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Mythmakers Season 7 Wrap Up · 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 and
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  today we are bringing you a wrap-up episode of our latest season of MythMakers. We're
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  doing this in two parts. We're looking at our top five more general podcasts about things
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  to do with fantasy and then next week we'll be looking at our top five episodes in our
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  Lord of the Rings sidecast as we read our way through the Fellowship of the Ring. Now coming
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  in at number five is the episode I did with my frequent podcast partner Jacob Renica where
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  we discussed our verdict of the film The War of the Rahiran. This came out during the winter
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  and it was a cartoon treatment of that part that they had dug up from the appendices in return
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  of the King. So have a listen to see what we made of that particular film. We're used to
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  talking in terms of talking about the Elven cultures who have these sort of centuries and
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  centuries of ages of history but Rohan is like the new kid on the block but to them they feel
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  old that their culture is already old so it's interesting I like that different perspectives
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  of different cultures. All that is great fun and that's one of the richness of Tolkien. So in
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  terms of the Rohan perspective on this in the story the voiceover is given by Miranda Otto who
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  is Erwin in the Lord of the Rings films so it is a kind of back in the midst of time this is the
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  story of the Shildmaden which of course is the basis of her character she refers to herself being
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  a Shildmaden. So they've lovely it's a lovely fact to choose that and pick that point up because
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  it's not in the Tolkien sketch. The daughter of Helm is even named and she's certainly not
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  called a Shildmaden so this is an invention which is fitting within the world that they've put into
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  the story. So do you want to sort of sketch out the line of the story that they've taken from
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  the Rohan culture without too many plot spoilers? So conflict between so this is so Rohan is kind of
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  a confederacy of different almost like tribal units that are kind of unified under a head and that
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  is Helm Hammerhand who's our you know kind of main character at the very beginning of the story
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  that this really hangs on in the appendices. It's really Helm Hammerhand and how what his legacy
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  is setting up moving from the first line of kings of Rohan to then our kind of following second
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  line of kings. So Helm Hammerhand leading a you know confederation of horse lords I guess if you
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  want to call them different you know domains and right conflict with one of them that leads to
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  a kind of a all-out battle between Helm and his and those who were who were allying themselves
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  with him and Freca who's the head of the other the other house and his group that was following him
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  Helm ends up having to escape to the Hornburg and hold up with his with his people and while they
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  are then siege during a terrible winter and the story then kind of follows the story of the siege
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  and then how the siege lifts and you know resolves with how Rohan is settled after in the aftermath of
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  this like large very elongated battle that had that took a toll on both sides really. So those of
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  you who are ticking off your sort of writer points there is an important inciting incident at the
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  beginning which is in the Tolkien version of this which is Freca comes to ask for
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  Hira who is how they decided to name Helm's daughter here is handy marriage for his son Wolf
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  and Helm takes this as an insult because Freca and his chaps are from the sort of
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  wilder edges the dumb landings the wild men if you're thinking of the Lord of the Rings films there's
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  a it's possibly only in the extended edition but anyway there's a sense that these wild men are
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  allying with Saruman in that and attacking Rohan so it's an age old conflict that keeps bubbling
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  up but at this point Freca is kind of extending a potential olive branch but Helm thinks he's
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  wanting to take the throne doesn't trust the olive branch so they go outside and have a scrap
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  and Helm bashes Freca, Freca dies and that means that Wolf the son is off to out for revenge and
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  is poisoned really his whole mind and mindset is poisoned by his desire for revenge so it drives him
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  into sort of Jacobian revenge tragedy extremes of wanting to stamp out Helm's children
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  get his revenge on Hira and so on so that's the inciting incident at the beginning
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  okay so we have a story here which has revenge it has a heroic woman arising to the top of
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  her leading her nation after everyone else has been killed I would say that just on the level of
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  story while it is great to see a female centric story in the Tolkien world and Hira for that I mean
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  that's one of the the best things about this film is that I did like to see the idea of picking
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  up on the shield maiden Hira is accompanied by her sort of serving lady Oldwind who then transpires
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  is a shield maiden it's played by the other fine actress Lorraine Ashborn who British people
