the mix is
33:56
the you know ragnarok we're all heading for the great defeat kind of feel it's getting um we're
34:01
moving away from a golden age yeah and there is definitely that feeling in Arthur too that we are
34:08
the greats go and they may possibly come back like in ragnarok they may possibly come back
34:13
but I don't know if you ever think they will it's the hope that maybe they will yeah it's interesting
34:19
isn't because the the Arthur story is that Arthur is not actually dead that he's going to come back
34:24
one day um and there are stories about Arthur coming back but really it works best if he is
34:30
some way off into the future and shivalry itself the time of shivalry never really existed you know
34:36
this time of nights and quests and so on there are historical periods of shivalry but even then
34:43
the kind of nostalgic yeah even at the time like even the medieval writers and people you know
34:48
they're trying to recreate something that never really existed um so shivalry always really exists
34:53
in the past and Arthur always comes back at a predetermined future date so there there is some kind
35:00
of hope for it but there's a yearning too um and I'm reminded there's a line in a doctor who
35:07
episode blink when one of the characters Sally Sparrow says uh I like all houses they're sad
35:14
and her friend says what's so good about sad and she says sad is happy for deep people
35:21
and that really resonates with me I love all this kind of sad stuff because it's it I don't know
35:28
it just sort of gives it inspires me and and yeah it kind of gives me a weird kind of happiness
35:35
at the same time because it's not all sad it's not you know there's lots of not everyone dies
35:41
at the end you know but it is this kind of loss in this yearning which I think absolutely also
35:47
get in Tolkien um the loss of previous civilizations and the the the sense that even you know the
35:55
the elves are going to stick around forever and um the order order changes yielding
36:01
place to the new is Tennyson put it I think that's absolutely something that Tolkien is getting
36:07
from Tennyson um he actually translated one of Tennyson's poems I think it was break break break
36:13
um into Elvish um so he was he was very taken by Tennyson and uh and and Tennyson break break break
36:21
uh it was either that poem or crossing the bar both written about Halem Arthur Halem who he was
36:29
you know this man that that Tennyson loved deeply and died before his time and that really
36:36
it was like the most life changing event for Tennyson and a lot of that goes into idols of the
36:42
king a lot of that goes into all his poetry and I think Tolkien himself you know had early losses
36:49
you know his mother um his father um his friends in the First World War and even before the First World
36:56
War um so uh yeah there's something that speaks to those writers about fantasy and Arthur and
37:05
of course Tolkien wrote um his own Arthurian poem as well the fall of Arthur which is incomplete but
37:12
still published and that's tremendous too and of course C.S. Lewis it's full of um Arthurian I mean
37:19
we haven't got time to cover it here but just for people who've read Narnia for example they'll know
37:24
that again and again there is an Arthurian feel almost like Arthur and would Juvenate it
37:31
um in Narnwich in the wardrobe and the way that the uh leadership is is described as being shared
37:42
um and the order of knights anyway we can go on there's loads of it um and of course
37:48
C.S. Lewis was the great medievalist and knew all this stuff inside out but maybe people would
37:55
be interested to know what you rate as really good Arthurian entertainment on their TV or film
38:03
choices so let's come bang up to date there's keeps coming up um sometimes relatively big film
38:10
sometimes missing the mark but what's your feeling of Arthurian themed series that people should
38:17
dip into well I really enjoy Merlin the BBC TV series and that's something a lot of people have
38:24
watched in Britain at least I think that's very relatable on Netflix actually now so yeah it's great
38:31
fun I mean it's if you've seen Smallville or Gotham it's a similar kind of story in that it's the
38:35
kind of the prequel series when Merlin and Arthur were young of course Merlin in most versions
38:40
isn't the same age as Arthur but it doesn't matter you can do what do you like with the legends and
38:44
they have great fun with them they have great sort of um banter banter yeah exactly I mean I think
38:52
I mean I as I kind of maybe shocked my students when I was teaching King Arthur recently because I
38:57
said I don't actually care about King Arthur they don't I don't have like a King Arthur duvet set I
39:03
don't have like King Arthur Cuddly Tory I'm not a King Arthur fan that's not what I'm fascinated
39:09
about with the Arthurian legend King Arthur isn't actually about King Arthur King Arthur is about
39:15
people and people's relationships and the best Arthurian fiction whether that be TV or film or
39:24
books is about those human relationships so I think that's something that the Merlin series does
39:29
well in terms of films I mean Excalibur is worth watching it's very intense um 1983 something
39:38
like that early 80s and actually John Baldwin the director wanted to get the rights to Lord of the
39:43
Rings and couldn't so he did King Arthur instead um but that's that's quite intense um I would say
39:50
