Surprised by Oxford - Academic and author Carolyn Weber on her book and biopic about her experience in the city

Hello and welcome to MythMakers. MythMakers is the podcast for fantasy fans and fantasy creators brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy. My name is Julia Golding, I'm an author but I also am the director of the Centre. And I was thrilled looking through the upcoming publications and films to discover Caroline Weber who is our guest today because Caroline is just put out a book and a film project called Surprise by Oxford. You couldn't really find anything more on brand than that. So Caroline, tell us something about yourself. Thank you so much Julia for having me here. Yes, I'm a, I have an M-Fell and a D-Fell and romantic literature from Oxford and and did have a wonderful experience there and I am currently a professor at New College Franklin. We moved recently to the Nashville Tennessee area and I do writing and speaking and teaching on faith and literature and the intersection of various genres in that way. Now I was particularly excited in a very personal way because the very course that you did was the one that I did. So picture me back in 1995, I just left the diplomatic service or took a break from it. I was having my first two children and I embarked on the M-Fell, the masters of philosophy in romantic literature and which then did another few more years after that to do the D-Fell and I think you did exactly the same thing, didn't you? I did, I did, but without children at the time, so you were far braver than me. Well, it worked out for me. My, my daughter is my M-Fell baby. My, my, my, my D-Fell baby. And if you remember sitting in the, because part of the M-Fell, as you remember, had written exams, one last experience of written exam and I, my daughter had chickenpox. I was sitting in the hall thinking I bet I'm the only person here who's actually rushed here from having put chamomile ocean on, on a, on a disagreeable baby. You probably do have a hold on that corner. Anyway, you got mine saying when, when did you do your doctorate? When you did it after me? So I was a little bit before you for the M-Fell, I came as a Commonwealth scholar a few years beforehand and then I was married just shortly after the time you arrived and hadn't moved to DC for my husband's work and did the doctorate. The first year of the doctorate or so there, but then long distance for a few years after that. So I finished my doctorate a little later. Yeah, that explains why we didn't actually meet at that stage. I, isn't that, I mean, we were, we would have overlapped a little, I think. Yeah. So did we sit at the feet of Jonathan Wordsworth, for example? I did. Yeah. So there was, for those of you who recognise the surname, they're one of the academics at the time who has since passed away, sadly, was a relative of Jonathan Wordsworth, which kind of feels like the name of William Wordsworth. He was Jonathan and his great, great, great, great uncle. So you feel as somehow a surname has decided that chat's future? Yes. Yes. Yes. It was, it was a wonderful group that I had a great chance to study under. Okay, so let's think about what we're interested in most is obviously your, your book and your film, surprised by Oxford nods towards CS Lewis's account of his early years. Okay, finishes in in the early 30s, doesn't it? Surprise and joy. So tell us a little bit more, more about your connection to CS Lewis and your time in Oxford. Well, it was interesting. I had arrived to like most from mainstream culture. I knew the Narnia Chronicles as a child and, and had adored those, didn't think of them in any sort of deeper way. I did not know of Lewis as a late theologian or really much as even a literary critic, especially coming from a larger secular undergraduate system. And so I was introduced to him through some friends when I was reading at Oxford and I was actually dragged somewhat reluctantly myself to a CS Lewis society meeting. Thinking that it would be corny or, you know, whatever. And I actually was really, really moved by it in PC Hall at the time and it planted some seeds. So I ended up reading his, surprised by George, sort of, you know, much later in my life at that point. But I was intrigued because the title is from Wordsworth and I was studying the Romantics. I thought, okay, what's this about? But at that point, I ended up reading a few other of his works. Actually, one of the works I had read just prior to that, which wedded my appetite for him further, was Sheldon Vanoccan's a severe mercy. And I was not a Christian at that point and had read that and knew that Vanoccan had studied, had read and worked with Lewis as a student. So I was intrigued by, I started to become more intrigued by him through, sort of, that back door. Yes. And I, if I remember the severe mercy, that's a very moving book. He's back in the account of a man who loses his wife quite early on, isn't he? It is. It's a very, very poignant book. Yeah, it mirrors the experience that Lewis went on to have, of