Abstract
Emily Lavin Leverett negotiates Pratchett’s use of intertextuality in her discussion of tropes from medieval English romance in this chapter. Medieval English romance is often governed by what Helen Cooper calls ‘memes’: repeated elements of stories that shift and change to stay relevant and alive in culture. Terry Pratchett is an expert on memes, going so far as to suggest that the knowledge of these memes, what he calls ‘narrative causality’, does not merely influence stories, but traps people. Caught in the idea of what one is ‘supposed to be’ according to the narrative, people fail to choose their own paths and construct their own selves. In Guards! Guards!, Leverett argues, Pratchett rejects narrative causality through the character of Captain Samuel Vimes of the Night Watch: Vimes forges his identity against, rather than in line with, narrative expectations.
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Notes
- 1.
Terry Pratchett, ‘Imaginary Worlds, Real Stories’, Folklore 111: 2 (October 2000), 160.
- 2.
Ibid., 160.
- 3.
Janet Brennan Croft, ‘Nice, Good, or Right: the Faces of the Wise Woman in Terry Pratchett’s “Witches” Novels’, Mythlore 26: 3–4 (2008), 154.
- 4.
Guards! Guards! also functions as a crime novel, with Vimes resembling Clint Eastwood in the Dirty Harry films. Vimes even gives his own version of the famous ‘do you feel lucky?’ monologue—though rather than a .365 Magnum, Vimes holds a small, fire-burping swamp dragon (177). While I am discussing the use of medieval romance and epic fantasy, I am not suggesting that there are not several other references going on here, and there is a lot more to be said about how Pratchett is using the American crime novel/film genre, too.
- 5.
Gail Ashton and Daniel T. Kline, ‘Introduction: Now and Then’, Medieval Afterlives in Popular Culture, eds. Gail Ashton and Daniel T. Kline (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 4.
- 6.
Nicola MacDonald, ‘A Polemical Introduction’, in Pulp Fictions of Medieval England: Essays in Popular Romance, ed. Nicola McDonald (Manchester: Manchester UP, 2004), 1.
- 7.
Angela Jane Weisl, The Persistence of Medievalism: Narrative Adventures in Contemporary Culture (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 17.
- 8.
Louise D’Arcens and Andrew Lynch, ‘Introduction’, International Medievalism and Popular Culture, eds. Louise D’Arcens and Andrew Lynch (Amherst, NY: Cambria Press, 2014), xi. Several scholars deal with both the creation and reception of medievalism and the anxieties surrounding the academic discipline. Most recently is Louise D’Arcens, Cambridge Companion to Medievalism (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2016); Leslie J. Workman, ‘Medievalism Today’, Medieval Feminist Newsletter 23: 3 (1997), 29–33; Richard Utz and Tom Shippey, ‘Medievalism and the Modern World: Introductory Perspectives’, in Medievalism in the Modern World: Essays in Honour of Leslie J. Workman, eds. Richard Utz and Tom Shippey (Turnhout: Brepolis, 1998), 1–13; Richard Utz, ‘Coming to Terms with Medievalism’, European Journal of English Studies 15: 2 (2011), 101–113; and Ute Berns and Andrew James Johnston, ‘Medievalism: a Very Short Introduction’, European Journal of English Studies 15: 2 (2011), 97–100.
- 9.
Pratchett, ‘Imaginary Worlds, Real Stories’, 180.
- 10.
About half of the critical response to Terry Pratchett has been about his children’s and young adult books, including the Tiffany Aching series set in Discworld. For a discussion of the medieval in children’s literature, including Pratchett and humour, see Clare Bradford, The Middle Ages in Children’s Literature (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). Two volumes of Pratchett scholarship have also been produced: Andrew M. Butler, Edward James and Farah Mendlesohn, editors, Terry Pratchett: Guilty of Literature, 2nd edition (Baltimore, MD: Old Earth Books, 2004) and Anne Hiebert Alton and William C. Spruiell, editors, Discworld in the Disciplines: Critical Approaches to the Works of Terry Pratchett (Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company, 2014).
- 11.
Gideon Haberkorn, ‘Debugging the Mind: the Rhetoric of Humor and the Poetics of Fantasy’, Discworld and the Disciplines: Critical Approaches to the Terry Pratchett Works, eds Anne Heibert Alton and William C. Spruiell (Jefferson, NC: Macfarland and Company, 2014), 183.
- 12.
Farah Mendlesohn, ‘Faith and Ethics’, in Terry Pratchett: Guilty of Literature, eds Andrew M. Butler, Edward James and Farah Mendlesohn (Baltimore, MD: Old Earth Books, 2004), 259.
