[Auto-generated transcript. Edits may have been applied for clarity.] All right. Hi, everyone, and welcome to session two of the fantasy Summer school. We have two wonderful speakers for this session. And we are starting with Professor Giuseppe Pedercini, who is tutor and fellow at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. And he is a classicist by discipline. He's also the Tolkien editor for the Journal of Inklings Studies, and one of the founders of the Oxford Tolkien Network.
He is the author of many publications on Tolkien, including a monograph on Tolkiens literary theory, which is out now with Cambridge University Press. And I'm also delighted to say this is allowed to say it now. He is the consultant for the new hunt for Gollum film, which will be released with Warner Brothers in December of 2027. So he is the official consultant on that. So if you want to ask him about that later, I'm sure he'd be happy to take questions.
So without further ado, um, please welcome Professor Butt Seeney. Thank you. Thank you very much, Grace. Thank you very much, Stuart and Carolyn, for inviting me today. Uh, thanks for being here. Uh, Grace was say, uh, I'm a classicist, and today I will have the pleasure and a way to connect my two main life interests, the classics and Tolkien. I hope you got a copy of the handout, all of you. I will see that we refer to it quite often.
And so what I'm going to do now is to discuss the classical reception in talking. Um, and they say this is a bit of a case study for classics, uh, in classics actually fantasy, although at the same time, I must say that talk in this case is a bit idiosyncratic. Okay, so I wouldn't say that. Uh, what I got to say today is can be applied to all fantasy authors, but maybe there would be some, uh, some ideas or some hints that will lead also to a better understanding of classical reception.
Other authors, in some sense that classical reception, in talking, there is a bit of a new subject. As you may know, for many years and decades it was more the Nordic ingredient in talking soup that was more considered. But as you can see on the handout, number one, in the past few years, the sir, there's been a bit of a surge of interest in classical reception in Tolkien. And in a way, what I'm going to say today is a bit of a contribution to it.
And it to say that Tolkien was a classicist in many ways is very accurate. As you can see from the handout, Tolkien was, uh, a student in this university, and the first subject of the study was, uh, classics. But several years before that, at the age of ten of 11 or maybe earlier than that, he had started to study Latin with his mum. In a way, Tolkien at the beginning was homeschooled for financial reasons, not for ideological reasons.
And then one of the subjects studied with his mother was Latin. Then in it he moved to King Edward School in Baumgardner, which was one of the most the top gamma schools in the country at that time. And uh, um, uh, and, uh, King Edward, uh, his training in Latin and Greek started to flourish in this school. Students were trained to not just to read literate text, but also expected to converse and to compose or read a lot of Greek and Latin.
And we know that that's something that Tolkien excelled at. Uh, and, uh, we have also some record, uh, of talks on engagement with these sort of exercises, uh, debating in Latin, performing plays in Greek. So it's not a surprise, therefore, that he decided to apply to study classics and also to apply the at the beginning to, to my college, which is Corpus Christi College. But then it was rejected to fail the examination. Uh, and in a way for the people of not his life.
It was that failure that led to his sort of adoptive father called, uh, um, Francis Morgan to say, for now, um, you're not going to think about your girlfriend, but you will have to study hard to get into Oxford. So in a way, we are somehow responsible for the kind of bit of a drama in a way, and it's a bit of a nice paradox, a nemesis that, uh, after many decades, uh, talking about Corpus Christi College will hire a classicist.
It was also talking scholar in many ways, as you know, after two years, uh, of his degree in talk, he decided to change and, and went to study church on the other side and went to study English language and literature. And yet Tolkien never rejected his classical training. His work, especially the early work, I will say, is filled with classic essays, and this is often a knowledge, um, bit of in the often talking himself a knowledge and extensive use of classical reception.
So for instance, you can see on the handout, has he explicitly referred to classical epic to describe some elements of a secondary world, including, for instance, the heroic horseman of the Second Age who lived in a heroic state, and it led to wonderfully one influences of classical heroic epic have been identified also in the katabatic Journey Moria. The parts of that The Escape for the Fall of Gondolin that's even clearer, I think.
But also there are several top point scenes, including especially one which is the catalogue of Warriors. You remember me in a series, and we know that in the manuscript Tolkien um, made that not saying Homeric catalogue. Okay, so he clearly had an Homeric catalogue in mind. But again, you see a few examples on the handout, but the list is growing.
I mean, I would say especially The Fall of Gondolin, which I recently read, it's impossible not to see the influence of the book two of the internet, for instance, in, uh, in The Fall of Gondolin. But that would be for another, another lecture, maybe. So what I'm going to do now is to focus on one particular case where I think we can see the influence of classical motifs and using later, we'll also try to expand a bit on what I think was told King's mode of classical reception.
And this motif number two on the handout is the motif of the narrative of decline. The narrative of decline is essentially a narrative, a story that posits a gradual degradation, a moral and ontological, but also spiritual and technological, maybe of humans or nature, or the two together from a idolise past, a golden age. Again, I want to dig into politics, but do you see how the Golden Age is still the phrase golden age still used very, very often nowadays to justify maybe problematic things?