course, when his, his wife, Joy, David Mann passed away from cancer too. So there's a, that sort of clicks into the grief observed side of CS Lewis. Yes, the problem of pain. So you pitch up in Oxford, you find that's CS Lewis is connecting to Wordsworth. Thank you for reminding me of that. I didn't know that, but so what did you think of Oxford in relationship to CS Lewis? Were you seeing him around every corner? Did you feel haunted in the nicest way by the Inklings? Oh, I felt tremendously haunted by virtually everyone who's thought of thought. Before when I arrived at Oxford, you sort of feel it in the walls, but, but increasingly so. At first, no, I wasn't even aware of the Inklings until, again, being with friends and then going to the Eagle and Child or the Bird and Babe ourselves. And the same thing with Tolkien as well, I'd known, you know, Hobbit, Lord of the Rings as a child. And I had a mother who was a voracious reader and I was always really blessed by that. And, and somewhat sort of a, a very magical person herself. But I hadn't known any of his other works or really had known of his ideologies or his friendships. I didn't know of Charles Williams or, I mean, you know, his novels are a certain taste. And, you know, that sort of thing. So I didn't know the wider Inklings as a group in that sense. And so as I slowly began to then get introduced to George McDonald and Chester Tin and that through, and then Sayers, you know, through these really interesting friendships and their own codery conversations, which I think is a romantic. I was in, I was always drawn to because of their circles. Yeah. You know, then it just expands like, like, you know, roots in terms of connecting and reading other ideas that I was really intrigued by. I mean, if you stopped any literary student of our kind and asked them name a famous literary group from the 1930s, people would say, oh, well, obviously the Bloom's peak group. The Bloom's is like in your wolf and co. But if you say, well, actually, remember how that fabulously popular genre fantasy was shaped by Tolkien and CS Lewis. And much of, and the friendship between Dorothy Sayers and TS Eliot and Charles Williams, you've got another group that who don't really kind of make it onto the university syllabus do they? So I'm not surprised you didn't know about them. And they don't make it on the secular university syllabus or the, yes, in many ways. And yet when you find something like a treasure like the Wade Center with all the collection of the inklings, you know, and everything at Wheaton College, it's just a treasure trove of really rich ideas, regardless of your religious stripe. Yeah, absolutely. And they were not the same kind of questions at all to each other, not at all. Charles Williams was extraordinary with his, with his secret society in print. And then we get sort of Northern Irish Protestants, then Anglican, CS Lewis, and of course Catholic Tolkien. So within that, you've got lots of flavours of your Christian ice cream. Okay, so what brought you to write the book surprised by Oxford? That's such a big and deep and wonderful question. It was not something I intended to do. I said out to do at all, Julia. I was an academic and was used to writing, you know, mainly researched work. And but my experience there, especially over the course of my first year at Oxford, of reading these other thinkers and exploring a life of faith, and then eventually myself becoming a Christian, had really sort of been sitting in my heart and my head. And I certainly didn't proselytise to students. I was teaching at different types of universities, but in private conversations with students or students who were asking or whatnot, you know, my faith was a topic. And I also had felt that I really wanted to share the story and write more about it for my friends and family who did not have a faith or had questions about it similarly to myself. So I wrote it really quite personally, in a sense, actually more for sort of me and God and me and this audience of friends or family members and students who kept prompting and asking. And I had written a couple of chapters that were foremost in my mind at first and then tabled it, wrote a bit, tabled it, and did for some time. Largely, actually at the time I was untenured in the secular system and was really warned not to publish something about my faith until I had some sort of job security and even then perhaps not. So there was that wrangling until something in my life really actually changed that and made me realize that where the line in the sand was for me regardless. But it ended up being longer than I anticipated. I think as English lit people, we have a lot of words. But I also felt it was important to share post-conversion as well. What that was really like kind of being in the world and not of it, that I'm like an unhime-like sort of existence. You know, that it's yes, it's an amazing experience and spiritually moving and deep, but there's also this reality of trying to now navigate a new world and a new way of being. And