the kid who would be King directed by Joe Cornish is much more uh accessible and fun that's a recent
39:59
film that came out a few years ago um and I also think although it's a bit controversial um the
40:07
the guy Richie King Arthur film King Arthur legend of the sword is actually a lot of fun I rewatched
40:15
it recently it's much better than I remember it being I think when it came out a lot of us were
40:19
sort of feeling like oh this goes too far who's the who's the lead in that one Charlie Hunman I think
40:25
is yeah yeah okay I'll just I'm afraid I get confused with the Robin Hood films right yeah
40:34
and run parallel that if someone's doing King Arthur there's also a Robin Hood film happening
40:38
okay right it's a similar kind of thing and it's basically it's very much a guy Richie version
40:43
of King Arthur so there's even a bit where Bed of It says you know we've got to assault the
40:49
the castle and we've got to bring you know all these armies and you think okay well this is like
40:53
a standard kind of Lord of the Rings sort of fantasy story with the big armies and so on
40:58
and then King Arthur played by Charlie Hunman says no no what we've got to do is get a couple of
41:04
diamond geese and we'll go and do ice and that's what they do so it's like a kind of it almost goes
41:09
that way the standard route and then it it's actually a very different kind of story um and it's
41:14
just great fun then with great love costumes don't analyze it too much um don't go into it thinking
41:21
I want historical realism because you're not going to get it in any Arthurian story so you might
41:26
as well enjoy the ride um so those those are the ones I would pick out I think for for accessible
41:32
kind of TV and film I did think that cursed which was on Netflix was actually doing some really
41:39
interesting things unfortunately you got canceled after one season but it is still worth checking
41:43
out and that's about Nimmerway the Lady of the Lake uh this from her perspective and it's a shame
41:51
because they were going some they were pushing things in some interesting directions in that series
41:55
but that that's another recent one which I enjoyed so that's thank you that's fantastic so
42:02
and just before we get to where in the world um how I usually end um Gabriel you're also involved
42:08
in curating some literary estates associated with the inkling so maybe you want to tell you
42:13
a little bit about that role and what that involves yeah um so I work with Owen Barfield's grandson
42:21
on the Owen Barfield's literary estate and that's been great fun and very rewarding I've been
42:28
doing that for over 10 years now and we've seen interest in Barfield grow in that time Barfield is
42:35
one of the inklings who is arguably the most important because he sort of glues
42:41
everyone together and you can find so much of talking and Lewis in Barfield or rather the other
42:48
around so much of Barfield and talking and Lewis and huge huge influence on them both especially
42:53
Lewis and but so someone who's been sort of a little bit more forgotten than the others
43:01
because he didn't write like a big fantasy universe that was his mistake I guess
43:06
but a fantastic philosopher and wrote lots of you know wrote the first inklings fairy tale uh the
43:12
sulfur trumpet um which is available on the website and so that that's something I've been involved
43:19
in getting the word out about Barfield making the information as accessible as possible
43:26
because talking to Lewis is so big the literary estates have to be a bit more close off
43:32
and protective whereas with Barfield we're bringing everyone in um we're putting up there's
43:39
lots of texts that you can just read for free on the website there's fantastic Facebook discussion board
43:47
there's YouTube videos Barfield has a reputation of being quite difficult to understand
43:53
and it is proper deep philosophy that he's writing about but it's actually very accessible once you
44:01
get your head around it and especially if you're not Christian um that you will find lots in Barfield
44:13
because I think some people feel like they're missing stuff out especially in Lewis if they're not
44:20
Christian um because Christianity is so central to to Lewis and to less extent to Tolkien whereas
44:26
Barfield is kind of writing for everyone and a much kind of broader approach and the brilliant novel
44:32
to read actually is Peron Easy by Susanna Clark which I just ignored and that is laced with Barfieldian
44:39
philosophy and she was inspired by Barfield uh to write it and she mentions Barfield by name at one
44:45
point that that kind of central idea is is extremely Barfieldian and it's also really important to
44:51
fantasies so if you're interested in the study of fantasy you have to read Barfield he
44:56
have to engage with Barfield and that's been really fun thing that I've been involved in um with
45:01
Barfield literary estate. Brilliant thank you okay so right down to the final question which is
45:08
wherein all the fantasy world is best and uh in your honour because we've been talking about Arthur
45:15
I'm going to ask where in all the fantasy worlds is the best place to find an enchanted sword
45:22
now obviously perhaps we could just put aside a scalaba because it might be like the winner
45:28
uh just because it's the most famous enchanted sword so we'll all just do a sort of nod to a
45:33
scalaba but in other books you've read what enchanted sword has taken your fancy.
