Masaryk University Faculty of Arts Department of English and American Studies English Language and Literature Libor Mičko Romantic Relationships in Contemporary Fantasy Literature Bachelor’s Diploma Thesis Supervisor: Mgr. Dita Hochmanová 2014 I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography. …………………………………………….. Author’s signature 2 I would like to thank my supervisor Mgr. DitaHochmanová, for her advice, encouragement, help, and patience. 3 Table of Contents 1. Introduction 5 2. Popularity of the Fantasy Genre 9 2.1. The Mixing of Elements 13 2.2. Connection with Fairy Tales 16 3. Romantic Elements 19 3.1. Romantic Elements in The Kingkiller Chronicle 21 3.2. Romantic Elements inA Game of Thrones 28 4. Erotic Elements 31 4.1. Erotic Elements in The Kingkiller Chronicle 31 4.2. Erotic Elements in A Game of Thrones 37 5. Conclusion 42 6. Works Cited 44 7. English Résumé 47 8. České resumé 48 4 1. Introduction The readers of modern high fantasy books, literature that basically covers all fantasy works set solely in a completely imagined world, can see a gradual emphasis on romantic relationships and inclination of creating realistic settings, which is connected to the popularity of these elements in other popular fiction genres, mainly in the young adult literature, which in the last decade thrives and is, according to The Wall Street Journal, "one of the book industry’s healthiest segments" (Beatty). Some of these very popular high fantasy authors, namely Patrick Rothfuss and G. R R. Martin, whose novels are analysed in the thesis, not only give their main youngster characters vast romantic side stories, but advance them towards intimate sexual relationships. High fantasy works, where the themes of romantic or other close inter-personal relationships represent a large portion of the narrative, tend to be more focused on the realistic aspects of life like relationships and self-fulfilment, while diminishing the elements that are typical for the high fantasy genre, like the stress on a fantastical setting, magic, or an overall epic quest set out for its protagonist. This trend can be seen in the high fantasy novels by the bestselling, fore-mentioned writers Patrick Rothfuss and G. R. R. Martin. Due to their approach, the distinction between fantasy targeting young adult and adult audience is becoming unclear. In connection with this trend, the forms of modern fantasy literature, with its elements dominating in other popular genres like contemporary romance literature or erotic literature, cannot be categorised as dedicated particularly to young or adult audience. It can be compared to the incorrect association of fantasy with fairy tales, as Tolkien suggested in his essay On Fairy- Stories. The thesis explores these characteristics to develop the idea that the extensive success of Rothfuss’s and Martin’s novels is partly due to mixing of the elements from various genres, and thus bringing the audiences together. Over the last few years, these two writers became famous worldwide for their critically acclaimed fantasy novel series. The winner of the 2002 Writers of the Future award and 2007 Quill Award, Patrick Rothfuss, wrote The Kingkiller Chronicle series of which the first book, The Name of the Wind, climbed up to the eleventh (blog.patrickrothfuss), and its continuation, The Wise Man’s Fear, to the first place in New York Times bestselling fiction novel chart (nytimes). George R. R. Martin, the winner of numerous awards, such as Locus Poll Award and World Fantasy Award, became famous for his The Song of Ice and Fire series, which even led to the creation of a famous television series based on these novels. These popular high fantasy novels comprise romantic elements like a courtship between a hero and heroine, or their interpersonal interactions, and the narrative is to a great extent concentrated around them, even though they serve only as a subplot to the larger epic story. Although, the romantic subplots are not entirely new in the fantasy genre, as they can be already seen, for example, in Tolkien’s classic fantasy The Lord of the Rings, their modern form is very different. The authors of these fantasy series tend to lean toward more realistic relationships, thus, contrary to the two couples in The Lord of the Rings where both of whom got married at the end, it is not characteristic to see a happy-ending for the romance between the protagonists of Rothfuss’s or Martin’s stories, as the difficulties they face are not always possible to overcome. This narrative direction goes hand-in-hand with the recent growth of popularity of the young adult literature, such as the J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series which, according to Michael Cart, a former president of the Young Adult Library Services, is "the most extraordinary phenomena in the history of publishing" (96), or the Twilight series, which "followed Harry Potter’s success story