I wanted to share that as well. So I had actually ended up writing it over several years, but I ended up writing the rest of it quite quickly. You'll probably understand this after I was on my first sabbatical and in Santa Barbara when I was teaching as a guest lecture or guest teacher for Westmont College. And I had three children under three. So I had twins and my little girl. And that was the greatest sort of incentive for overcoming writer's block in terms of hiding and finally getting it done when I had moments and it brought it together for me. Yeah, so here's a sidebar for creatives here. And when she could ask me about writer's vlog and because my career when I was on maternity leave for my third child, my usually my first thought is, I didn't have time. Writer's block is a luxury. Maybe goes to sleep. Right, quick. You know, and you pretend you don't hear the first cry. I think, oh, we're going to go to see begin on you. I can write up until a certain volume. Yeah, no, so absolutely. So just putting your book alongside surprise by joy for those who listening who perhaps can't remember the details are surprised by joy. He actually finishes the account. When he's a day, when he sort of calls himself a dayist, he finishes, it's not like a whole version of it. He sort of says that and, you know, going further on was when I eventually became a Christian. He's actually more interested in his journey is having gone out of having a sort of childhood faith into a kind of atheism of the first world war and as a young academic and then having these conversations with Tolkien and others are in barfield that brought him back. So you're actually taking the journey further on as to, you know, what ordinary life looks like beyond that. And did the choice of what you were studying in your romantic hero? Because I haven't asked you what your doctor was about. Did that have a connection to what you were thinking and feeling? Oh, absolutely. And I wouldn't have guessed it at the time. I mean, I think we do go back and see how these points are plotted. But I was drawn to the Romantics because of their interest in that infinite longing. And, you know, as we see even in German romanticism too and endgurta and whatnot. And so I was drawn to that overall out of all the periods I was studying at the time coming out of undergraduate. And so I think that seed was already planted. I was also really interested Julia in world religions. So how religion and was being shaped in what not in England and the Commonwealth by colonialism, but also in the infiltration of the oriented ideas and things there. But how and how many of these particularly second generation romantic writers were writing abroad, they were not writing in England themselves or in Britain themselves. So being shaped by these ideas. And I was really drawn to myth and the Greco-classical world. And really the notion of world religion. So that was actually really shaping my and Phil work. Prior to even though it was rooted in the Romantics, I was sort of reading all around all around that. And I was actually drawn to the metaphysical poets as well. I was trying to figure out even as without a Christian faith at the time trying to figure out what sort of, you know, subtle knot that makes us man done was talking about. And so I was I was really drawn to all sorts of theories and world religions and was studying all of those. And yet highly cynical of the claim Christianity made of being the religion. So yes, all of those things were feeding in to my to my backdrop at the time. Yeah. So if you're doing the second generation Romantics, just people who perhaps don't know, there's a difference. So the first generation of roughly speaking, their words were Sincola Ridge and William Blake who's a kind of on his own figure. And then and sort of minor figures like Robert Southy and others. And then you've got the next generation coming along who think they're all hopelessly fuddy-duddy by the time they get there. I say you get the tolerance. Shelley Keats has it. People like that. Who in their own ways are sort of quite more revolutionary. I mean, not too much Keats. Because he's so short. But yeah, but certainly Shelley was proudly declaring himself an atheist. He's so good at his time. Oh yeah, no, they're religion of the Romantics is absolutely fascinating. And there's all me waters really because it's part of the whole ferment of ideas that's going on there. Absolutely. So you wrote your book after having the prompting to do that. And now I've got image of you sort of, you know, putting baby down, picking up computer. It became, it was published obviously. And where did the film project come from? That part of it. Hmm. Well, yeah, this version latest iteration of this is once. Yeah. Yeah, so it's much later. I mean, I certainly didn't see that coming either. It didn't anticipate writing a memoir nor a film. But several years ago over, I mean, suppressed by Oxford was published about 10 years ago or so. And here and there, I'd had different requests for documentaries