45:40
Well I mean the first thing to explain is that a scalaba of the sword and the stone are
45:44
separates usually I mean sometimes they're combined because it makes more sense um but
45:50
scalaba comes from the lady of the lake uh and is it's it's an important sword although in
45:55
Mallory it's not actually the sword that's important it's the scabbard the scabbard is the enchanted
46:01
part which means that you won't die you won't lose any blood as long as you've got the scabbard.
46:06
um the sword of the stone is just a sword that just proves that Arthur is the rightful king
46:11
so that the sword itself isn't actually important um so if we if we if we assume that
46:17
scalaba is the sword from the lake and we're we're nodding at that but not going into detail
46:23
I would still say that enchanted lakes are good sources for swords um I mean in the real world
46:29
you know people do drop swords and they get washed up on the shoreline and there are stories of
46:35
children finding swords and you know the story becomes uh the new king Arthur and why not um
46:41
but yeah the the sword in the stone would be another another place to find good swords especially
46:49
if you can pull it out there's some great stories there's a short story by Jane Yearlan
46:54
written in the 1980s and there's a short story written in the 1910s
47:01
Thomas Wood Stevens about people pulling the sword out of the stone using their initiative
47:07
using um science to freeze the metal or to lubricate the metal in order to pull it out and then
47:16
becoming the rightful owner of Excalibur or sorry the sword on the stone um using their
47:25
ingenuity so I quite quite like that so if you if you do find a sword in a stone and you
47:30
can't pull it out because you're not the rightful you know you don't have the right lineage
47:35
rewrite the story rebel against the story and say it's actually about your ingenuity that
47:43
gives you the right to be the ruler and find another way of pulling at the sword out of the stone
47:49
but um the the only other place to think of where you might find an enchanted sword would be
47:53
in a castle usually with some kind of ritual ceremony involved maybe a procession comes out
48:03
with the holy grail and then there's a sword there quite often there's the spear of long enough
48:09
as well spear of destiny um if anyone ever or if you ever get a vision of a sword seek that out
48:18
I read you to a castle you'll probably have to pass some kind of test um maybe it's a riddle
48:24
maybe it's um a morality test um but if you can pass that test and gain the sword then it will
48:32
be a great boon to you and uh you can yeah it will serve you well I thought of three which don't
48:41
fit that category so obviously let's do a nod to sting your bow sword because it's an early warning
48:47
system excellent use for a sword uh shines blue get worried excellent idea um but the other two
48:57
I thought of one is in um the uh Percy Jackson series where he gets the sword which is from the
49:06
Greek Olympic Olympian gods and the thing that attracts me to that is it changes shape
49:13
so it's a very user friendly sword you can carry it around with you in your pocket um and then of
49:18
course probably my favorite sword is actually a lightsaber um because that was the one I think we
49:25
were pretending to play within the playground so and I was little and if you really think about that
49:30
that is just an enchanted sword yeah because it works on um the force a kind of Jedi magic
49:38
I'm probably going to get those people telling me why I'm wrong but that's my understanding
49:42
of the Star Wars universe um so I think that up there with Excalibur these days is the lightsaber
49:51
is an instantly recognizable form of enchanted sword so that's my favorite yeah absolutely and
49:57
and both Bilbo sorry both Frodo and um Luke gain their swords from inheritance this has passed
50:05
down to them from their relatives and so that's a nice thing as well and that's the thing about
50:11
sword it lasts practically forever you can still find swords buried in the ground um so it
50:17
represents great continuity um and there's this idea also you know there's a period in history
50:24
after the Romans left when um things slid back a bit and there were kind of civil wars and so on
50:31
um the early medieval period where you might find an all sword or you might be inheriting all
50:37
swords there's actually really well made and made with the technology that doesn't exist anymore
50:42
and that kind of I think that comes into stories about magical swords so you know the sting is a
50:49
really all sword but it has this amazing properties um you know it was in this really old battle
50:56
um killed a lot of goblins that's very different to today when it's like you've got to get the new
51:02
iPhone or something you're not going to inherit your grandfather's iPhone and it's going to be much
51:06
better than the current one so it's a different perspective though but it's certainly yeah that's a
51:11
thing about magic swords all there is often better that's an excellent uh last thought inheriting
51:17
your grandfather's iPhone that would be quite a thing so thank you so much Gabriel it's lovely
51:23
talking to you and I feel we've covered um king of quite well in our chat and people will be
51:30
uh i'm sure looking up some of those books that you've mentioned which they were already
51:34
familiar with so thank you so much i'm certainly going to go and check them out thank you
51:39
and and thanks for all the work you do um as well and it's great i think the talking
51:44
election fantasy literature is sort of we're trying to do similar things to what you
51:49
in doing as well which is promote the study of fantasy but also bring as many people in as
51:54
possible exactly doors should definitely be open thank you so much and um goodbye thank you very much bye bye
52:06
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