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  all know from TV over here it was bugging me who she was and I saw her picture I thought oh yeah
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  exactly who you are great character actor over here that is for me the guts of this film and why I
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  liked it coming in at number four get ready to be cursed because you can join in the conversation
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  I had with Dr Eleanor Baker about an intriguing little volume that she made for the Bodian
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  libraries where she dug through their archives and found some curses about whether or not you can
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  read or destroy or damage writing all good stuff for fantasy writers to delve into
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  so looking through the the book it's a beautifully produced book as the Bodian library books often are
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  it is done chronologically so you go from the very oldest curses that you could find to
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  contemporary ones we're talking about curses about books do you want to actually sort of explain
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  the the actual scope because obviously cursing more generally is a very long-standing human
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  occupation but we're talking about a particular kind of curse yeah absolutely and Julia you're
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  completely right in that purses are found among the earliest of human writings curses have existed
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  as long as writing has so they're a kind of conceit a way of imagining the power of the word
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  that is quite familiar to us across different prime periods what I'm focused on in this book is
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  purses which think about what is termed in academic study the material text and that is what
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  it sounds like it's literally the thing that words are on so we start off at the beginning of the book
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  with examples from the ancient Near East in just before 3000 ECE and as you say we finish in the
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  the modern era but the the initial curses that we're looking at are written on on monumental
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  stone stelae which are stone monuments which are taller than they are broad and they were being
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  inscribed with a text form called cuniform which is formed of little triangles which kind of
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  pressed into clay or inscribed into stone and they warn things like whoever defaces this text whoever
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  scrubs out the name of the king and replaces it with their own will face the rough of a multitude
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  of different gods so there's this warning about not editing the text not destroying the monument
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  and this is picked up later on by medieval writers who then go on to write these curses when
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  the technology to to develop the book is is made so that condition that desire to protect
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  the written word and also the the material thing that the written word is placed on is something
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  that we've continued across different high periods across literary history of course when we think
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  of the pre printing press age just the huge expense of producing a text I mean no doubt it costs
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  an awful lot of money to build one of these monumental stelae as well so equally you don't want
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  that defaced but let's just go to the medieval period where you've got all the parchment you have
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  to produce and then you've got the monks sitting up painstakingly hands copying everything you
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  wouldn't have a library of just we're both sitting in houses full of books that was incredibly rare
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  the people who had books were very high status individuals they would have been kings they would
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  have been bishops and the idea of somebody coming in and stealing a book would be the equivalent
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  of stealing a jewel literally it's it's it's it's very high status so you can see why a curse is
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  employed one of the things that came up again and again in the curse as you found in the medieval
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  period was the anathema curse do you want to talk a little bit about words that become
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  almost like a magic spell curse yeah absolutely you you've really kind of struck at the heart of
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  medieval curses they were completely right to identify the manuscripts made of parchment sheets
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  later paper sheets bound in leather sometimes really richly decorated in and of themselves as well
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  they might have kind of these elaborate gold settings with jewels literally on the front cover so
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  they become this form of treasure but there are also treasuries in a different way and they're
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  kind of word treasuries because often these books were produced as you identify in
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  scriptoria so the the writing rooms of monks and nuns they were likely to contain theological
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  devotional texts and so the text itself had an importance beyond which beyond the book itself
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  it's something of divine importance um yeah so you can absolutely see that there are lots of
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  different layers of value that are kind of compounding together that might make someone want to
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  to protect it with a curse in terms of the the different phrases that um people come up with yeah
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  anathema literally means in Latin first uh it's it contains these connotations of um
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  communication particularly um of being removed from the society of the church literally being cast
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  out by by society as you know it so the threat of being excommunicated of being anathema
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  was really strong but there's also a sense that anathema has this kind of incantatory quality
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  in and of itself it's a Latin word um and perhaps a word that despicable knowing it's meaning