or student adaptations or something to be done. There have been a few queries. And I hadn't really taken them seriously because I wanted to be very careful with the story and the integrity of the story. But Ryan Smith, Ryan Whitaker Smith reached out to me. He's a beautiful screenplay writer, writer himself, and he's done some other film work when, well, we were living in Canada. So we had gone, we were out in the States for years and then we had gone up to Canada for about the last eight to 10 years, actually caring for my elderly parents at that time was the main reason. And he was quite doggedly so reaching out. At first, I thought, this wasn't, you know, going to be serious. And until my agent, Mark Sweeney, who's always cared for me and my family, very, very, very, very lovely man, said, I think he's actually quite serious. I think he's actually really quite, quite good. And so I did talk with him at length, we developed a friendship, a relationship, discussing the possibility of adapting this to screenplay. So we were connected for several years by the phone and email that kind of thing. But it's an amazingly small world, Julia and God's hands because I ended up also working in classical education, going to conferences, things like that with Greg Wilber, who had ended up being, he's a wonderful mentor in that area and I had started this college, new college Franklin that I now teach at. And he had been a former professor for Ryan and Ryan's one of his favorite teachers who taught him about film. And so all of these intersections started happening and the film project became just more of a reality. We worked on the screenplay together. Then it was, we thought halted and stopped by COVID as they were trying to get financial backing. And yet what was actually amazing was we ended up doing most of the filming in England during COVID. It actually the doors opened for various locations and protocols and things that we would never have imagined. And I actually had even the amazing opportunity to go there myself, which was very, I mean, absolutely unbelievable given the timing of world events and things like that. So we actually did a bulk of the filming right between the variant, you know, when it was resurfacing. So we had this strange window in which we were allowed to do scenes in the bodily and in that sort of thing. And I was actually able to go with my husband. So it did percolate, I would say over a good five, six years really, but when it, and we expected the filming in that to maybe drag on or have, have many more hurdles, but actually it's been, it was all done quite quickly in the end. A bit like the motorcycle ride for Lewis. It was you. When he decides he's going to become a Christian, I think he's in the sidecar or something isn't he? Yes, he's not one when he leaves and he is when he arrives. And that's kind of how the last bit went. Yeah. So did you have any influence over casting because that surely must be peculiar casting yourself? It's very peculiar and I feel very safe speaking, especially to romanticist about this, it feels like a doppelganger, although a much more attractive and lovely doppelganger in my case, and my husband laughs that he has his hair. But say you had to cast yourself. Yes, I didn't have any say in the casting. It's a strange experience because they consulted me on some things, which was really lovely. They didn't actually have to. You know, you're sort of, when you're making a film of a book, it was an interesting learning curve. They did consult me on some things, but actually technically it's sort of an adaptation of its own. So I was not consulted with the casting. I didn't have any say in that, but I thought that who they casted were fantastic, and I did get to meet many of them. Just Rosarie who plays myself, which is a really surreal strange thing to say, is just a delight and a very talented actress and a very beautiful person. So that was a great honor to have her do that. But also I think it was, and she's a fellow bibliophile. But those kind of many of those decisions were out of my hands. And so you've now had the launch of the film. What kind of distribution is it getting? Will I be able to go and see it towards it for streaming? Yes, well, we're still in process of thinking over that and trying to think the right, they're trying to figure out the best distribution plan. So it did have its world premiere to a limited audience for critics and whatnot at the Heartland Film Festival in Indianapolis a couple weeks ago. And it did receive excellent reviews, which was really heartening. And the audience, again, regardless of religious stripes, were enjoyed it and there was great feedback. But at the moment, it's not available for public distribution. We're still awaiting what that plan will be. So they were hoping that that would be decided or figured out before Christmas. But I don't think that will be quite enough time right now. So they're hoping for I think a hybrid model would be lovely to have some time in theaters and some and sun streaming. You