Masarykova univerzita Filozofická fakulta Katedra anglistiky a amerikanistiky Bakalářská diplomová práce 2019 Petr Sobotka Masaryk University Faculty of Arts Department of English and American Studies English Language and Literature Petr Sobotka Tendentious Humour in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy 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. …………………………………………….. Author’s signature Acknowledgements Firstly, I would like to thank my supervisor Stephen Paul Hardy, Ph.D. for his useful comments and patience. I would also like to thank my family and friends for their encouragement and for putting up with me being locked in a room barely communicating with the outside world. Table of Contents 1. The Introduction ......................................................................................... 1 2. Theoretical Approaches to Humour ............................................................ 4 2.1. The Relevance Theoretic Approach ........................................................ 5 2.2. The Semantic Approach .......................................................................... 8 3. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series ............................................ 11 3.1. The Overview of the Series ................................................................... 11 3.2. The Analysis of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy ........................ 14 The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy ......................................................... 14 The Restaurant at the End of the Universe .................................................. 28 Life, the Universe and Everything; So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish; Mostly Harmless .......................................................................................... 33 4. Conclusion ................................................................................................ 36 5. Works Cited .............................................................................................. 38 6. Abstract ..................................................................................................... 40 7. Resumé ...................................................................................................... 41 1. The Introduction The genre of science fiction is a common medium for commenting on philosophical questions or social or political issues. Be it literature or film, the best works of this genre are often those dealing with topics that give the reader or the viewer something to think about. However, most of these works are set in either utopian or dystopian universes. While these universes lend themselves very well to the type of messages most science fiction authors want to convey, it does become rather stale when all the sci-fi works dealing with interesting topics are set in somewhat similar worlds. Authors like George Orwell, Philip K. Dick or the Strugatsky brothers mostly work with similar concepts, be it evil governments exploiting people, people destroying Earth through their own doing or aliens doing so for them. However, as Douglas Adams proves with his world building in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series, not every meaningful narrative needs to happen in either a dreary or idealistic universe. Adams ignores these traditional worlds that have been used so often and creates a world that is based on chance and improbability and where most of the traditional world building techniques are replaced with absurd humour and satire. Adams utilises humour to satirise the traditions of the genre and to convey messages that would be traditionally portrayed in a dystopian or utopian fashion. Adams proves that works of certain genres do not necessarily need to stick to the same settings that have become traditional for those genres. In this thesis, I would like to present several instances which illustrate the methods Adams uses to create such an engaging world, offer possible interpretation of those passages and discuss several theoretical approaches to humour in connection with Adams’ use of humour. 1 As the aim of this thesis is to analyse Adams’ use of humour, and humour is a rather vast subject, it is necessary to establish the scope of this thesis. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is built almost exclusively upon humour, however, there are several types of humorous instances. This thesis will primarily focus on the more complex satirical and allegorical aspects of the series, rather than the simpler, mostly absurd jokes. The second chapter, divided into two subchapters, therefore presents and discusses a couple of theoretical approaches to humour. It offers some general information about the theories together with some examples and thoughts on their actual usage, all with the intention to figure out which of those approaches is better suited for analysis of the chosen humorous aspects of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series. While this chapter is mostly theoretical, the ideas described in this chapter help in determining what to focus on in the various passages chosen for analysis. The third chapter of this thesis is then dedicated to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series itself, however, this thesis will only consider the five books written by Douglas Adams himself, even though the series technically consists of six books. The first subchapter contains some general information about the series, together with a brief summary of the series’ plot, and it also presents some thoughts on the popularity of the series. The second subchapter then deals with the analysis itself. It is further divided by each novel separately. This is the most extensive part of the thesis. There are numerous passages and humorous instances from the novels, each with a possible interpretation according to the selected theoretical approach. Since The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series has such a unique style of humour used to portray such an enticing story, I have read the series several times. Starting with Czech translations early in my teenage years and later moving onto the 2 original English versions. However, I have always read the novels just for pleasure as a leisure activity and thus I have never dissected the books into such details as I did this time reading them, and even after the numerous readthroughs, I still managed to find new notions and new metaphors to think about. 3 2. Theoretical Approaches to Humour Through thick and thin, comedy or humour in general has always been there for man to help him, at least for a while, forget about his problems or just simply when he was looking for some amusement. That is especially true for satire and parody as even when soldiers were fighting for their lives and the lives of their loved ones, satire and parody have been there to offer a welcomed distraction during those grim situations. From the baby steps of satire in the Ancient Egypt (such as The Satire of the Trades), through the great works of literature such as Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, to hilarious mute films of Charlie Chaplin (e.g. Shoulder Arms), satire has many forms and many ways to entertain. And because people find different humour funny and because humour spreads as far as the eye can see, its analysis is not an easy task. However, there are several approaches to the analysis of humour and this chapter will cover and explain at least a couple of them. As the primary purpose of this chapter is to figure out the best approach to analyse the different humorous instances in Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, it will be predominantly theoretical. It will often draw from Zohra Fatima’s Humor, Satire and Verbal Parody in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: A Relevance Theoretic Approach as it provides arguably the best summary of humour analysis in relevance with the topic of this thesis. The first subchapter will cover the relevance theoretic approach to humour analysis and the second will be interested in the semantic approach. However, for the purpose of the analysis of Adams’ The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, this thesis will be focusing primarily on one of these approaches, preferably the one which turns out to be more suitable or more fitting for analysing the selected humorous cases. 4 2.1. The Relevance Theoretic Approach This subchapter will cover the basic principles of the relevance theoretic approach and its use in regards of the analysis for this thesis. It will focus on the origins of the theory and it will explain its primary principles. As Zohra Fatima dedicated her work Humor, Satire and Verbal Parody in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: A Relevance Theoretic Approach to the primary source for the analysis in this thesis (as the title suggests), it will therefore be used extensively. This chapter will also include a couple of personal observations and notions which round up the whole idea of the relevance theoretic approach as well as make it more approachable for those less familiar with this theory. The beginnings of the relevance theoretic approach date back to the late 1980’s and the theory itself was proposed by a British linguist Deirdre Susan Moir Wilson and a French cognitive scientist Dan Sperber. It is slightly difficult to precisely pinpoint the exact year in which the final theory was published or presented to the public as it has developed through several publications in 1986,