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  has a sort of rhythmic quality to it as well uh it's often placed in conjunction um with another
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  word which is it's sort of a nonsense word in the way that it manifests it's placed together with
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  another word anathema marinaffa and together they have this really incantatory quality
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  but the letters are almost scrambled between the two words and marinaffa doesn't actually
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  mean anything like it doesn't directly translate it's a process of transliteration so it's moved
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  from a different language uh with different letter forms into another and therefore the sense of
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  the word the meaning hasn't been translated well either so it's almost got the same sense of
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  abracadabra that this kind of the words themselves hold power even if that power is not specific
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  and hocus pocus and and hocus pocus exactly today it's expected patron and so on the these use we
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  can see how we have in our western brain somewhere vaguely Latin-sounding words equal magic
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  yeah absolutely and in some ways that's reflective of the the differences in literacy rates
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  and who had literacy in which languages were the vernacular say the language of the spoken
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  people at the spoken language of the people so you can imagine for people whose spoken language
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  was English and who perhaps didn't have the ability to read or write would have gone to church
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  services and heard Latin spoken words like anathema would hold that incantatory quality because
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  they have a general sense of what that word evokes but not a full conception of its meaning
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  to a good life sleep and in third place we return to Jacob and I discussing things to do with the
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  inklings and in this episode we took a close look at the discarded image which is a book C. S. Lewis
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  put together towards the end of his life based on lectures he gave to undergraduates helping them
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  get inside the medieval mindset so you have to imagine that C. S. Lewis gave this first as a
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  series of lectures as Jacob said he was faced with rows upon rows of students who were pitching
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  up at Oxford and then Cambridge who had come with a modern mindset of science things have been
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  set out into space they knew how big the universe was or had an inkling of it anyway I think it's
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  got bigger since and and he felt there was a need to give them a guide to how people before the
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  modern times thought because so much was being missed when students were reading medieval literature
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  and writer taught the end of his life he compiled these lectures into a book called the discarded
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  image rather poignantly the prologue is written in 1962 and the book is published in 1964 and 1963
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  the intervening year is the year in which he dies so it's very much something that comes out right
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  at the end of his career okay so that was the purpose of this book just so you can sort of
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  feel what it's like to read it is a scholarly book and there are large chapters on things like
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  the Latin writers that the medievals were reading who aren't on any present day bestseller list
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  people like plotiness but we see us who I think is probably I certainly knew a bit more about him
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  and and then there was sort of the old faves like Aristotle and others description of the Greek writers
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  like Plato and so on so he does the Greeks he does the latins and tries to show the continuity
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  between those writers and the medieval to then pick them up in the period which he was teaching in
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  so if you skip those chapters the nub of the argument comes in the beginning material and the
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  epilogue at the end so that's what we're going to be concentrating on so Jacob do you want to have
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  a stab at describing what the medieval universe was like yeah this is yeah this is fascinating
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  it took Lewis a number of different lectures so I don't think I can do it in any shorter of a
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  time than he didn't but I'll try so just kind of the 20,000 to 30,000 foot view is a kind of
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  intricately woven carefully planned interconnecting a set of heavenly bodies earthly bodies
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  all governed by you know by god essentially but with layers levels that all relate to each other
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  in different ways but that are all firmly interconnected and like I said interwoven and
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  it's organized you can you can label everything everything has its proper place everything makes sense
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  there's it's a given that the things are going to make sense there's there's a reason and rationale
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  for it all and the medieval mind as Lewis says enjoyed this sort of categorization and this sort of
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  complexity and just contemplating this model was something that authors that really kind of sparked
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  them and drove them so they didn't see repetition of the model trying to re-explain it as being
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  something that would be dull to them rather it was something that they thought that they looked
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  upon with a sense of joy and delight and that if they could you know recapitulate this
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  model that could explore it they could kind of detail the interconnection between these different
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  parts that that was something that delighted them and presumably delighted their audience at the