know, the world has so shifted and changed. And you know, with COVID. So we're still sitting on that at the moment. It's you can't watch it yet. But it hopefully will be distributed soon, probably early spring. I would imagine now. So one of the reasons, Carolyn, I really wanted to talk to you from the point of view of the Oxford Center for Fantasy is I wanted to ask you about your version of Oxford. Because one of the things that you soon sort of learn when you think about these writers and the way they interact with Oxford is that Oxford is a real place. But it also is a mythic place. And it appears that there are so many fantasy books. And I've got this idea of it being like a palimpsest. You were saying you were saying hello to all sorts of people as you walk around, you know, from the people way back in history like Fryer Bacon and those kinds of you know, early scientific pioneers up to today's generation. So when you think about Oxford, are you sort of conscious of it being almost like a fantastical location for yourself or how do you, where's it fit? That's such a lovely question. Such a lovely question. I mean, I think you probably experienced this as well. On one level, it's a very, very real place, you know, with politics and pressures and a lot of expectations and work and delight and busy. You know, your term is incredibly whirlwindy busy. I mean, I always think of the white rabbit, you know, in terms of how term functions. But it also is haunted. It is a place that you can feel the history. I think everyone does. I think that's a magic that appeals to everyone in a way. The cinematography in this film is beautiful. They did a lovely job, which is why it really lends itself to the big screen. But there is something I think that speaks to all of us in ruins or in old places that carry many stories. A polymsist is a great example. When you're there, you feel the history, you feel the thoughts, you feel the suffering, you feel what has happened there. It's contained in that. That's part of the mystique of a place like England as well, but also of particularly Oxford, because it's, you feel the concentration of history and a thought, don't you? And so they decided in the film to really highlight the sort of magical, fairy realm feel of it as through my eyes, which I did feel, but in tandem with this student life and this busy life and then later this life being employed there too. But you do feel like you're on the shore of something, you know, that any moment it could tipper that you're somehow in this liminal space between the two worlds. I mean, you do look at the portals going into the into the colleges and they do open into these vast gorgeous beautiful gardens and you can't help but think of Narnia, right? They are like wardrobe doors. They are like it is interesting to have this very busy bustling city in the town, down dichotomy, and yet you can walk a few feet and be entirely in in perfect peace. Yeah, I mean, I did my undergraduate at Cambridge, right, which I'm very fond of. And the thing about Cambridge is that its beauty is is there exposed to sea because of the way that it works with the river is you can walk as a member of the public, you can walk along the backs and you see a whole range of most incredible beautiful buildings. So the beauty of the universities on the outside, yeah, feasible. Think about Oxford is it's full of secrets, stories and stories and you can't really see how beautiful each of the colleges are until you actually go in. And so my interaction with Oxford has been as a I had my academic phase but I've also worked there and raised a family there so I'm very town. Right. I'm not actually town anymore. And still for me, I can sort of go into a, I've went to a friend's wedding anniversary in a college and you go into the Unitarian Chapel and find amazing windows by William Morris and I think it's Bern Jones. You think, well, if there's any other city, this would be on the map. Right. And so if you think to go, it took me about 25 years to know it was there. And then a lockdown as well. We bring the phase when we were only allowed to walk from the door for a certain length of time during under the regulations. We started exploring the bits on the map we never been and discovered a whole series of wonderful walks right in the heart of the city. Absolutely. And then a place for music meadow which in itself sounds storybook. It's you're on you're on the Chak Chauwell River with an old mill and blue bells and birds and trees and you are literally in the heart of the city. You go deeper into the city and this is this little enclave, natural enclave is there. Again, it took us 25 years to find that. So I agree with you that I think Oxford is a place of doorways and of course the the biggest of the fancy writers for doorways I think other than but an Oxford one is Lewis Carroll. Yes, absolutely. That image of the tiny door you can't get through because and then you forget to get the key when you eat the cake. Right, you know, that's what you're being on the wrong