Since 2013, students from Pembroke College have organised an annual public lecture in honour of J.R.R. Tolkien. The lecture series promotes the study of fantasy literature, and advances our understanding of it, by inviting influential and talented speakers to share their ideas on the field.
Acclaimed fantasy author Rebecca F. Kuang will deliver this year’s Tolkien Lecture on Fantasy Literature at Pembroke College, Oxford. The lecture will take place on Monday, May 23rd in the Pichette Auditorium at 6 PM BST.
Kuang is best known for the Poppy War trilogy, a grimdark fantasy based on Chinese history. Her work has won the Crawford Award and the Compton Crook Award for Best First Novel and has been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and World Fantasy Awards. In 2020, she also won the Astounding Award for Best New Writer.
In addition to being a fantasy writer, Kuang is a Marshall Scholar and a Chinese-English translator. She has an MPhil in Chinese Studies from Cambridge and an MSc in Contemporary Chinese Studies from Oxford. She is now pursuing a PhD in East Asian Languages and Literatures at Yale, where she studies diaspora, contemporary Chinese literature, and Asian American literature.
Kuang currently has two more novels in the works: Babel, a historical fantasy inspired by her time at Oxford, set to release this year, and Yellowface, to be released in 2023. For more on Kuang’s work, visit her website at rfkuang.com.
On Tuesday May 11th, Guy Gavriel Kay delivered the eighth annual Tolkien Lecture on Fantasy Literature at Pembroke College, Oxford, broadcasting live from Toronto in Canada. We were moved, inspired, and delighted by his lecture, ‘Just Enough Light: Some Thoughts on Fantasy and Literature.’
Our thanks again to Guy for spending time with us. It was also wonderful to see so many people attend the lecture live, both on Youtube and Zoom.
If you missed the lecture, or want to watch it again, the recording is available here:
Photographs
We’d love to see more photos of people watching the lecture from around the world… share them with us on social media, and we’ll add them to this post!
Roma Prudente, watching live from Toronto, Canada
Maria Dahvana Headley, watching live from North Carolina
Behind the scenes managing the simulcast on Zoom and Youtube
Award-winning and best-selling fantasy author Guy Gavriel Kay will deliver this year’s Tolkien Lecture on Fantasy Literature at Pembroke College, Oxford. The digital lecture will take place on Tuesday, May 11th, 6 PM BST (1 PM ET).
Kay has published fourteen novels which have been translated into 30 languages and have appeared on bestseller lists around the world. He is also the author of the poetry collection, Beyond This Dark House. His most recent work is A Brightness Long Ago.
Before beginning his career as a novelist, Kay was retained by the Estate of J.R.R. Tolkien to assist in the editorial construction of The Silmarillion, the first and best-known of the posthumously published Tolkien works. Called to the Bar of Ontario in 1980, he has also been principal writer and associate producer for the CBC’s award-winning crime-drama series, The Scales of Justice.
Kay has twice won the Aurora Award, is a multiple World Fantasy Award nominee, and won that award for Ysabel. He also won the Sunburst Award for Under Heaven, and is the recipient of the International Goliardos Prize, presented in Mexico City, for his contributions to the literature of the fantastic. Both Under Heaven and River of Stars won the Prix Elbakin in France for best foreign language speculative fiction work.
In 2014 he was invested with the Order of Canada, the country’s highest civilian honour. Kay’s authorized website may be found at brightweavings.com. He is on Twitter as @guygavrielkay. Kay lives in Toronto.
Register to attend on Zoom, or alternatively you can watch the livestream on our Youtube channel. Zoom capacity will be limited but Youtube capacity is not, and both Zoom and Youtube will broadcast at the same time.
Thank you to our amazing panellists for an inspiring and thought-provoking discussion last weekend, and thank you to everyone who joined us on Zoom and Youtube Live to listen and contribute to the discussion. If you missed it, a recording of the event can be found on Youtube:
We were also thrilled to surpass our fundraising target, collecting £860 for The Society of Authors’ Covid-19 emergency fund. Thank you to all who donated and helped provide much-needed financial support for professional writers during the pandemic.
We have compiled a list of quotations and resources, to help people find out more about our panellists and the authors and works they discussed.
Gabriel Schenk, 34:50, Diana Pavlac Glyer, The Company They Keep: C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien as Writers in Community (Kent State University Press, 2006)
Writing During the Time of Covid-19
Terri Windling, 42:00, Ellen Kushner, author of Swordspoint (Arbor House, 1987) and many others
Kij Johnson,43:09, ‘I know what you’re thinking – that anybody with proper sensitive feeling would rather scrub floors for a living. But I should scrub floors very badly, and I write detective stories rather well’ Harriet Vane in Dorothy L. Sayers’s Gaudy Night (Gollancz, 1935), p. 31.