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  reason why Lewis says that they spoke about this model so much was because they enjoyed it so much
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  and that that might be a difference it wasn't a sense for a drive for novelty rather it was a
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  sense of kind of like comfort not just comfort but like really deep appreciation for respect for
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  and kind of an enlivening by these these sort of principles that stood as as fundamental so
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  you can see everything everything is explainable and you can enjoy it again and again and there's
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  always more to kind of see and understand but it's all there it's all laid out you just have to
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  remember it. I think one is a it's a kind of instinctive version of the universe so if you
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  imagine us standing outside looking up at the skies this model of the universe which goes back to
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  the Greeks and probably before that starts with the idea of the earth is not exactly at the center
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  but it's at the bottom and then above that are the spheres and the spheres are all the seven
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  planets and the moon is counted as a planet in their separate spheres so you've got the moon
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  mercury Venus Sun Jupiter not not the very outer layer planets like Uranus because they weren't yet
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  discovered so you've got seven of them sort of stacked up and then beyond that you've got the fixed
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  stars and beyond that you've got the sort of prime mover because they understood that for in order
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  for the spheres to be revolving there had to be something to set them in motion the other thing
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  was that it was felt that the this was like an eternal universe they didn't have a sense of it
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  being created that was the Greek version of it of course by the time you get to the medieval
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  version they've got the idea of the Christian worldview of there being a creation moment
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  so there were some dissonance between what Christianity had entered into the model and what the
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  Greek scientists had. And coming in at number two is another conversation that Jacob and I had
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  in this time we look at the beautiful new edition the scholarly edition of Tolkien's poetry it's a
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  wonderful three volume set all that spans his poetry from his war years all the way up to the very
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  last poems he wrote and here you have a little section where we discussed his playful poems some of
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  which appear in the Lord of the Rings. I was drawn to talking about the playful poems because that
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  is a thread that goes all the way through so he starts writing these when he's a young father
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  sort of playing around with the idea of the nasty rhyme having a sort of bigger backstory
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  and then he reworks some of them to fit into the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings when he needs
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  a poem so he goes to his drawer with a notebook of poetry and draws the mountain shifts and changes
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  them to fit the context and then of course later on he puts together the tombomberdill collection of
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  poems where some of these get reworked again and he blows off the dust of some others that he has
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  so and then of course he does publish that volume of poetry during his lifetime so
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  I would say he hoards poetry like a dragon and polishes them up for display at the right moment
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  and we should also mention we probably won't go into detail about this because I don't think either
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  of speak Anglo-Saxon or Elvish but there are long poems written in other real and invented languages
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  he clearly the thing about the connection between his interest in languages and his interest in
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  poetry is sound that the sound wonderful even if you don't know what they are saying the translations
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  provide a wonderful insight into what's going on but in a way you don't need that because it's
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  the sound of them that is so intoxicating and that is something which he did both professionally
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  there were some attempts to encourage students of these languages by writing new poetry for them
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  in it but also what you were mentioning about sparring with them and creating his own
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  and of course exploring the possibilities of Elvish in in verse so there's that area in the book as
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  well so if you're interested in this do dip into those sections of the three volumes by the way
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  it's very clearly signposted each volume has all the poems listed at the beginning you just need
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  to look down find the one you want to follow and go to it it's very clearly signposted anyway
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  what I want to talk about now is how so many of the poems of that early period start in one
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  context and get dragged into the middle earth context I've got a couple in mind but was there any
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  where you followed the footnotes and thought this is a really interesting evolution giving insight
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  into his thinking yeah the earliest one that really where I realized that this was going to take
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  me a lot longer than I thought it was was getting into the the thick of the footnotes for the grimness
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  of the sea later you know titled the tides later titled sea chant of an elder day finally titled
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  the whole the horns of Yilmir or Olmo so you see it's it's a poem that starts about just his