side of the door thing. Yes, Oxford definitely definitely does reward the seeker and it does remind you that things not everything's seen, you know, there's the unseen as well. And so it is very, there is a a magic to it. That's very real in that sense. Yes, but also, they don't know you romanticize it because there is some cutthroat and absolutely stuff going on. So it's probably quite a good counterbalance that one of the most favorite famous television programs here about Oxford is Inspector Morse where people are dropping like flies. Yeah, it is. So and Dorothy is of course is famous for her crime fiction. So we also spawn you know, a lot of violence. Oh, yes, and there's I mean, it's a fallen city like anywhere else, you know, there I mean, there's people and human interactions and lots of political issues. It's not as dangerous as it's made out in crime fiction, you know, no, it's actually a very face safe city really. It is overall. Yeah. So moving away from surprised by Oxford to your specialism in the romantic era, this is one of the great periods for fantasy. Though people perhaps don't associate it with that because we call it gothic fiction. And we call it the collectors of fairy tales and folktales like the brothers Grimm, but also of course, the poets were doing this too, the romantic poets. So it is it is very right. Some of the sort of tropes for fairy tales came into our European consciousness at this point. Yes. And Robert Salvi is credited for being the first person to write down Goldilocks, I don't know if that's true or not. Oh, I didn't know that. Strange facts. I'm everything that's weird. And you know, I don't think I do recall that because of his relationship with Courage's children, wasn't it? Yeah. Yes. That's right. That's right. So Carolyn, do you have a favorite romantic era fantasy story or poem that we should try to read? There are so many and it's such a wonderful dance time and and I'm drawn to to Scottish nationalism and that as well. I think it's really interesting in terms of the folk stories there. I, but off the top of my head, I think one of the most important and beautiful to read is Courage's Ancient Mariner. Yes. Have you read the wonderful Malcolm Guite? Yes. So people want to read a wonderful biography of Courage plus an explanation of the Ancient Mariner and Malcolm Guite, who is also a Tolkien expert, has written a wonderful book based on it. Yeah, I agree. Though I think Kubla Khan, you just have to read for the sounds as well. You do. You just have to read it as T.S. Eliot says, right, that a poem is an event. You just have to read it to experience it and yet it's ending is really much that magical realm. But I think Ancient Mariner, the ballad rhyme scheme, the story development, the end turn to another into another world that's in many ways our psychospiritual landscape, actually, that journey into the interior. Again, to think about Margaret Atward and her poem by that name, but it's such a, it's such a beautiful rich otherworldly experience. I think. Has we should get you back, Carolane, to talk about Courage? Because I haven't yet done a podcast on him, but we, of course, the romantic writers and fantasy is definitely a podcast we should do. And that is fun. So just to finish up, we always have a where in all the world, in all the fantasy worlds is the best place for something. We've done ins and magic swords and so on and so on. As we have both done academic things with small children, Rugrats at our knee. I thought I'd ask you, where in all the fantasy worlds is it the best place to be a parent? Very often in fantasy worlds, the parents have gotten rid of. So that's true. Where is a good place to be a parent? Well, I think obviously, Rivendell would be a great place to be a parent. Unless you leave your daughter behind. Yes, I mean true. That's true. That's true. But I do think somewhere where there is immense natural beauty and you could trust the trees to care for your child where you have a nap. And there's nothing threatening because, of course, we as parents see everything as threatening. Yeah, the landscape changes for us and our mortality looms in the moment we have children. I was thinking of, I mean, I went through a whole range of horror stories when I was thinking about this. But if you manage to survive and your children don't get bumped off, the set-up of being a weasley in the past, you know, that's the best we've ever in Harry Potter. I have many, many students who wanted to be a weasley and Mark Williams was actually in the film. Fantastic news. Oh, there we go. So that's brought the conversation to a lovely and meaningful point. So I would, in times of peace, mine is old and I would like to be in the world of Harry Potter. As a parent. So thank you so much for talking to us, Carolyn. And yeah, it's been wonderful talking to you and I look forward to seeing the film when it does get its wider distribution. Thank you so much, Julia. It's a delight to have talked to you with you today too. Thank you. Your favorite podcasts worldwide.