The Double-Edged Nature of Neil Gaiman's Ironical Perspectives and Liminal Fantasies
2009; Volume: 20; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
0897-0521
Autores Tópico(s)Comics and Graphic Narratives
ResumoNote: A version of this article was published Gaiman's Irony, Liminal Fantasies, and Fairy Tale Adaptations Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies 14.2 (2008): 317-34. Neil gaiman is tremendously popular fantasy writer with an extensive oeuvre, which ranges from comic books (Sandman 1989-96; The Tragical Comedy or Comical Tragedy of Mr. Punch 1994) through quasi-mythical fantasy novels (American Gods 2001), fairy tale rewritings (Snow, Glass, Apples 1994), audio plays (Two Plays for Voices 2002), film script collaborations (Mirrormask 2006; Stardust 2007; Beowulf 2007) to children's or young adult literature (Coraline 2002). This essay intends to demonstrate that Gaiman's short fiction illustrates all-encompassing influence of postmodernism popular genres. (1) His stories frequently double or multiply narrative perspectives, lay bare process of storytelling, interweave different language registers, and violate narrative levels. Thus, they contribute to general tendency of our time that defines reality as constructed and through our language, discourses, and semiotic systems (McHale 164; emphasis original). His texts, analogously to writings of mainstream postmodern authors and his fellow New Wave Fabulists, demonstrate contemporary urge to pluralize our critical perspectives, questioning possibilities of an objective vision and universal language. This is postmodern stance, which Jean-Frangois Lyotard links to moment when grand narratives lose their credibility and locally determined little narratives become quintessential forms of scientific and cultural discourses (37, 60-61). My critical method is based upon diverse approaches to fantastic and various theories of narrativity. As for former, I find useful suggestions J. R. R. Tolkien's, Brian Attebery's, Nancy H. Traill's, John Clute's, and Tzvetan Todorov's fantasy theories, but none of these fully accounts for Gaiman's stance. As for latter, I utilize Linda Hutcheon's analyses of irony and parody, Mieke Bal's studies of vision, and Wolfgang Iser's theory of reading order to explain that Gaiman's fantasies are ironic due to their doubled narrative perspectives, multiplication and estrangement of voice, and focalization. To bring these two approaches, narrative and fantastic, into some sort of coherence, I utilize Farah Mendlesohn's taxonomy, adapting--and perhaps slightly refining--her concept of Irony First-Person Narrations Before analyzing Gaiman's ironic fantasies, it is useful to briefly outline Mendlesohn's taxonomy of fantasy texts, especially her category liminal fantasy. Mendlesohn draws on and modifies Attebery's theory of Attebery considers genre of fantasy a fuzzy set [...] defined not by but by center, whose boundaries [...] shade off imperceptibly (12). He suggests that hub of genre is Tolkien's The Lord of Rings (1954-55): Tolkien is most typical, not just because of imaginative scope and commitment with which he invested his tale but also, and chiefly, because of immense popularity that resulted (14). Mendlesohn stresses that present-day fantasy canon has broadened or multiplied, and we can actually identify several fuzzy sets (Rhetorics xvii). Tolkien's arguments On Fairy-stories (1947) can be challenged, while his position center of fantasy canon could be threatened by contemporary authors, such New Wave Fabulists. Readers enjoy not only traditional portal-quest fantasies, but also fantasies of sort that Mendlesohn describes her Rhetorics of Fantasy the fantasy, subgenre that in defiance of conventional understanding of fantastic straight-faced [...] [is based on] ironic mode (xxiv). She emphasizes crucial role of this category: liminal fantasy [. …
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