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  feelings about the coast and the ocean against the shore that that's what it initially was but then
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  through these successive kind of iterations revisiting reworking it becomes you know a poem about
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  tool you know the a song of 74 lines that tour makes for Aaron Del so it's it goes from just
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  using this kind of just capturing his feelings staring at the coast to then being fully incorporated
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  into his legendary in this you know epic poem essentially that's fully you know embodied by
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  some of the characters that he's created here and actually done in their voice and from their
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  perspectives to fit consistently within his larger legendary and so that was the one that for me
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  kind of you know that that kind of changed you see it no pun intended you know ebbing and flowing
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  uh from his just between all of these different versions and all of the different individual you know
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  strike-throughs and and you know edits and reworks um so that one that that was probably the one for me
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  that was the earliest on that just kind of signal to me like okay here's like you said he's he's
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  hoarding these ideas that he has I don't know if like hoarding I'd say maybe uh I love that image
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  I'd say for him it's it's kind of like you know cultivating if if gold was living which the
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  dwarves would say it is so I don't want to say that gold it doesn't actually have life um but it's
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  you know he's he's kind of storing these away and like bringing them out not just like to polish
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  them but to kind of like water them and see if there's something that he can add to or join to this
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  larger kind of organic organism of this world that he's creating is this something that he can
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  transplant from this original context and will it survive if given the proper care and feeding
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  in this new world legendarium because I think he assumes that the legendarium
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  has been kind of essentially a constant his whole life and so everything that he's created
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  possibly has roots or connection it's it's all watered by the same rain and you know in life and
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  by the same sun that's he's been you know experiencing a soul life and so I think that's why he sees it
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  as he could just like rifle through his his file cabinet and say here's here's a poem about
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  throughout you know any of these things and he would actually look at it and take it seriously
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  as something that could possibly fit in here and so that that was a fascinating this this grimness
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  of the sea going to the horns of Yilmer transformation as kind of his process of
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  trying to get his mind around his whole life and his whole you know creative identity as a creator
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  so we're sorry as a as a sub creator yes that that's probably one for me I don't know which ones
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  for you were fascinating yeah another one in that early batch is one called the trees of
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  criterion which is based on the real city of Warwick now Warwick is it's probably about 50
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  miles north of Oxford and would have been a place that he he certainly visited or met his wife
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  there during these sort of war years at early stage of the marriage it was one of the places he
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  was near so it was a very special beautiful place for them and it is a very beautiful city it's got
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  a fabulous absolutely jaw-dropping castle so all very mythic
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  and finally our most popular episode was a conversation I had in two parts with Professor
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  Nick Grimm who has written the book on 21st century perceptions of Tolkien's writing in this
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  little bit you will hear how Professor Nick moved to Macau just as Covid was about to hit the world
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  but we go on to look at how he has given serious attention to Tolkien's writing as literary works
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  in the same way you would other modernist writings so just that we got a non-specialist audience
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  listening so the Battle of Morden is an Anglo-Saxon poem and the homecoming of how do you say
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  that beyond North? I think it should be up North. It is a drama short drama which Tolkien wrote
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  which is like a spin-off he's adaptation of the Battle of Morden so that asked obviously
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  fascinating so I noticed you said you moved in 2020 and I wrong in thinking you were
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  butting up against Covid when you were in two weeks Covid had followed me here and
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  indeed was spreading around the world so it wasn't the happiest of times but we made it.
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  Tough tough beginning so your book charts the writing of the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings
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  with a sort of academic interest to start with I would say that if you want to gen up on a kind of
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  modern way of looking at the writing and reception and possible interpretation of the book because
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  this is a great paperback to buy but you also then go on and to do what lots of people really
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  want to read about which is have a serious attention to the various adaptations so we're going to
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  start first of all with the material which is the kind of thing that you wanted to do at university
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  and were not allowed but are now doing and that is looking at how the context of the composition
