Stereotypes in Terry Pratchett´S Discworld Bachelor’S Diploma Thesis
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Masarykova univerzita Filozofická fakulta Katedra anglistiky a amerikanistiky Bakalářská diplomová práce 2019 Marek Holub Masaryk University Faculty of Arts Department of English and American Studies English Language and Literature Marek Holub Use of Cultural Stereotypes in Terry Pratchett´s Discworld Bachelor’s Diploma Thesis Supervisor: Stephen Paul Hardy, Ph.D. 2019 I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography. …………………………………………….. Marek Holub I would like to thank my supervisor, Stephen Paul Hardy, for his remarks and patience with reading my thesis. I would also like to thank my girlfriend and family for support. Table of Contents Introduction ........................................................................................................................... - 1 - Chapter 1: Stereotypes .......................................................................................................... - 3 - Definitions ......................................................................................................................... - 3 - Prejudice ............................................................................................................................ - 5 - Perception of groups .......................................................................................................... - 7 - Stereotypes as shortcuts .................................................................................................... - 9 - Narratives and fiction ...................................................................................................... - 11 - Parody .............................................................................................................................. - 14 - Chapter 2: Oriental stereotypes and culture in Sourcery and Jingo .................................... - 17 - Sourcery, a parody of Arabian folk tales ......................................................................... - 18 - Jingo, a satire of stereotyping and prejudice ................................................................... - 21 - Chapter 3: Australian culture and stereotypes in The Last Continent ................................. - 29 - Conclusion ........................................................................................................................... - 38 - Works Cited ......................................................................................................................... - 40 - Resumé ................................................................................................................................ - 42 - Resumé ................................................................................................................................ - 43 - Introduction Discworld is a fantastical realm created by Terry Pratchett in a series of fantasy genre novels. What makes Discworld different from other fantasy realms is the fact that it is a parody of these realms, drawing on the previous fantasy texts with intention of parody and satire. Furthermore, it also draws on the real world matters and patterns and its real content to create parody and satire. To achieve that, Pratchett creates images resembling real world narratives, myths, tales, nations and cultures. Discworld is devised as a mirror of the real life Earth. For parody or satire to work properly, the reader must know and recognize the original text, culture or notion the author is referencing. Discworld, although containing various images of the real life cultures and texts, does not use their original names, they are only written as images of their real life counterparts. Therefore for the reader to recognize the categories, Pratchett inevitably needs to employ stereotypes. The stereotypes used in Discworld are used with purpose of giving clues to the reader to recognize the categories used for either parody, satire or simply illustrating the specific culture. For the purpose of this thesis, national stereotypes and references are going to be analysed, as Discworld counterparts of the real world nations are always named differently and therefore the reader depends solely on Pratchett´s clues to recognize their templates. Pratchett, when depicting a Discworld version of a real nation, employs both well-known and less-known stereotypical characteristics, behavioural patterns and appearance of the nationalities portrayed as well as their various historical fictional texts, tales and fables. The use of stereotypes is going to be demonstrated on three Discworld novels: Soucery, Jingo and The Last Continent. The first two novels were chosen because they deal with and portray the nation of Klatch, which is an image of real world Orient with emphasis on Arabian - 1 - countries with some elements of India. Comparison of Sourcery and Jingo allows for observation of the shift in Pratchett´s style from predominantly textual parody to a real world parody. Sourcery is one of the earliest Discworld novels, while Jingo is in the middle of the series. Furthermore, Jingo offers Pratchett´s own critical view of prejudice and stereotyping, which are a target of satire in this novel. The Last Continent takes the reader to the Fourecks continent, Discworld version of Australia. The novel´s focus lies in portrayal and parody of Australian environment, customs culture and pop-culture. The emphasis is put on relaxed Australian lifestyle and worriless attitude. The Last Continent, similarly to Jingo, is one of the mid-series novels, nevertheless it resembles the earlier novels by its structure. Preceding the textual analysis are a chapter considering academic view of stereotyping and, in a brief chapter, parody. The chapter on stereotypes considers the progress of the notion since it has been devised up to contemporary views and ideas. Stereotyping is a cognitive process enabling a quick assessment of people and surrounding world. However, since stereotypes are mostly inherited from culture, they often lead to distorted ideas, prejudice and discrimination and are therefore considered with a negative connotation. The brief section on parody summarizes the use of parody in novels and addresses Pratchett´s own employment of parody. A progress is apparent during the Disworld series, which, at its beginnings, employed mostly simple parody of various fantasy genre texts and their narrative clichés to later proceed into parodying mostly real world matters and satirizing various aspects of the society. - 2 - Chapter 1: Stereotypes Definitions A stereotype is a term used frequently and widely in relation with cognition, prejudice and viewing the worlds and various categories within it. It has been defined and used variedly by many researchers and scholars. Some of them view stereotypes as a shortcut of cognition, others as a tool for justification of conduct towards various groups of people, some argue a negative connotation to the term while others neutral. Either way, stereotypes are used daily by each member of the society. Literature and fiction is no exception and Pratchett employs stereotypes in various situations and with varying intentions in his novels. First one to coin the term of stereotype was Walter Lippmann. Stereotyping is a practise of meaning acquisition, which helps in introducing “definiteness and distinction” and “consistency and stability” of meaning into something lacking these characteristics. As the world is a complex and complicated space, people perceive what was stereotyped by experience or culture: For the most part we do not first see, and then define, we define first and then see. In the great blooming, buzzing confusion of the outer world we pick out what our culture has already defined for us, and we tend to perceive that which we have picked out in the form stereotyped for us by our culture. (Lippmann, 81) People pick signs from the environment. From these signs they recognize an idea for which they might stand. For these ideas people have a stock of images, which they then use to fill and complete the idea (Lippmann 88). His definition, although it has laid the basis for the theory of stereotypes, is nowadays often perceived as too wide. Allport defines a stereotype as an exaggerated belief concerning - 3 - a category, which justifies behaviour towards that category. He discerns stereotypes and categories, considers stereotypes markings of the category, not the core concept of it (Allport, 188). “It is possible for a stereotype to grow in defiance of all evidence.” People´s selective memory overgeneralizes a few distinct encounters into a stereotype, no matter how little evidence is behind them. (Allport, 186). Allport is going as far as describing a perfect stereotype, referring to Aristotle´s defence of slavery. Slaves are slaves because they were born slaves, and it is natural this way (192). There is no kernel of truth at the bottom of this perfect stereotype, it is simply a tautology used for justification of slavery. The justification of conduct through stereotypes leads to prejudice and therefore to a negative connotation of stereotypes. Ruggiero deems stereotypes harmful: “A stereotype is an overgeneralization that is especially resistant to change . They are discriminatory; they are restrictive; they place people in strict categories and limit diversity and opportunity” (qtd in Hinton, 201). The notion is that stereotypes are a bad thing and should not be used at all. This general idea is contemporarily