“Happy” Endings in Fantasy
Terri Windling, 50:28:
‘The consolation of fairy-stories, the joy of the happy ending: or more correctly of the good catastrophe, the sudden joyous “turn” (for there is no true end to any fairy-tale): this joy, which is one of the things which fairy-stories can produce supremely well, is not essentially “escapist,” nor “fugitive.” In its fairy-tale – or otherworld – setting, it is a sudden and miraculous grace: never to be counted on to recur. It does not deny the existence of dyscatastrophe, of sorrow and failure: the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance; it denies (in the face of much evidence, if you will) universal final defeat and in so far is evangelium, giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief.’
– J.R.R. Tolkien, “On Fairy-Stories,” 1939
Messages of hope in Fantasy and Science-fiction
Gabriel Schenk, 56:45:
‘“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo. “So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.’”
– J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, bk. I, ch. 2
Terri Windling, 1:00:00:
‘For adults, the world of fantasy books returns to us the great words of power which, in order to be tamed, we have excised from our adult vocabularies. These words are the pornography of innocence, words which adults no longer use with other adults, and so we laugh at them and consign them to the nursery, fear masking as cynicism. These are the words that were forged in the earth, air, fire, and water of human existence, and the words are: Love. Hate. Good. Evil. Courage. Honor. Truth.’
–Jane Yolen, Touch Magic: Fantasy, Faerie & Folklore in the Literature of Childhood (August House Publishers, expanded edition, 2000)
Will Covid-19 Change Fantasy?
Rebbeca F. Kuang, 1:09:11, examples of POC authors writing about trauma in speculative fiction: N.K. Jemisin, Tochi Onyebuchi, Octavia Butler, Rebecca Roanhorse, Rivers Solomon
Fantasy, Science-fiction, and Landscape
Terri Windling, 1:13:58, examples of authors who write nature-based fantasy that is also internal: Robert Holdstock and [second author TBD]
Rebecca F. Kuang, 1:16:09, examples of fantasy and sci-fi that include a closing-off of landscape: Sophie Mackintosh, The Water Cure (2018), Sam J. Miller, Blackfish City (2018), and Chen Qiufan, Waste Tide (2013; translated into English in 2019)
Quotations
“My heart’s right down in my toes, Mr. Pippin,’ said Sam. ‘But we aren’t etten yet’”
– J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, ch. 4
Kij Johnson, 1:18:23, ‘I’ve always loved the notion that as long as you’re not eaten, you’re good.’
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Terri Windling, 1:18:38: ‘“Words are intrinsically powerful,” wrote the Kiowa author N. Scott Momaday. “And there is magic in that. Words come from nothing into being. They are created in the imagination and given life on the human voice. You know, we used to believe — and I am talking about all of us, regardless of our ethnic backgrounds – in the magic of words. The Anglo-Saxon who uttered spells over his field so that the seeds would come out of the ground on the sheer strength of his voice, knew a good deal about language, and he believed absolutely in the efficacy of language. That man’s faith — and may I say, wisdom — has been lost upon modern man, by and large. It survives in the poets of the world, I suppose, the singers. We do not now know what we can do with words. But as long as there are those among us who try to find out, literature will be secure; literature will be a thing worthy of our highest level of human being.”
– N. Scott Momaday, qtd. in Joseph Bruchac, Survival This Way: Interviews with American-Indian Poets, (University of Arizona Press, 1987)
‘Like Momaday, I believe that words have a magic and a power of their own, which those of us working in the fantasy field would be wise to remember. A good fantasy novel is literally spell-binding, using language to conjure up whole new worlds, or to invest our own with magic. The particular power of fantasy comes from its link with the world’s most ancient stories, and from the author’s careful manipulation of mythic archetypes, story patterns, and symbols.‘A skillful writer knows that she must tell two stories at once: the surface tale, and a deeper story encoded within the tale’s symbolic language. The magical tropes of fantasy, rooted as they are in world mythology, come freighted with meaning on a metaphoric level.I believe that those of us who use the magic of words professionally should remember how powerful stories can be — for children especially, but also for adults – and take responsibility for the tenor of whatever dreams or nightmares we’re letting loose into the world.’
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V.E. Schwab, 1:20:40: ‘“Life is terrifying. None of us have a rule book. None of us know what we’re doing here. So, the easiest way to stare reality in the face and not utterly lose your shit is to believe that you have control over it. If you believe you have control, then you believe you’re at the top. And if you’re at the top, then people who aren’t like you… well, they’ve got to be somewhere lower, right? Every species does this. Does it again and again and again. Doesn’t matter if they do it to themselves, or another species, or someone they created […] You studied history. You know this. Everybody’s history is one long slog of all the horrible shit we’ve done to each other.”’
– Becky Chambers, A Closed and Common Orbit (Hodder & Stoughton, 2016)
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Rebecca F. Kuang, 1:21:43: ‘“I think good art is good for people precisely because it is not fantasy but imagination. It breaks the grip of our own dull fantasy life and stirs us to the effort of true vision. Most of the time we fail to see the big wide real world at all because we are blinded by obsession, anxiety, envy, resentment, fear. We make a small personal world in which we remain enclosed. Great art is liberating, it enables us to see and take pleasure in what is not ourselves. Literature stirs and satisfies our curiosity, it interests us in other people and other scenes, and helps us to be tolerant and generous. Art is informative. And even mediocre art can tell us something, for instance about how other people live.”’