But anyway, that's the narrative of decline that, um, has an archetype in Western literature, which is a poem called The Walks and Days by the Greek poet Hesiod. You see, number two on the handout are quoted, especially a passage which is really like the archetype of the decline narrative, uh, going back to a golden age. This narrative was then uh, is also found in Homer in a way. So to a certain extent it also predates Hesiod.
It goes into the Latin literature. You find it in Catullus, you find it in Virgil, you find it everywhere in a way. Anyone who has studied a bit the classical world will see how the narrative of decline that things are going, uh, bad. It's really everywhere. There are some exceptions, like Augustus, the first emperor who said that the Golden Age was coming back to earth. But overall, I will say that the ancient sensitivity was déclin East. Life history is at decline.
And the important text for this, um, uh, um, uh, codification of the narrative of the decline into the Western tradition is Augustus, the key word that today, you see at the end of page one on the handout. Again, I won't go into it today, but certainly especially in the Middle Ages, the idea that, uh, the world was going into decline was somehow mediated by this important text.
If you turn the page just to want to say a couple of things more about this narrative of decline in the ancient world, which, as I said, is omnipresent, but it's found also in different variants. There is one important variant which is the one, uh, a number on number three on the handout, which is we may call primitive, primitive mystic. It's a primitive state, a version of decline. Again, that's the one, uh, which we find, uh, especially in Hesiod, but also in Catullus.
And the idea is that, uh, um, uh, everything from the very beginning. So the idea that the Golden Age people were living in a sort of a technological world. So the Golden Age was an age with no technology, with no seafaring, with no agriculture. It was a sort of age where the relationship between humans and nature was somehow immediate. That's a very influential, uh, negative decline. But it's not the only one.
We have at least another version very important to a very influential for talking, which is the one number four on the handout. On the handout where you do have a decline, especially a moral and spiritual decline. But this does not go hand in hand with a technological decline. In fact, uh, the the paradox is that, uh, in the Golden Age, that technology was actually more sophisticated in the later age.
And that's the version that we, we find in very influential myth, which is the myth of the fall of Atlantis, which we can read nowadays, especially in Plato's Timaeus and in the Critias, a lost but yet fascinating dialogue in. Although in this myth, uh, the description of the Atlantis follows the pattern of a natural Paradise. Atlantis is a natural Paradise. Its habitants were no kind of primitive beings. They engage in agriculture. They engage in Milwaukee, walk my.
And in fact, they were to a certain extent artists and, uh, builders. And therefore there was a society in Atlantis which was golden, but also was a society very rich. It's not the kind of pastoral, bucolic version that you see. Instead, you find in Hesiod. And, uh uh um. So two version of the Klein. I introduced them both because I will come back to this when to talk about talking.
Okay. Because talking is able to take different ingredients again from the ancient soup, and we forge them into a different kind of artefact. That is one important implication of this decline. Narrative number five on the handout, which is found in both the versions of both the version, both the primitive and the non primitive, is to have something in common, which is the idea of a correlation between between decline and the gap between the human and the divine.
If you see here on the handout, um, number five, the golden made man of the Hesiod, the tradition lived like gods. They were loved by the lesser gods, whereas in contrast, when they become the Iron Man, the men of the Iron Age, they have no longer an interaction with divine beings. So there is really a kind of a spiritual decline. That's also very clear in the myth of Atlantis.
The early men of Atlantis had participated in a quota in a portion of divinity, whereas this portion of divinity, the portion of the divine, became faint and weak, and through been ofttimes blended with a large measure of mortality. So the ancient men were somehow immortal. They were almost demigods. And this is like an idea which is found quite often in the Greek tradition.
This also explains why the main reason for the decline and eventual collapse of civilisation is, first of all, moral, spiritual and therefore also political. Again, I don't want to spend too much time on it, but I mean, these two versions of the decline primitive East and non primitive East with the common thread of a spiritual decline are quite often intermingled in the tradition.
Okay, so even in the, um, the myth of Atlantis itself, uh, we have, you know, way two different versions in the same text because in contrast with the plant, this we have the case of Athens, which eventually proves to be the society, the civilisation, the, uh, that is better, morally better, which instead is more of a preview to be, uh, um, um, uh, nature. So in the ancient world, the decline in one aspect of natural or human life can be complemented by a progress in another aspect.
So you can decline spiritually, morally, but you can progress technologically. Okay. So it's all a bit it's all a bit, uh, um, complex and complicated. And, uh, I could also refer to you our philosophy, where you have really like a combination of the two, the clear narratives and these also leads to another very important idea of the ancient world, which, if you think about talking, is also very prominent in talking, which is the idea of a cyclical framework.
So life of an historian generates like a cycle. You start with the progress and then decline. It's a never ending cycle for which we cannot escape. Again, this for the people interested in comparative mythology. We find that this idea of a cycle of age is everywhere in the eastern tradition as well. And it's quite possible that the Greeks even imported it from the east at the very beginning. But even in this cyclical, uh, story, the trajectory is quite similar.