to no small extent" (Yao). The Kingkiller Chronicle and The Song of Ice and Fire are, similarly to these series, vastly 6 concentrated on the personal issues concerning the main characters. The difference between them is the setting in the high fantasy world with no direct connection to the reality, which is the opposite of the low fantasy Harry Potter and Twilight that are set in our contemporary world. In their novels, Martin and Rothfuss devote such wide attention to relationships that they even include numerous sexually explicit scenes, which are the subject of many debates on their appropriateness for younger readers and the overall target audience. The authors see them as a natural part of every romantic relationship, and thus they include such explicit scenes to create more believable and complete characters and plots. The narrative style in these scenes is different for both authors and the thesis includes their comparison to show how delicate use of indirect expressions in The Wise Man’s Fear can soften the obscenity which, due to explicit expressions, is noticeable in A Game of Thrones. These romantic and erotic aspects of Rothfuss’s and Martin’s novels are the subject of analysis in the latter parts of the thesis. Their analysis is separated from the chapter concerning the romantic elements because they are not a primary part of every romantic novel, even though they might occur in them. As Martin’s series is already the next popular fiction phenomenon, and Rothfuss’s trilogy is becoming at this time well-known, the thesis proposes that their acquired higher popularity is connected with narrative elements and the employed techniques which are similar to the fore-mentioned former bestselling young adult books and serve as one of the major story advancements. As was already said, these elements are romantic relationships and even sexual experiences of the children protagonists. They are going to be analysed in the thesis to demonstrate Martin’s and Rothfuss’s modern approaches to writing fantasy novels. The first chapter of the analysis is dedicated to a brief overview of fantasy literature, its acquired popularity, 7 and the way of its development through the years. Also, it aims to highlight that the term fantasy genre is only a term of convenience as fantasy literature developed into many hybrid sub-genres. The second chapter focuses on the analysis of elements of romance novels that are present in both of Rothfuss’s The Kingkiller Chronicle books and in Martin’s A Game of Thrones (the first volume of his A Song of Ice and Fire series) where they serve as a factor which would bring the audience closer to the personalities of main characters, and thus making the story more attractive to readers. Erotic elements are also analysed in a similar fashion to the analysis of romantic aspects, but as they are not a primary part of romance novels, they are addressed in the separate chapter of the thesis. Both of these chapters show how the content of romantic relationships and depictions of sexually explicit scenes can be used to modify the narrative of classic fantasy literature, and offer a view on its different goals between Martin’s and Rothfuss’ novels. The overall aim is to present fantasy literature in a different light, and offer the readers of this thesis a broader insight into this undervalued literary genre. 8 2. Popularity of the Fantasy Genre There is a popular, yet questionable opinion that J. R. R. Tolkien is a father of the modern fantasy genre (Mitchell), but what is undeniable is that his The Lord of the Rings changed the popular view on this genre. Even though his view on the genre was not critically accepted, his works led to the creation of its unified form and inspired countless number of writers to create their own sub-genres to fantasy, while attracting massive attention. This chapter serves as a brief overview of the fantasy genre and its acquired popularity. It also presents features of young adult literature and their presence in a few chosen, very successful fantasy novel series, like Harry Potter, Undersea, Discworld, and most notably, nowadays bestsellers, The Kingkiller Chronicle, and A Song of Ice and Fire, which are to be analysed it the latter chapters to demonstrate the modern approaches of fantasy writers. And lastly, this chapter also demonstrates a gradual evolvement of the fantasy genre, connected with its fusion with the elements of other popular fiction genres, and describes its difference to fairy tales. When fantasy literature found a larger audience, literary critics gave very harsh opinion on it: "Certain people . have a lifelong appetite for juvenile trash, "declared Edmund Wilson in 1956 (Vizzini); A writer for Life in 1967 declared that "What apparently gets kids square in their post-adolescent sensibilities is not the scholarly top- dressing but the undemanding, comfortable, child-sized story underneath" (Saler 189).