The Worlds Of J.R. R. Tolkien
It was the quiet, pious and conventional Oxford professor, J. R. R. Tolkien, who turned fantasy literature into the most popular literary genre in the modern world, especially with his great trilogy of the 1950s, The Lord of the Rings. This talk is intended to explain what sort of man he was, and what formed his life and beliefs and inspired his work. It also poses the question of how far he can be regarded as essentially a Christian author, as many devoutly Christian commentators have claimed, and how much his fantasy world was a much more complex creation, including both pagan and folkloric themes. In doing so this talk seeks to account for the remarkable public success of his stories and their huge influence among such a varied readership
Speaker: Professor Ronald Hutton is a Professor of History at the University of Bristol. He is a leading authority on history of the British Isles in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, on ancient and medieval paganism and magic, and on the global context of witchcraft beliefs.
don’t worry if you miss it – we will send you a recording valid for two weeks the next day
C. S. Lewis And The Chronicles Of Narnia
Clive Staples Lewis was an English tutor at Oxford University between the 1920s and the 1950s, who was converted to Christianity by his friend and fellow Oxford academic, J. R. R. Tolkien, and became one of the twentieth century’s foremost defenders and propagators of the Christian faith. He is also, however, remembered and loved by most people today as the author of the stories set in an imagined land called Narnia, which rank among the greatest works of children’s fantasy literature. This talk seeks to explain what sort of man he was, and how and why he came to write the stories. It also looks at the relationship between them and his own, Christian, religious faith, and proposes to answer the question of why they are meaningful to, and appreciated by, people who do not share that faith.
Speaker: Professor Ronald Hutton is a Professor of History at the University of Bristol. He is a leading authority on history of the British Isles in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, on ancient and medieval paganism and magic, and on the global context of witchcraft beliefs.
don’t worry if you miss it – we will send you a recording valid for two weeks the next day
Europe’s Great Witch Hunt
Between 1424 and 1782 Western and Central Europe, which had been an area of the world relatively little affected by witch hunting (the persecution of people accused of using magic to harm others), was badly convulsed by it. This talk is designed to answer the question of why late medieval Western Christianity lost its nerve so badly and began so much to fear imagined evils. It will tackle the related questions of why the trials peaked in the supposedly more rational era of the Scientific Revolution and European expansion overseas; and why the trials came to an end and have not resumed. It will also seek to explain why witch trials concentrated in particular places as well as times and why the majority of those put to death as a result were female.
Speaker: Professor Ronald Hutton is a Professor of History at the University of Bristol. He is a leading authority on history of the British Isles in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, on ancient and medieval paganism and magic, and on the global context of witchcraft beliefs.
don’t worry if you miss it – we will send you a recording valid for two weeks the next day
The Magicians of the Golden Dawn
At the greatest of their seasonal festivals, the Spring Equinox, this is a fit time to consider the most celebrated order of ceremonial magicians in the history of the world, which established the template for most modern ritual magic. The group also contained some of the most vivid characters in the story of that magic, including Samuel Mathers, William Butler Yeats, Arthur Waite and Aleister Crowley. The talk will take a fresh look at how the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn was founded, who inspired and led it, and how its rituals were developed. It will examine the complex and controversial place of religion in the order, and the relationship between paganism and Christianity in it. Finally, it will deal with the dramatic and traumatic end of the order and consider its legacy.
Speaker: Professor Ronald Hutton is a Professor of History at the University of Bristol. He is a leading authority on history of the British Isles in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, on ancient and medieval paganism and magic, and on the global context of witchcraft beliefs.
Watch a recording of This Lecture, & 100s of others, for free when you join our PatreonÂ
Vampires have become key figures in the modern imagination, over three thousand works of literature and film being devoted to them in the last third of the twentieth century. Since then the momentum of that interest has if anything increased. This talk is designed to show why this is, and what forms it takes. Three patterns are very clear. The first is that all modern vampires descend from Count Dracula. The second, that before the 1970s vampire lore was dominated by cinema, and since then it has been by novels. The third is that until the 1970s the development of the mythos was a joint enterprise across the Western world, and that since then it has been driven overwhelmingly from America. These patterns are both illustrated and explained in the talk, and in the process a key question is also proposed and answered: what function do vampires have in the contemporary world, and why are they so important to us?
Speaker: Professor Ronald Hutton is a Professor of History at the University of Bristol. He is a leading authority on history of the British Isles in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, on ancient and medieval paganism and magic, and on the global context of witchcraft beliefs.
Watch a recording of This Lecture, & 100s of others, for free when you join our PatreonÂ
Of all fictional characters, only Sherlock Holmes has appeared more often in films than Bram Stoker’s vampire, Count Dracula. Stoker, however, reworked what was already a long literary tradition about vampires, going back to the eighteenth century. Before then, this particular type of monstrous being was a novelty in most of Europe, having only appeared in its imagination from the 1720s. The vampire was in fact an amalgam of two much more ancient monsters, which came together in the Balkans during the early modern period, and broke into the rest of European belief when Austrian soldiers reached that region. This talk is designed to show how it was created, and dispersed, and to reveal the rich literary tradition that it had inspired by the nineteenth century. It will also show what was so different, and so compelling, about Dracula, which made him the most celebrated vampire of all time.