The trajectory is decline. I do believe that there is a generally decline this outlook in Asian culture, from philosophy down to popular wisdom, which did feed Tolkien's imagination in his early years. And one of the things that did when it came to also a few years ago, it was to go to the Berlin Library and check the syllabus. The talking started for exams in 19, um 92, 11, 13, 13, 14, actually. And in fact, Hesiod was there, Catullus was there, Virgil was there.
All the texts that, uh, imbued with this narrative of the Klein, uh, well presented, the texts that you talk, you back it very, very well. And in a way, it's interesting. The talking took his mouth exam in 1914, just at the, uh, just the year before the beginning of the First World War. So it is as if his imagination is little. Imagination was immediately then embodied in left field, uh, by the real imagination, or back to the real lsps the dead in the trenches of the First World War.
It is not, therefore not surprising. And now I move to number six on the handout, that narratives of decline are really omnipresent in wide ranging intelligence works. Think about the Lord of the rings. We have many allusions to the superiority of past generation and culture. You find them. Some of them are number six on the handout. These are very, very similar to the one you find in Homer or Virgil.
Just quote one, for instance, from the for the very beginning of the of the prologue of the Lord of the rings, the hobbits have dwindled. They say in ancient days they were taller, so the hobbits were taller, an hour shorter, and all the creatures and peoples of middle earth clearly were taller and bigger in the ancient world. They. This decline is allusions, as I may call them, resonate to also with the landscaper, which, as you know well, is filled with the ruins of orange buildings.
You can remember the tower of of Nazca, the statues of the Argonauts, and all these can be considered as if you want some vestiges of a lost civilisation. I quote a long vanished kingdom. There is this idea that the great kingdom is now all vanished.
Also just that, as in Hesiod, humans, men in the Lord of the rings are falling ill and die much more easily than they are sisters who the numenoreans live much longer and really lead lives have been more similar, like the Zodiac men of the Golden Age. And they quote again from number six men who did not suffer miserable age, and when they died, it was as though they were overcome with sleep. If you remember that at the end of the Lord of the rings, a dragon dies the old way.
If you want, I bring him back not just to the ancient kingdom, but also bring him back. The ancient lifespan of the Numenoreans. Also, artefacts and artworks in the Lord of the rings, uh, that are produced by the present generations can not really equal with the works of ancient mapped stars. Let me just read a couple of passages.
This is what the dwarf Gloin says in metal Work we cannot rival our forefathers, many of whose secrets are lost on again referring to now, in the case of lore from page A6, a 60 or Lord was in these latter days fallen from its fullness of old. That's a comment on the lore that is now in the house of healing.
If you in the Lord of the rings, with this kind of, uh, uh, question in mind, uh, trying to see the traces of a deck in this narrative, it's really everywhere, almost in every chapter, and you will somehow find the reference to this inevitable decline of mankind and history in general language itself. Uh, maybe that's even more interesting. Language itself. The language spoken at the time of the Lord of the rings, is just a call up to the shadow of an ancestral perfection.
And the quote, uh, for one of my favourite passages in the old talking, which is the Bible's encounter with the dragon, and I quote, there are no words left to express is meant to cease main change the language they learn of elves in the days when all the world was wonderful to see. So the language of no man nowadays is not able to describe the fullness of reality. Ancient else could, but not men. Um.
Uh. So we may even say that talking to the Lord of the rings is set in a sort of fictional late antiquity. If you're familiar with late antiquity for the third to the fifth century A.D., read the text that to the age. You really find a lot of allusion to this kind of perception of decline. Everything in the Lord of the rings is dominated by a sense that things are not going well. A sense of loss and decline from all points of view history, uh, language, literature, art and so on.
And go even deeper into token sensitivity. It's therefore not surprising that Tolkien himself said that in a quote from the bottom of number six that uh uh uh uh um uh, no. So easy to. Yeah, that's all I quote from the 96, which I hope to put on the agenda, but it's a quote for later. 96 Todd King said that the heart of making sense of the vanished past was the emotion which moved him supremely and found small difficulty in evoking.
So talk he was, as himself said, was especially able to express this sense of the vanished past. So it seems, as the narrative decline of Asian origin is really at the core of Tolkien's literary sensitivity. Moving to number seven on the handout. Told Kings to turn to page page three. We can see the tokens declines and majority of decline is evident. Also the macro historical level which we find especially described in The Silmarillion.
For the people who read The Silmarillion, do work. There is the idea that the history of Judah is divided into a series of ages. The age of the son, the first age, a second age, a third age, and now the fourth age. And it's every, every time it is said that each age is somehow inferior to the previous one in some respect. In each one. Also, just like in Asian narratives, uh, an age gradually degenerates to more corruption of, uh, less and less degree of divine interaction.
And also a finally a catastrophic event, the destruction of Numenera, uh, and, uh, the, uh, destruction of the ring at the end of the Third Age. Another key notion within talk is declare Nizam, which again, it's somehow classical, not just classical is the idea of the full, uh, number, the second passage in number seven on the handout, the idea that uh, decline is also correlated with the idea of a moral fall is, of course, itself also classical.