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  of these novels and where they fit amongst other 20th century books at the same time how that's
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  enriched your understanding I just wanted to particularly start this by your wonderful jaw dropping
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  moment a bit of a mic drop moment where you talk about how when you reach the appendices in return
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  of the king you if you're following him and you're sticking with it you suddenly find out that
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  actually Tolkien admits to having translated his story from western common speech English so the
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  shire is not really the shire but Susa and Sam short for Samwise from the Anglo-Saxon is not
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  really Sam but ban ban is here all words based on the ancient Gothic language and you're making
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  the argument here that you've got a suddenly you're chucked out of a familiar world into this
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  unfamiliar you call it the Miz on Ambien the idea of suddenly you're dropping through a world
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  into the abyss which was great I'd forgotten well forgotten but not really thought about it in
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  what a rude shock that is when you read that so what you found by treating Lord the Rings as a
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  serious literary work what kind of sides of it has it made you think about the book where it
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  sits within 20th century literature well that's a very interesting question because of course
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  the tradition of Tolkien criticism and scholarship has really been led by those working on early
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  literature such as Anglo-Saxon medieval period as a way of hunting for Tolkien's sources and
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  showing how inventively and creatively he he adapted materials and also as a gateway to introduce
• 34:22
  readers down to that early period of literature so in that sense that Tolkien's a bit of a god
• 34:27
  sent for medievalists because it encouraged his priest to return to that period but I really felt
• 34:36
  that Tolkien as a stylist as a creative writer had been overlooked because what those studies do
• 34:44
  I tend to take him out of the 20th century and put him into a rather sort of separate or unique
• 34:52
  individual category and so he's not treated as part of the literary history of the 20th century
• 35:00
  in fact when you this is changing this has been changing over the past few years but certainly when
• 35:05
  I was studying in first teaching 20th century literature there'd be a focus on what
• 35:12
  we call the modernists and many many writers who might be familiar with were excluded from that
• 35:22
  these would be an emphasis on you know Elliott Joyce, Wolf, maybe the D.H. Lawrence because
• 35:29
  from Controversial because these days lately perhaps William Goldey but you know university
• 35:38
  courses haven't been very good at including not only Tolkien but also writers like George
• 35:43
  Orwell for example who are you know similarly internationally well known so I really wanted to see
• 35:50
  how Tolkien might fit into that literary history but not just through whether he's using the same
• 35:58
  sorts of devices playing the same sorts of language games can he be treated alongside somebody
• 36:04
  like James Joyce but really to delve further into you know the way he writes and his you know
• 36:11
  particular strengths as a writer I really believe in the value of literature and I think that's
• 36:17
  something that for many critics this is sort of something which is seen as I don't know
• 36:26
  being unfashionable or ideological or whatever but I think we have to be able to as critics
• 36:32
  have you know sort of the good to cover your convictions and say when we think a writer is good
• 36:38
  and why they are particularly good and I thought well I must you know take this to Tolkien and sort
• 36:44
  try to argue that Tolkien is as good a writer as his contemporaries although he may be
• 36:51
  using different techniques have a very different perspective on things so I really wanted to
• 36:57
  think about those elements also Tolkien's readers get very is possessive the right word
• 37:10
  they certainly yeah very I think it is the Tolkien's a little bit talking belongs to them
• 37:16
  and this does sentimentalize his writing and there's a strong identification with the with many
• 37:22
  of the characters but also when I was rereading it I realized it's not only what a dark book it is
• 37:29
  would also how it's full of failure and uncertainty and ambiguity one of the things that
• 37:37
  interests me is that Tolkien is described as a world builder now of course he has his fantastic
• 37:44
  linguistic foundation Fuban Lerth he produced maps which Christopher to talk in his son
• 37:52
  then Drew he has things like the family trees the genealogies even heraldry he was artist as well
• 38:00
  so there's a big emphasis on how Tolkien creates this sort of really sort of thickly woven
• 38:08
  watertight world but it's not it's full of loose ends and it's full of unexplained contradictions
• 38:17
  because that's what our world is like we don't explain everything we don't have answers for every
• 38:22
  experience or phenomenon or episode and I think to Tolkien for a few writers to actually
• 38:30
  recognize and identify and express that he's really really good at presenting loose ends but in a way
• 38:39
  that you don't necessarily notice system so an obvious example is Tom Bompadou who simply does not
• 38:46
  fit in the story I mean he is from another world the ring has no effect on him he's not interested
• 38:55
  in it you know that lovely line when Frodo says well why didn't we leave the ring with Tom Bompadou
• 39:01
  and Gandalf says will he just lose it he's got no interest in these things
• 39:07
  independently and Tolkien did say that you know Bompadou does not fit he's an inexplicable
• 39:13
  element of the world he was writing about Tom Bompadou before he wrote Lord of the Ring and he
• 39:18
  continued to write about Tom Bompadou laughter Lord of the Ring is but not in a way that really
• 39:23
  enhances our understanding of Lord of the Rings except to demonstrate that when only getting a
• 39:31
  partial view of this world we only get a partial view of Middle Earth we're not seeing a whole
• 39:36
  of Middle Earth a more I think subtle example would be the fox that sees Frodo and Sam as they're
• 39:48
  leaving the Shire and all of a sudden you're in the mind of this fox who's thinking isn't it
• 39:54
  strange that these hobbits are out at this time of night and then talking it says well why they were
• 40:00
  out the fox never learnt and so we suddenly realized it sort of foxes are sentient they're having
• 40:06
  their own experiences they're looking at the world in a particular sort of foxy way and so you get
• 40:15
  a perspective on things that doesn't explain the story but it deepens it by showing us there are
• 40:23
  things that we're not understanding and there are things that aren't being explained thank you
• 40:30
  for listening to our wrap wrap up episode and we look forward to seeing you when we return after
• 40:36
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