- 13.
Helen Cooper points out: ‘The quest provides both the subject of a work and its shape, and to discuss quests is to discuss the point where form and content meet.’ The English Romance in Time: Transforming Motifs from Geoffrey of Monmouth to the Death of Shakespeare (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2004), 46.
- 14.
Pratchett, Guards! Guards! (New York: Harper Collins, 2007), 9–10.
- 15.
Ibid., 80.
- 16.
Ibid., 85. Italics in original.
- 17.
Ibid., 97. Italics in original.
- 18.
Ibid., 103.
- 19.
Ibid., 107.
- 20.
Ibid.
- 21.
Cooper, The English Romance in Time, 227.
- 22.
Pratchett, Guards! Guards!, 123.
- 23.
Ibid.
- 24.
Ibid., 167, 168.
- 25.
Ibid., 174. Italics in original.
- 26.
It is important to note here that Sybil is in need of rescue because she tried to be a hero. Believing that because she could control swamp dragons she could control this dragon, she charged out to speak to it very firmly. Sybil here also rejects the idea that she needs saving; she is the one who will do the saving, and she does rescue Vimes from the dragon at one point. Guards! Guards!, 228.
- 27.
Ibid., 225.
- 28.
Ibid., 226.
- 29.
Ibid., 227.
- 30.
Mendlesohn, ‘Faith and Ethics’, 259.
- 31.
Pratchett, Guards! Guards!, 195.
- 32.
Ibid., 195.
- 33.
Ibid., 300.
- 34.
Wonse has kept this young man hidden away, with plenty of alcohol and women, and brings him out to ‘slay’ the dragon. His ‘slaying’ amounts to poking at it with a fake, bejewelled sword at the moment that Wonse, who has called the dragon, sends it away. The boy will be set up as a puppet king while Wonse actually rules Ankh-Morpork. The dragon, he finds, has other plans. Ibid., 141–144.
- 35.
Ibid., 209–210.
- 36.
Ibid., 211.
- 37.
In the next book in the City Watch series, Men at Arms, the audience discovers that Vimes does actually come from a noble family—one that was stripped of its coat of arms. ‘Stoneface’ Vimes executed the current, and last, king of Ankh-Morpork because no one else would do it. Stoneface did not allow the king to be above the law. In this sense, Vimes’s role as a servant of the law, and as a hater of the monarchy, indeed seems genetic.
- 38.
Pratchett, Guard’s Guards!, 320–321.
- 39.
This comes particularly to a head in Thud!, where Vimes is possessed by a kind of dark rage demon. When filled with the desire to destroy those who attacked his family, he is able to control it, at least in part, because he believes in justice. He considers himself a watchman—and that means he is responsible for watching himself, too—and envisions a kind of internal watchman who imprisons the dark. Vimes does not deny the darkness inside him, and that is one of his greatest strengths.
- 40.
Horn’s lands are invaded by Saracens who kill his father, destroy all the churches, and forcefully convert his people. He and his friends are cast out to sea in a rudderless boat, and, after many years, Horn returns to kill the Saracens and take his place as king. Havelok’s uncle banishes him from his land. While Havelok is gone, his uncle appoints his friends to jobs, takes bribes and offers no justice for those who are wronged by his favourites. In the end, Havelok is judge and jury, sentencing his uncle to a brutal death by flaying.
- 41.
Cooper, English Romance in Time, 340.
- 42.
Pratchett, Guards! Guards!, 292.
- 43.
Ibid., 348.
- 44.
Ibid., 354. Italics in original.
- 45.
Ibid., 372. Italics in original.
- 46.
It is Vetinari who insists on a ceremony: ‘Then the whole thing could be neat and settled. And forgotten. Just another chapter in the long and exciting history of eckcetra, eckcetra. Ankh-Morpork was good at starting new chapters.’ Pratchett, Guards! Guards!, 397.
- 47.
Ibid., 407.
- 48.
Ibid., 391–394.
- 49.
A few examples include the following: in Men at Arms, Vetinari is against the use of the ‘gonne’ as a weapon because of the chaos it would create. In Jingo he stops a war between Ankh-Morpork and Klatch. In Night Watch, a young Vetinari fights—one might say sentimentally—alongside a group of rebels who ultimately lose.
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Leverett, E.L. (2018). ‘At Times Like This It’s Traditional That a Hero Comes Forth’: Romance and Identity in Terry Pratchett’s Guards! Guards! . In: Rana, M. (eds) Terry Pratchett's Narrative Worlds. Critical Approaches to Children's Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67298-4_9
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