But for Christians like Tolkien was also tied to the dot in the biblical doctrine of the original sin, sending Zion from Adam and talking, in fact, in the letters quite often also to the notion of Eden, of Eden, of a lost Eden. You see here the classical in the biblical tradition, the kind of a mix together because Tolkien was imbued with both since a very young age. Uh, in a way, the fall that Tolkien describes is somehow biblical to a certain extent, but also is classic.
And I do think that in many senses, the classical um ingredient is also important to extract the soup of the fall if you want in talking to give just one example. And, uh, I'm referring to the fourth passage, number seven on the handout in the story of Turin to remember, if you remember, for The Silmarillion, uh, I hope you know the story of Turin to. But most of you, I guess most of you are familiar with it.
So if you're familiar with the story, it's quite clear how you have a long series of different influences. That is, the idea of an ancestor of a class and insist, which is quite typical of the ancient world. And if it's found, for instance, in the story of a deep Purcell, you remember in many ways Tolkien is a deep house, but it's also, of course, Nordic. And there is one particular case of the character of Sigurd that that is really, really similar in a way, to read.
There's also a new signature, but also it's a new level. So you have got to level is maybe the main source if you want to. But the is not just Calabro. You really see a lot of different influences that like intermingle together into a single character. And there is one case in particular, one narrative of a fall, of course, of a decline by where the classical component is very explicit, and that's the one you find, number eight on the handout. That is to say, the fall of Numenera.
The fall of Numenera was by Tolkien explicitly and emphatically connected to Plato's stories of Atlantis, so we know it. The very name itself evokes the myth of Atlantis in the latest toolkit, the first quite often to the Numenera Atlantis myth, and in fact, in a very early version of this myth of the story, the connection was very, very extreme in the sense that the first version of the story told.
Can you imagine that to some time, travellers will go back to the island of Atlantis and the weakness, the Fall of Atlantis, a guide down a record that will then compliment to what Plato did in the writer in his own narrative. So at the beginning, it was not just a version of the story was exactly the same story, just simply retold through a different for Eliza. That is to say, Tolkien himself.
In a later version of the myth, which is the one that we read now in the 1977 Silmarillion, the connection is not so explicit. That's not the island of Numenor. That's so. That's not the island of Atlantis. It's the island of Numenor. And yet the narrative parallelism remains remains striking, with similarities in the island's divine origin the landscape, the topography, the idea of a moral corruption, the nature of a catastrophe that befell the island, and so on.
And it is therefore not surprising. Then Tolkien decided to keep eventually the allusive name Atalanta for Numenor. And what I find even more abuse is that token even gave an etymology saying, and they called for number eight on the handout. It is a curious chance that the Stem talents using Quenya in Elvish for leaping, sliding, falling down for decline, or which Atlantis is anomaly in Quenya. Now formation shouldn't so much resemble Atlantis.
So I really love this passage, because Tolkien is claiming that the connection between the Numenor and Isle of Atlantis and the Isle of Atlantis is just a curious chance. Okay? It's not just that they want it, I mean it just a curiosity biological connection. But in fact, the narrative model G of the World Atlantic confirms how the tale of Numenor is prototypical of Tolkien's omnipresent decline ism, but also would say of its classical ancestry.
And yet what I find interesting and is leading to the second and final parts of my talk, is that you can still claim that this was just a chance. Okay. That's it. I really want it. Why is that? I mean, what's the point of making this claim? That's I will try to answer this question in the final ten, 15 minutes and also thereby say something more comprehensive about what we could call the told Keynes idea of classical conception, what is called Keynes idea of classical conception.
And I think that everything can be referred back to this claim that it was just a curious etymological chance. But let me move now to number nine on the handout and just say a few more, something more about exactly how Tolkien conceived his own version of the tale of Atlantis. As I said before that, uh. Uh, at the very beginning, you really thought of the tale as, uh, the tale told by, uh, time time Traveller. And let me just read the quote from letter 257.
I began an abortive book of time travel, which was to be the presence of my hero in the dawn of Atlantis. So that's only the very beginning for the people you are aware of. It was this kind of conversation with C.S. Lewis, and he said, okay, you're going to write to space travel, which there will be peril. And in the other books. And then I would like to time travel in the time, time that was exactly this is on version of the Dawn of Atlantis.
But even at this early stage, if you read the drafts of this very early stage, it's quite clear how tall it was, not just rewriting the platonic myth. So it was not an adaptation, you see. And it's not like talkies adapting again, right? Adapting the myth of Atlantis. Rather, it felt the need to integrate this myth in his own authorial mediation. So was putting himself into the narrative somehow. So it's not just enough to say, okay.
And now, in the 2020 century, giving a new version of the myth of Atlantis. No, I'm bringing myself inside. I bring in my own vocalising authorial perspective into the tale, if you want. Also talking. Change the names, change the details, and inserted clearly his own creative idiosyncrasies and concerns into the story. And in a way that's kind of represented by the very fact that decided to vocalise.
