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"Let me Deal so Candidly with the Reader": A Study of the Unnatural Spaces and Narrators of Gulliver’s Travels and the Discworld

Sigurdsson, Atli LU (2016) LIVR07 20161
English Studies
Master's Programme: Literature - Culture - Media
Abstract
Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels and Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels set in Ankh-Morpork are similar enough that both can be treated as belonging to the subgenre of comic fantasy. The narratives foreground the fantastic, written to entertain and amuse its readers but also contain societal criticism in the form of satire or parody. This paper compares the
unnatural aspects of Gulliver’s Travels and select City Watch instalments of Discworld. By using a combination of the fairly recent sub-discipline within narratology, unnatural narrative theory, and Genette’s question of “who speaks?”, this study analyses the narrators and the different kinds of unnatural spaces in which they speak. The analysis is divided into four chapters as... (More)
Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels and Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels set in Ankh-Morpork are similar enough that both can be treated as belonging to the subgenre of comic fantasy. The narratives foreground the fantastic, written to entertain and amuse its readers but also contain societal criticism in the form of satire or parody. This paper compares the
unnatural aspects of Gulliver’s Travels and select City Watch instalments of Discworld. By using a combination of the fairly recent sub-discipline within narratology, unnatural narrative theory, and Genette’s question of “who speaks?”, this study analyses the narrators and the different kinds of unnatural spaces in which they speak. The analysis is divided into four chapters as follows: how to read the unnatural in a narrative, what constitutes an unnatural space, the respective narrator’s voice, and finally, reliability of the narrators within their unnatural space. It becomes apparent that the narrators are unreliable, not only in terms of controlling the information the reader is allowed access to within the narrative but also because of spatiotemporal ambiguity within the narratives. (Less)
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author
Sigurdsson, Atli LU
supervisor
organization
course
LIVR07 20161
year
type
H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
subject
keywords
Discworld, Gulliver's Travels, Terry Pratchett, Jonathan Swift, Fantasy, Narratology, Unnatural Narrative Theory, City Watch
language
English
id
8926056
date added to LUP
2017-10-20 11:36:20
date last changed
2017-10-20 11:36:20
@misc{8926056,
  abstract     = {{Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels and Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels set in Ankh-Morpork are similar enough that both can be treated as belonging to the subgenre of comic fantasy. The narratives foreground the fantastic, written to entertain and amuse its readers but also contain societal criticism in the form of satire or parody. This paper compares the
unnatural aspects of Gulliver’s Travels and select City Watch instalments of Discworld. By using a combination of the fairly recent sub-discipline within narratology, unnatural narrative theory, and Genette’s question of “who speaks?”, this study analyses the narrators and the different kinds of unnatural spaces in which they speak. The analysis is divided into four chapters as follows: how to read the unnatural in a narrative, what constitutes an unnatural space, the respective narrator’s voice, and finally, reliability of the narrators within their unnatural space. It becomes apparent that the narrators are unreliable, not only in terms of controlling the information the reader is allowed access to within the narrative but also because of spatiotemporal ambiguity within the narratives.}},
  author       = {{Sigurdsson, Atli}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  note         = {{Student Paper}},
  title        = {{"Let me Deal so Candidly with the Reader": A Study of the Unnatural Spaces and Narrators of Gulliver’s Travels and the Discworld}},
  year         = {{2016}},
}