Cardiff BookTalk: Watership Down
This event has ended.
Contact
Add to calendar
Cardiff BookTalk is delighted to invite you to our next online event on Tuesday 9 May 2023, on Richard Adams’ immortal Watership Down. The event will take place via Zoom and is open to all. It will be accompanied by a screening of the 1978 film adaptation of Watership Down at Snowcat Cinema in Penarth (date tbc).
‘Oh Hazel, look! The field! It’s covered in blood!’
A rabbit named Fiver has an unimaginable vision of his home warren destroyed by the machines of men. When the Chief Rabbit refuses to listen, Fiver’s brother, Hazel, becomes the reluctant leader of a raggle-taggle band of misfits who decide to flee. Pursued by their former friends and terrorized by predators they endure an epic journey across England’s farmland and ancient chalk hills. But where can they make their home, and who should they trust? For there are many different kinds of trap, and before his journey ends, Hazel’s resourcefulness and courage will be tested to the limits.
Richard Adams’ classic novel combines elements of political and social parable with a harrowing tale of adventure. His rabbits-eye view of the North Hampshire landscape is vividly and convincingly dramatized and Hazel and his friends have an elaborate psychology and culture, which includes language, religion and stories of the proud trickster El-ahrairah, Prince with a Thousand Enemies.
Originally conceived as an entertainment for Adams’ children on long car journeys, Watership Down was rejected by multiple publishers who felt that it was too adult for younger readers and too preoccupied with small animals to be of interest to an older audience. However, on publication in 1972, the book quickly became a best-seller and was adapted into a feature-length animated film that has both enthralled and traumatised generations of children. In its rendering of a world beyond the human, Watership Down remains both a peerless example of the English weird and a haunting evocation of the creatures that our civilization casually exterminates.
To guide us in our thinking about Watership Down, we have the great privilege of welcoming three expert speakers to begin our discussion:
Dr Dimitra Fimi is Senior Lecturer in Fantasy and Children’s Literature at the University of Glasgow, and Co-Director of the Centre for Fantasy and the Fantastic. She is an internationally recognised expert on J.R.R. Tolkien, and has published on fantasy literature more widely, as well as on medievalism/folklore in modern fantasy. Her latest monograph, Celtic Myth in Contemporary Children’s Fantasy: Idealization, Identity, Ideology (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) was runner-up for the Katharine Briggs Folklore Award and won the Mythopoeic Scholarship Award in Myth and Fantasy Studies. She is co-editor of the Perspective on Fantasy book series (Bloomsbury Academic) and co-editor of the just-published collection Imagining the Celtic Past in Modern Fantasy (Bloomsbury).
Dr Catherine Butler is Reader in English Literature at Cardiff University. Her academic books include Four British Fantasists (2006), Reading History in Children’s Books (with Hallie O’Donovan, 2012) and Literary Studies Deconstructed (2018), and several edited collections. Her latest book, British Children’s Literature in Japanese Culture: Wonderlands and Looking-Glasses, is due to be published by Bloomsbury in 2023. She has also published six novels for children and teenagers. Catherine is Editor-in-Chief of Children’s Literature in Education.
Dr Lisa Sainsbury is Associate Professor in Children’s Literature at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Roehampton. She is Series Editor for Bloomsbury’s Perspectives on Children’s Literature and Director of the National Centre for Research in Children’s Literature (NCRCL). Ongoing research focusses on the philosophical remit of children’s books, as explored in her monographs—Ethics and British Children’s Literature: Unexamined Life (Bloomsbury: 2013) and Metaphysics of Children’s Literature: Climbing Fuzzy Mountains (Bloomsbury: 2021). She has a particular interest in environmental ethics and eco-ontologies, as reflected in her current work on Watership Down.
Each of our speakers will present a 15-20 minute paper on one aspect of the book, followed by an opportunity for audience questions and discussion. To make the most of the session, you may like to read Watership Down. Further recommended texts include Adams' novels Shardik and The Plague Dogs.