That is to say, to tell the story from the point of view of an English man of the 20th century, if you want. That's a nice image to see, to introduce the how talking conceived classical reception explicitly. It's quite clear that for the very beginning, therefore, talking felt the literary urgency to create something distant from its source, which eventually explain why he decided to abandon the story of Atlantis. And the quote again from letter 94. My effort.
After a few promising chapters, Randy, it was too long away round to what I really wanted to make. That is to say, not an adaptation of Plato's Tale of Atlantis, but rather a new version of the Atlantis legend. So if you want to use a bit of a graph, I mean, if this is the myth of Atlantis and this is talking I mean, in the first stage we got a derivation that I derivation. So talking is rewriting the plot of the Tale of Atlantis.
Whereas in this passage just right, the framework is different. There is one one event, one event which is the Atlantis legend. And then there is, um, Plato's version and Tolkien's version. Of course, the two are somehow related, but Tolkien's like going back to the original event.
It's not like going through the mediation of the platonic event, and that's already like a bit of a step from a framework of a classical reception, which you said is very common in the at this time, which is simply like we kind of adapt the ancient text to a new audience. In the passage of just quote, there is a key adjective which is new. It's a new version, which I think is at the foundation of Autolycus literary theory of adaptation.
It is quite related, I think, to what Tolkien says again and again in his literary manifesto, which is the tale, as they say on fairy stories, where he's talking says again and again, the whole point of creating art is to do something new. Creative fantasy is mainly trying to do something else, make something new. That's really like the idea of not just the fantasy, but also with these classical reception. Let's say is still connected with this basic urge of the artist to make something new.
Tokens urge for little newness, therefore explains why he decided that Gacy's original intention to integrate the of Numenera in his own legendarium is all mythology in a way which is a new mythology. It's a mythology which is clearly influenced by Nordic mythology, classical mythology.
But it's a new mythology is different. And later in Isaiah, if you turn the page number ten on the handout, he was even bolder in affirming and claiming is authorial freedom and originality in the use of myth of Atlantis. And I quote the legends of Numenera, the Atlantic myth. Uh, and I highlight my own use for my own purposes of the Atlantis legend, but not based on special knowledge, but on a special personal connection with this tradition.
So you see, in the course of the second quarter, I think of time for it, which you will see the same kind of emphasis of the ownership to a certain extent to the spatial, spatial, personal concern. Nominal is my personal alteration of the Atlantis myth and tradition and accommodation, key world accommodation of it. To my general mythology, of all the mythical or archetypical images, this is the one most deeply seated in my imagination. You really? See, I was kind of gruff.
We will say before talking is not interested in Plato, but is interested in the archetype and he's going down into the archetype. Not also how in the passages I've just read. Tolkien stresses that personally. It's a personal thing. The personal entity of this literature. In this kind of emphasis on the personality or in other letters, we see the emphasis on the individual, the peculiar, the particular, the spatial.
The other, and the key words of the kind of very important elements in Tolkiens literary theory, which applies to both the production of this text, but also to the reception and quote from number 11 on the handout, and another passage from On First Stories, which I think is very beautiful and very relevant to what I'm trying to say. Literature and a quote walks from mind to mind and is does more genitive.
It is at once more universal. And more importantly, particular if he speaks of bread or wine or stone or tea. It appeals to the whole of this things, to their ideas, to the event, to the original archetype. Yet that's really the paradox here with each year, so the recipient will give them to them a peculiar parcel embodiment in his imagination.
Beautiful passage that really says how this the importance of the newness and the individuality in the person and not only applies when a new writer produces a new text, but also when we go and read the Lord of the rings each single time. So every other and literary event at the level of the production and the of the reception is always new and individual. At the same time. And that's also something that Tolkien says in the passage that just read this personal element of literature.
It's my own for my own use. It's a special personal use. So it's a personal thing. Yet it's just one of two poles. We have another polar, no less, no less important, which is what Tolkien refers to as the universal or traditional. You got the particular individual, you got a version of the The Tale of Atlantis, which is Tolkien's all the embodiment of creation. But then you got the universal or interlocking and times the pattern or the motive.
This contrast, this tension, almost dramatic tension of polarities, the personal and the universal is, of course, something that the literary authors said need to be talked about many, many times at this time in his time there was especially a great poet to a little critique, Tsilia told a very influential text, which is called tradition and the individual talent on this topic somehow.
But it's quite clear how talking is given in a ways on that particular individual and yet also universal action. And there is especially an image which I put your number 11 on the end of the final passage, second passage, which I think helps to disentangle what was talking. So understanding of the polarities between the two different ideas, the individual and the universe and, and the quote from number 11 who can design a new leaf? Arthur wants to do something new. Who can design a new leaf?
The patterns from batter to unfolding and the colours from spring to autumn were all discovered by men long ago. Again, the want to discuss what he's referring to, but it's clearly a debate going on in the inn at that time. So which is basically everything has already been said. So every new literary author cannot but repeat what was said in the ancient world. That's something that even my even ancient poets, like Terence said at the very beginning of his poem.
