Degree Project Level: Master’S Bringing the Magic Back to Structuralist Approaches in Fantasy Literature

Degree Project Level: Master’s Bringing the Magic Back to Structuralist Approaches in Fantasy Literature Supporting Themes of Unity in Patrick Rothfuss’ The Kingkiller Chronicle Author: Sarah Schroer Supervisor: Billy Gray Examiner: Carmen Zamorano Llena Subject/main field of study: English (literature) Course code: EN3063 Credits: 15 ECTS Date of examination: May 28, 2020 At Dalarna University it is possible to publish the student thesis in full text in DiVA. The publishing is open access, which means the work will be freely accessible to read and download on the internet. This will significantly increase the dissemination and visibility of the student thesis. Open access is becoming the standard route for spreading scientific and academic information on the internet. Dalarna University recommends that both researchers as well as students publish their work open access. I give my/we give our consent for full text publishing (freely accessible on the internet, open access): Yes ☒ N o ☐ Dalarna University – SE-791 88 Falun – Phone +4623-77 80 00 Table of Contents Introduction 1 Establishing Patterns of Binary Thinking Between Hard and Soft Magic Systems 9 Madness as Mediator: The Whole is Greater Than the Parts 16 Conclusion 26 Works Cited 30 1 Introduction From witches and warlocks, wizards and sorcerers, spells and incantations, magical potions, wardrobes that transport you to another world, and even one ring to rule them all, magical elements or beings are considered to be the fantasy genre's main defining feature. But what are the different ways magic appears in novels? In 2007, fantasy author, Brandon Sanderson published an essay where he not only explained his personal guidelines for creating magic systems, but more significantly to the genre, he proposed a scale for defining the different types of magic. Early fantasy novels emerging around the twentieth-century or earlier set a tradition for using magic in a ‘softer’ sense that leaves readers with only a fuzzy idea of what the magic can do (Sanderson). Examples include the magic that enables the children in C.S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia to step through a portal into an imaginary world or the magic held by Gandalf the wizard in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy. The way that the wardrobe portal works in Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia is never explained, nor is it fully understood by readers what sort of magic Gandalf can yield with his staff. In modern fantasy novels, however, there has been a movement towards the creation of complex ‘hard’ magic systems inundated with rules that allow readers a rational, almost scientific-like understanding of the magic’s capabilities (Sanderson). Lewis once wrote that pseudo-scientific explanations can appease skeptical readers, saying that “the most superficial appearance of plausibility—the merest sop to our critical intellect—will do” (“On Science Fiction”). Sanderson’s proposed continuum places soft magic on one end, hard magic on the other, and ‘hybrid magic systems’ that explain some of the rules of the magic in the middle. Sanderson’s article added to fantasy’s taxonomy, giving vocabulary to ideas that had been understood, but not yet defined by literary critics. While 2 Sanderson lays out some important expectations of how magic can be used to create or solve tension within a plot, it is limited because of its author-centered approach, and therefore misses the chance to use a theoretical approach to deepen understanding of how a soft or a hard magic system might link together the meaning or theme in a story. The critical and theoretical material that exists about magic in fantasy literature tends to focus on its usefulness as a device in inventing believable secondary worlds1, an authorial process that J.R.R. Tolkien called ‘Enchantment’ because of the labour, thought, and special skill required to make the imaginary world seem plausible (“On Fairy-Stories” 52-53). Jules Zanger explains that magic acts as a catalyst to propel the reader into a secondary belief, a process that is familiar because of readers’ expectations of fantasy genre (228). More traditional literary theorists have looked at magic in novels from a Marxist, religious, or mythological point of view (Chevalier; Galway; Boyer; Ravikumar; Milbank; Lief; Slabbert and Viljoen). So while theoretical studies on works of fantasy literature do exist in limited numbers, details on the most distinguishing element of the genre, magic, is often left out of focus. In order to understand how magical systems might aid in finding meaning in a story, it is necessary to recognize that they are part of larger structures within the fantasy genre. A structuralist approach seems appropriate to the fantasy genre not only because the origins of structuralism are tied to subgenres of fairy tales and myths (Campbell, Propp, Todorov), but also because structuralists acknowledge the need to isolate and understand larger, abstract, containing structures (Barry 41). Tzvetan Todorov’s work focused on structures involved in making the 1 ‘Secondary world’ is a term coined by J.R.R. Tolkien to describe worlds that are imagined into existence by authors along with their associated maps, societies, languages, cultures, customs, and magic systems (Tolkien 6). Stories that take place in a world that resembles the real world—or primary world—are considered low fantasy, while stories taking place in an author-created secondary world are considered high fantasy (Mendlesohn 4; Zahorski and Boyer 56). 