– Iris Murdoch, qtd. in Bryan Magee, Talking Philosophy: Dialogues with Fifteen Leading Philosophers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), p. 238
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Adam Roberts, 1:22:48, ‘There is room, in the world of Tolkien, for fried fish and a bit of sushi as well, if that’s what you’re in the mood for […] it’s always seemed to me just such a beautifully observed little moment.’“‘Be good Sméagol and fetch me the herbs, and I’ll think better of you. What’s more, if you turn over a new leaf, and keep it turned, I’ll cook you some taters one of these days. I will: fried fish and chips served by S. Gamgee. You couldn’t say no to that.’`Yes, yes we could. Spoiling nice fish, scorching it. Give me fish now, and keep nassty chips!’”
– J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, bk. IV, ch. 4
*
Lev Grossman, 1:26:00, ‘There’s a great strip where Charlie Brown just sits up with Linus because Linus can’t sleep. I don’t even think there’s a particular punchline for that strip, but it’s one that keeps coming back to me.”
– Charles M. Schulz, Peanuts, January 9–10, 1961
1:25:24, ‘Lucy takes away Linus’s blanket […] It’s one of the rare instances when you see Charlie Brown, who I love, be truly compassionate. For Linus, the blanket is a magic object, but it’s not magic for anybody else, and so much of fantasy is making visible, or placing value, on things that aren’t otherwise visible.’
– Charles M. Schulz, Peanuts, January 9–10, 1961
Other Books Mentioned
Kij Johnson, 38:09, Lord Dunsany, author of the novel The King of Elfland’s Daughter (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1924) and the linked stories in The Gods of Pegāna (Elkin Mathews, 1905)
Kij Johnson, 38:10, Stephen King, ‘Children of the Corn’, in Night Shift (Doubleday, 1978)
Adam Roberts, 44:35, William Golding’s Lord of the Flies (Faber & Faber, 1954)
Terri Windling, 46:56, Alan Garner, author of The Weirdstone of Brisingamen (Collins, 1960), The Owl Service (Collins, 1967), and many others
Terri Windling, 46:57, Susan Cooper, author of The Dark is Rising Sequence and many others
Lev Grossman, 55:23, ‘Earthsea,’ from Ursula K. Le Guin, The Earthsea Cycle (1968–2001)
55:25 Lev mentions ‘Westeros,’ from G.R.R. Martin, A Song of Ice and Fire (1996–)
For the effect of a time of crisis on Tolkien’s life and work, see John Garth, Tolkien and the Great War: The Threshold of Middle-earth (HarperCollins, 2003)
“The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.”
– J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
This year, Pembroke College’s Tolkien Lecture on Fantasy Literature is transforming into an online symposium! Previous speakers of the series Kij Johnson (2013), Adam Roberts (2014), Lev Grossman (2015), Terri Windling (2016), and V.E. Schwab (2018), together with forthcoming speaker Rebecca F. Kuang (lecture date TBD), will discuss the importance of fantasy in times of crisis: how science-fiction and fantasy literature respond to, and provide inspiration during, moments of despair and personal difficulty.
The symposium will take place on Saturday May 16, 4:00 – 5:30pm British time (11am – 12:30 Eastern).
The event is free but the Tolkien Lecture committee are inviting donations for The Society of Authors’ COVID-19 Crisis Fund, which responds to the loss of income many writers have faced as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. The fund provides financial support for professional writers based in the UK – including illustrators, literary translators, scriptwriters, poets, journalists and others – who rely on their writing as their main source of income.
The Tolkien Lecture on Fantasy Literature was established in 2013 at Pembroke College, Oxford, where J.R.R. Tolkien worked for twenty years as professor of Anglo-Saxon. Speakers in the series are given freedom to discuss any aspect of fantasy literature, broadly defined to include other types of speculative fiction. Our aim is to honour J.R.R. Tolkien’s legacy by promoting the study of fantasy literature.
We are delighted to announce that Rebecca F. Kuang will deliver the eighth annual Tolkien Lecture at Pembroke College, Oxford.
Rebecca F. Kuang is the Nebula, Locus, and World Fantasy Award nominated author of The Poppy War and The Dragon Republic (Harper Voyager). She has an MPhil in Chinese Studies from the University of Cambridge and is currently pursuing an MSc in Contemporary Chinese Studies at Oxford University on a Marshall Scholarship. She also translates Chinese science fiction to English. Her debut The Poppy War was listed by Time, Amazon, Goodreads, and The Guardian as one of the best books of 2018 and has won the Crawford Award and Compton Crook Award for Best First Novel.
The third part of the Poppy War trilogy, The Burning God, is due out in late 2020. You can find out more about Rebecca F. Kuang on her website, rfkuang.com
The J.R.R. Tolkien Lecture on Fantasy Literature 