New long form dictum, dictum supreme. Everything has already been said, but the old king says that is not to. Spring, of course, is not really less beautiful because we have seen or heard of other like events, like events. So like similar events, never from Walt's beginning to the world. So in the same event it is an event. So what I really like, it's an event similar to all the other events, but it's a new event. Each leaf of oak, ash and thorn is a unique embodiment of the pattern.
A for some, this very maybe the embodiment, the first ever seen recognise the oaks that have put forth leaves for countless generations of men. So you see, it's a little event which is always new at all stages. It's also the time of the recipient. When we look at the leaf, it would be always something different.
So if we kind of decode the analogy, we can say that according to Tolkien, every new personal little event, that is to say The Tale of Numenera, but also every new experiential event, Tolkien's dream of Atlantis. So Tolkien's experience in the world is a unique embodiment of an archetypical motive the decline. Things always collapse. The decline in a fallen human affairs of stock is said in the letter was affected to.
Each embodiment, each leaf is related to all its previous and future embodiments. The Atalanta is linked, of course, to Plato's myth of Atlantis and how they relate, not they by direct influence, by, we may say, transitive property. That is to say, both Atlantis myth and talking are different attempts to tell the same event, to refer to the same event, the same pattern of the leaf a yet the terms of this relationship.
That's also quite interesting in theoretical terms as regards the classical conception. So the relationship between these two cannot be easily explained in genealogical terms, neither, for that's what we do nowadays in our walk with a simple frame of intertextuality. For the people who have done no one into festivities, I am myself a intertextual critic. Sometimes this is not really good enough to explain how texts relate to each other, not even kin information, that is to say, source criticism.
Trying to find for the source really completely answers through these influence. In a way, the inference remains unknown. In any way. There is an important implication that I will discuss in the final five minutes. I will ask you to jump a bit to number 13. Uh, so 12 on the handout, which is, uh, the father talking. Somehow this prefers to be a big diagnostic about this relation.
It says, I know that many people, we spend many decades after my death to, um, to try to, to, uh, reconstruct the sources of my work, which is what we do, which is what they've been doing in a way for the whole time today. And yet that was not enough. In a way, the two tokens two attitude in front of this strange connection between different text. Was the one that he was referring to by, uh, saying that the, um, etymological connection between Atalanta and Numenera.
Well, just a close chance. So you see, they what's. It's a curious chance. There is an element which is a bit mysterious, which cannot be fully control. Eh, probably, if you want to use psychoanalytical term and maybe other MongoDB related to something which goes deeper in the mind, in the heart of human beings with the archetypical experience of of human beings.
So, to sum up, Tolkien considers his own literary endeavour as consisting producing a new personalised version of an archetypical theme or motive. This can also involve the alteration or accommodation of an earlier text, that is to say, a pattern of reception a yet rather than a source in a traditional sense. This is caused by Tolkien as just another earlier version of the same universal transcultural archetype.
It is at this inner, deep level of literature, a human experience that all can suggest the real influence is found. Just like in the life of a tree. A new leaf is more influenced by its underlying pattern rather than by a leaf from a previous year. How this relationship works at this latter most superficial level is often unclear, and not, to me, is less uninteresting, at least according to talking.
And this is also why, in contrast, in the quote, it is the particular use and recall from number 13. This is the particular use in a particular situation of any motiva. It is most interesting thing to consider. It is also to in uh, in talking on vision the classical reception. Thank you very much. Um. Before I leave you. Sorry, guys. Just a final thing. So you see that, uh, I had actually planned to go forward.
Yeah, I had that for five points to make, which I cannot make because it's very late, and I would like to do a Q&A, but, uh, I will leave you to delve into it, which is basically to, um, which I would basically tell you, uh, in which I was trying to kind of explain what was the exactly Tolkiens particular use of the narrative decline in especially this can be answered, I think, by thinking about how this the decline narrative is associated with the ads.
But it you see, there is a picture of my recent book, so you can read to explore more if you're interested. Thank you. All right. We have about between 10 and 15 minutes for questions. And I think we will start on this session with one from online if you have one. Okay, so anyone in the room. Would you like to ask Giuseppe a question? Sorry, I didn't mean to. Okay, discussion, but I'm so thrilled looking, doing this work.
And I was so happy to see the book appearing because, again, scholars often forget that Tolkien started his life as a classicist. Salem. Maybe it's in the book, which I haven't read yet, but maybe you could use this time to explain this. Um, very crudely, I always understood that Lewis, who comes from classical background as well, still sort of classical tradition as, uh, kind of dominant in higher up the native tradition.
Whereas for Tolkien, I think it's the other way round. Um, in a way, it's a little bit counterintuitive. Can you mean explain why, uh, the native tradition was, more importantly, was it just pure nationalism or like. Yes, I, I must say not too sure that that is taught, to be honest. Okay. I do I do agree that there is this sort of idea that Tolkien was more, uh, um, and in a way his work related that way.
It is true that at the centre point, uh, he moved on from the classics, uh, but uh, uh, the idea that he forgot, forgot, uh, is classical thing is just a bit of a myth. Okay? To be honest, I don't think it's really true. I mean, there are a couple of passages from the letters, okay? These are extrapolated and then becomes the building of a of a big, uh, idea. But this is not really true.