3 secondary world believable with an emphasis on the contract between author and reader. Joseph Campbell focused on typical archetypal characters in myths. Propp looked at events in the plot in sequence and made an ordered list of common plotlines within myths. Christopher Mahon says that linking a magic system to some greater meaning, message, or theme can save secondary worlds from turning into a too-familiar science and reason-based replication of our primary world. Genre itself acts as a container structure for all the features that define it. To understand the features of the fantasy genre a structuralist approach is fitting, as a common motif of that field of criticism is the belief “that things cannot be understood in isolation” (Barry 40). Fantasy features, like magic systems, benefit from an examination of supporting structures such as the definitions within the genre that encompass it. A greater sense of meaning can be brought to the discussion about the function of soft versus hard magic by identifying the structures in which they exist in a novel and relating them to other stories within the same larger structure, or genre. The anthropologist, Claude Lévi-Strauss, applied a similar approach when interpreting myths. In "The Structural Study of Myth" Claude Lévi-Strauss found opposition at all levels of the narrative, not only the motifs within a myth, but also in names of characters, settings, and actions. The practice of using binary oppositions in theory to explain how meaning is created in language was utilized by structuralist linguist Ferdinand de Saussure who "thought in dichotomies" (Dosse 215). In studying myth, Lévi-Strauss found that individual tales did not have a separate meaning on their own, but needed to be looked at with others in the sequence in order to see repeated motifs and binary opposites, which contributed to the creation of meaning in a specific tale (Lévi-Strauss 431). 4 Hard and soft magic are binary opposites that have certain features and functions that can be identified more readily when considering them within the larger context of the fantasy genre. Peter Barry, in writing about Lévi-Strauss’ approach, said: “Concrete details from the story are seen in the context of a larger structure, and the larger structure is then seen as an overall network of ‘dyadic pairs’ which have obvious symbolic, thematic, and archetypal resonance” (Barry 47). To identify a magic system in a singular work of fantasy as hard magic is to compare it against referential soft magic systems found within the larger context of the fantasy genre, and in doing so archetypal themes are simultaneously aligned with the designated magic system. Hard magic systems tend to rely on the wit and skill of a character—a point which is understood by comparing it to the representation of soft magic systems in fantasy works—while soft magic systems tend to represent flaws in thinking that a character must overcome. In the “Structuralist” chapter of The Cambridge Companion to Fantasy Literature, Brian Attebery examines the usefulness of Lévi-Strauss approach when applied to fantasy literature. He argues that, like Lévi-Strauss suggests, looking at the ways different groups of binaries, or bundles, change throughout the narrative help elicit new meanings from the text of fantasy works (Attebery 95). One point of discussion in this thesis will include whether binaries appear to be opposite of one another or whether they work to complement each other to create a unified meaning. Hard and soft magic systems can be viewed as one such binary pair, but they need to be viewed with other binaries that may exist within or between fantasy stories in order to reveal new meanings and possible links to greater themes. A fantasy story that conveniently contains both a soft magic system and a hard magic system is called The Kingkiller Chronicle and is written by Patrick Rothfuss. Two books from 5 the trilogy have been released thus far, The Name of the Wind (2007) and The Wise Man’s Fear (2011). The third instalment, Doors of Stone does not currently have a release date2. The novels tell the story of young Kvothe, as he works his way from childhood poverty following the murder of his parents to acceptance into a magical school.

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