Speaker: Professor Ronald Hutton is a Professor of History at the University of Bristol. He is a leading authority on history of the British Isles in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, on ancient and medieval paganism and magic, and on the global context of witchcraft beliefs.
Watch a recording of This Lecture, & 100s of others, for free when you join our PatreonÂ
Kenneth Grahame’s books changed the nature of children’s fiction for ever, giving childhood its own authentic voice. Of them, of course, the one which stars the animal characters Ratty, Mole, Badger and Mr Toad is by far the most famous. It is not only a rollicking comic tale, of a quite unique kind, but a disturbing social parable, one of the finest portraits of the southern English countryside, and the most intense evocation of paganism in Victorian and Edwardian fiction. This talk looks at how and why it came to be written, and at the story of Grahame himself, the outwardly boring and conventional bank clerk who created it. His life turns out to be one of triumph, pathos and tragedy, and by understanding him, we come to understand also when and why his masterpiece was created, and how it has been so effective.
Speaker: Professor Ronald Hutton is a Professor of History at the University of Bristol. He is a leading authority on history of the British Isles in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, on ancient and medieval paganism and magic, and on the global context of witchcraft beliefs.
Watch a recording of This Lecture, & 100s of others, for free when you join our Patreon
The books for young children by Alan Alexander Milne, about Pooh Bear and other animal characters, are the most successful that the world has ever known, being loved around it from Australia and California to Russia. They were composed originally for his son, Christopher Robin, whose relationship with his father has recently been made the subject of two (rather inaccurate) films. Milne himself was one of the best-selling authors of the 1920s, before he wrote anything for children, and yet he is today himself one of the most forgotten of English writers. This talk is designed to introduce readers to his often rather dark story, and complex character, and to show how and why Winnie the Pooh came to be created, and the effect of his creation and success on both Alan Milne and Christopher Robin.
Speaker: Professor Ronald Hutton is a Professor of History at the University of Bristol. He is a leading authority on history of the British Isles in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, on ancient and medieval paganism and magic, and on the global context of witchcraft beliefs.
Watch a recording of This Lecture, & 100s of others, for free when you join our PatreonÂ
This talk is devoted to a particular form of ancient pagan goddess, one who is at the same time associated with love and sex, and with warfare. Though this may seem like a paradoxical linkage, it was actually quite a common one in the pre-Christian European and Near Eastern world, combining two different types of dramatic and often ecstatic human activity, associated with potent bodily fluids. Moreover, some of the most important of these goddesses actually influenced, and helped engender, the others, and the talk considers these in particular, in a divine chain reaction, stretching across the ancient world: the Sumerian Inanna, the Babylonian and Assyrian Ishtar, the Syrian Astarte, the Greek Aphrodite, and the Roman Venus. It considers the development of each one, which can be traced through history, the particular and distinctive forms which each attained, and the powerful influence which they exerted on each other, spanning the most important and pervasive ancient cultures.
Speaker: Professor Ronald Hutton is a Professor of History at the University of Bristol. He is a leading authority on history of the British Isles in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, on ancient and medieval paganism and magic, and on the global context of witchcraft beliefs.
Here are some of his other talks you might be interested in https://thelasttuesdaysociety.org/digital-events/?cat=ronaldhutton
Watch a recording of This Lecture, & 100s of others, for free when you join our PatreonÂ
Everybody thinks that they know what the Holy Grail is, whether the person in quest of it is one of King Arthur’s knights or Indiana Jones: the cup used by Jesus Christ at the Last Supper, preserved by his followers and hidden until the right hero, with the right attitude, comes to find it. Some believe that it actually exists in the human world at the present day, embodied in particular vessels preserved at Nanteos in Wales, or at Glastonbury, or concealed at Rosslyn Chapel or Rennes-le-Chateau. Others, conversant with Edwardian British scholarship, think that it is a Christianisation of a pagan Celtic tradition of enchanted cauldrons, ultimately representing the divine feminine. This talk is a quest in itself, for the origins of the story, which can be pinpointed quite specifically, and for the process by which an idea with a precise origin grew into a motif capable of taking so many different forms. It also considers the claims of the Celtic cauldrons to be the ‘true’ grails and those of the vessels revered today by many people as the genuine one.
Speaker: Professor Ronald Hutton is a Professor of History at the University of Bristol. He is a leading authority on history of the British Isles in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, on ancient and medieval paganism and magic, and on the global context of witchcraft beliefs.
Here are some of his other talks you might be interested in
https://thelasttuesdaysociety.org/digital-events/?cat=ronaldhutton
Watch a recording of This Lecture, & 100s of others, for free when you join our Patreon www.patreon.com/theviktorwyndmuseum