And I can tell you something which I discovered in the modern library just a couple of months ago, which is a text that you wrote in 1959. Okay. That's a text which is called Latin for the lady. Okay. It's a very long text. We're basically talking that goes on for a long time. Saying that Latin is the best language ever invented is a great language.
And then it shows and it gives a very interesting history of, uh, uh, the, uh, of the Anglo-Saxon people and so on that one of the things he says there is that actually the old point for the Anglo Saxons, that they were Latinised and that the only people in the history of Western Europe. Okay, we may disagree with what he says, but clearly Tolkien was uh, uh, remained a classicist in is that even if it was a professor of English literature, Anglo-Saxon.
But we need to forget that we did not forget that he made that move after ten years of being a classicist. So my students that were here in Oxford, I mean, certainly I have a much less knowledge of the ancient world that Tolkien had, uh, uh, in, uh, at the end of months. I mean, they were all classicist. I mean, that generation was all classicist. I think Tolkien, as always, wanted to move on. In a way, Turkey moved on, but they moved on was not like, uh uh, I don't really believe so.
I really I'm very happy to be. I don't really believe that he thought that the Anglo-Saxon annulled the concrete, and it was more important than others, in a way. And even if the Lord of the rings, something people have been, uh, pointed out again and again, nowadays you have a lot of influence of modern literature. The hobbits are nothing to do with the classics have nothing to do with the Nordic saga.
The hobbits are really more than characters coming from the novels of Dickens set and the others. Okay, so the Lord of the rings, and that's certainly the case. Lewis himself noted in his earlier review, is a book where which is able to bring together a lot of different things. You got the Anglo-Saxon, that is to say, the wrong people, the really Anglo-Saxon people, the old English people that know the people, the Roman people.
But already the Numenoreans are not exactly just, uh, uh, Anglo-Saxon is any more complicated than that. And I would say that even for Lewis himself, I mean, I don't think that following him, I don't really see this big difference between the two with, you know, way. Thinking about it as two different things. So basically, you know, the one subset, I do think that we are wrong. I see do I do I do think we are wrong. And this depends again on many factors.
Again, there are couple of passages in the letters. What he says seems to suggest that the novel The Killer was more interested for me in a way. But of course there is much more in the in the published letters. There's much more in the corpus, but also that it depends on the history of perception of Turkey, which is that the only people that for 20, 30, 40 years had the courage to walk on Tolkien.
We have medievalist, which is all great, but Thomas sheep and others were all medievalist, so by their own nature they had no way to um. Use the kind of perspective, but I think that's just one ingredient in a much more complicated soup. Um, with what you're talking about, with talk and sort of personal versus traditional ideas. Do you ever get the sense that he's sort of it's some of it is unconscious to him, like he's that it's not that he's choosing his relations.
It's like he seems to feel this sort of compulsion. I read a bit about it's like Dreams of Atlantis. Is there sort of like a yes? The answer is yes. I think the word unconscious is one of the most common objectives in the lighthouse. And so, especially in the passages where I tries to explain, is an experience, uh, quite often refers to the idea of unconsciousness, um, in the sense that, uh, I guess one could explain in different ways.
So I don't think the talking will be ready to use a sort of a psychoanalytical framework to explain that. So, I mean, it does refer in a couple of unpublished letters to younger. So he was clearly aware with Jung and with the idea of Jung's archetypes and so on.
But in the passage of, uh, um, fairy stories, he's very, very adamant that for him, the dreams he's talking about are not exactly the freedom Feldman deems that there is a difference in size between the dreaming of fantasy literature and the dreaming of psychoanalysis. If you want. Again, it would be wrong to distinguish between the two. But I feel like, uh, what is certainly a common thread is the idea of unconsciousness.
That is to say that the that the author is not in full control of what he's doing when he's writing, so his rational mind is higher if you want higher level of the mind is not the one that displays most of the thing that goes on at the level of writing. He really says very often. He says, I wrote the Lord of the rings, and then I edited it, and then I also was, in a way, the first reader of my own work told he really finds himself not just a writer, as a reader at a very, very early stage.
And this is kind of a combination of the two is also interesting because he allows allows us to connect someone like Ptolemy, we, the even postmodern thinker. So thinkers like Bakhtin about talked about the idea of the death of the author. In that sense, Tolkien was an author, was not in full possession of his own literary work in the kind of imagery used to explain that is exactly the image of dreaming, that is to say, the image of something which is remains unconscious to the higher.
If you will mind again, it would be to discuss why, in this sense is not Freud, it's not the subconscious. I would prefer unconscious rather than subconscious, but that's a maybe a bit too complicated. So speaking of online questions, uh, before I ask the reader outside the questions, I have to say to our online audience where, sorry for not being able to provide a handout at this moment, I got many emails.
Um, but we do have, um, actually, one question is very easy, and it's basically what was the name of the 1959 Tolkien text you referred to? Uh, and the other one is a more fleshed out question. And, uh, it refers to a narrative of decline so that our, um, a viewer asks, uh, whether it is related to the physical embodiment of decline or can it also mean an imaginary decline the narrative can have.
So I think, yeah. So the first question, the quest is called the Latin for the Latin, still unpublished. As you know, there are plenty of unpublished material in the Tolkien Archive, which is great because it means that for we've been busy for a few other decades, I will come out. Uh, there is a new one coming out very soon. In fact, in the next couple of weeks, uh, which is called the Bovada of fragments, which is a, um, a sort of satirical piece on traffic in Oxford.
So very, very relevant, I would say, to the current discussions. As for the people who live in us, for they will understand. On the second question instead, is on the physical or the imaginative decline. Again, we should discuss what exactly think the climate means. But, uh, certainly the climate is, first of all, physical. Yes, there's something about physical decline.
And for someone like Tolkien to experience the Second World, First World War and the Second World War, and so is on the physical decline from an early age. I mean, something that we sometimes we forget. But, um, Tolkien was, in a way wounded in the First World War. And he came back. He was very ill for many months. He had to stay in the ospital, and he kept for all his life, uh, um, uh, very, very, very, very weak, as we know.
They got ill again and again, but also clearly was wounded psychologically. I mean, the kind of Thomas that suffered in the First World War where, uh, and there was a strain of depression in his mind, which clearly can be somehow traced back to the trauma that he had to face in his early life. But but in kind of, in more, um, thinking, more imaginative terms. I mean, talking says in a letter that any story of made by men must be about the fall.
So certainly Tolkien thought that, uh, this kind of idea of a fall or decline is somehow present in any possible story. The. Human minds can produce. Why is that? Again, physical decline is one thing, but I think talking will say that there is something even deeper which relates to what talking calls the sense of nostalgia for a lost Eden, for something that in a way, uh, and again, this could be speaking religious terms, the doctrine of the follow, the original sin and so on.
But maybe even more general in psychological terms, this idea that, uh, who we are now and it's not exactly how we were supposed to be, this perception that we have made for greater things, that the things that were. But somehow in the past, I feel that's a kind of a general, uh, experience that the human imagination will say Venice, too, expressed from the very beginning.
Thank you. Um, I'll try to keep this very quick. Just, um, I'm noting that you had said that the answers to you wanted to talk more about and just thinking about the the narrative of the client specifically and what a powerful thing it is, uh, in regard to how we think about ourselves and our culture. And of course, talking is aware of this.
And you've heard earlier about how talking is very resistant to having a lot of grace specifically associated with Faulkner and, um, wondering about sort of how this use that our work and this sense of sort of like, well, if it was older and simpler, this veteran household thing might have, uh, wanted us to understand about the rings in regard to the sort of parallels, uh, of how that traditional, uh, sensibility. Yeah. Thank you. That's a big question.
Again, I will try to make it very short, but if you think about the characters in the Lord of the rings, I got a question for yourself. Who do you think of the characters in the Lord of the rings that are most directly needs to, in a way that are more prone to think in life in times of decline? Oh yeah. Yes, yes, I agree with that. If you think about the ads and talk, they are all about obsessed with the memory.
They want to move around. They have the little places, the little kingdoms, the lawyer and, and and Rivendell. When time doesn't flow away, doesn't pass away. The else that's talking explicitly says in the letters are the best embodiment of the sense of nostalgia for a vanished past. And they are obsessed with it. Donkey would say to the pointer. And that's something that he explicitly says to the point of becoming embalmers.
They are embalmers. So the they are embalming because you see, if there is decline, then what we are supposed to do. And of course, our temptation is to be a conservative again, the want to go into politics now, but conservative in a general sense. So things are going bad. So what are we supposed to do to keep things as they are? And that's really what you are subduing. If you think about it, that's very problematic.
And there is one moment in the all of the drawings where the sort of a clash of perspectives really come to us to flesh if you want to, which is in the dialogue between the Gallagher and Frodo, because Gallagher, Frodo is there and she says, and he says to take the ring for Galadriel to keep the ring will be to keep things exactly as they are, at least in appearance. And she says, no, and I pass the test. But I know that by passing the test, I allow logging to be destroyed.
Log. It is destroyed in at the end of the Lord of the rings. The past will go away. The elves will be the last. Because that's basically the history. What the history of our, um, wants. But if you think about it, I mean, the gold, the long, it is the golden age wood is the golden wood. But the gold of the Logan does not completely disappear. What happens to the gold? It goes to the Shire. And in fact, the following year we got all the new little hobbits with blonde hair.
Okay. And clearly there is a connection there. So that is the gold that was moved from the log in. And that's the kind of Tolkien's perspective, which is it is a long, quite long answer, buddy, which is like you take a narrative of the climb, which is something that says something about who we are, but not everything. So every single experience of mankind is bad or good. Eventually it's sort of integrated into a larger all, every single leaf if you want to, because then part of a tree.
So you do have the narrative decline. You do have the answer and talk a love the answer. But the elves are not the kind of the best people to look at, okay? Even the elves themselves need somehow to go up. I need to accept that the perception of history is not complete. Well. Thank you. We have to end this talk now. But please, a round of applause for Giuseppe Bertini.