Discworld And The Disciplines

This collection of new essays applies a wide range of critical frameworks to the analysis of prolific fantasy author Terry Pratchett's Discworld books. Essays focus on topics such as Pratchett's treatment of noise and silence and their political implications; art as an anodyne for racial conflict; humor and cognitive debugging; visual semiotics; linguistic stylistics and readers' perspectives of word choice; and Derrida and the "monstrous Regiment of Women." The volume also includes an annotated bibliography of critical sources. The essays provide fresh perspectives on Pratchett's work, which has stealthily redefined both fantasy and humor for modern audiences.

This book highlights the multi-dimensionality of the work of British fantasy writer and Discworld creator Terry Pratchett. Taking into account content, political commentary, and literary technique, it explores the impact of Pratchett's work on fantasy writing and genre conventions.With chapters on gender, multiculturalism, secularism, education, and relativism, Section One focuses on different characters’ situatedness within Pratchett’s novels and what this may tell us about the direction of his social, religious and political criticism. Section Two discusses the aesthetic form that this criticism takes, and analyses the post- and meta-modern aspects of Pratchett’s writing, his use of humour, and genre adaptations and deconstructions. This is the ideal collection for any literary and cultural studies scholar, researcher or student interested in fantasy and popular culture in general, and in Terry Pratchett in particular.

For the translator, intertexts are among chief problems posed by the source text. Often unmarked typographically, direct or altered, not necessarily well-known and sometimes intersemiotic, quotations and references to other writings and culture texts call for erudition and careful handling, so that readers of the translation stand a chance of spotting them, too. For the reader, the rich intertextuality of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series is among its trademark features. Consequently, it should not be missed in translations whose success thus depends significantly on the quality of translation of the intertexts which, as is highlighted here, cover a vast and varied range of types of original texts. The book focuses on how to deal with Pratchett’s intertexts: how to track them down, analyse their role, predict obstacles to their effective translation, and suggest translation solutions – complete with a discussion of the translation of selected intertextual fragments in the Polish version, Świat Dysku, a concise overview of intertextual theories, and an assessment of the translator’s work.

Terry Pratchett's writing celebrates the possibilities opened up by inventiveness and imagination. It constructs an ethical stance that values informed and self-aware choices, knowledge of the world in which one makes those choices, the importance of play and humor in crafting a compassionate worldview, and acts of continuous self-examination and creation. This collection of essays uses inventiveness and creation as a thematic core to combine normally disparate themes, such as science fiction studies, the effect of collaborative writing and shared authorship, steampunk aesthetics, productive modes of "ownership," intertextuality, neomedievalism and colonialism, adaptations into other media, linguistics and rhetorics, and coming of age as an act of free will.

Philosophy and Terry Pratchett is the first attempt by philosophers to explore themes in Sir Terry Pratchett's writings. It will appeal to both specialists and fans of Pratchett with serious essays written in a manner accessible to anyone who enjoys, or is curious about, Pratchett's work.

The fantastic first book in the Sunday Times bestselling Science of Discworld series When a wizardly experiment goes adrift, the wizards of Unseen University find themselves with a pocket universe on their hands: Roundworld, where neither magic nor common sense seems to stand a chance against logic. The Universe, of course, is our own. And Roundworld is Earth. As the wizards watch their accidental creation grow, we follow the story of our universe from the primal singularity of the Big Bang to the internet and beyond. Through this original Terry Pratchett story (with intervening chapters from Cohen and Stewart) we discover how puny and insignificant individual lives are against a cosmic backdrop of creation and disaster. Yet, paradoxically, we see how the richness of a universe based on rules, has led to a complex world and at least one species that tried to get a grip of what was going on. Terry Pratchett is the acclaimed creator of the global bestselling Discworld series, the first of which, The Colour of Magic, was published in 1983. Raising Steam is his fortieth Discworld novel. His books have been widely adapted for stage and screen, and he is the winner of multiple prizes, including the Carnegie Medal, as well as being awarded a knighthood for services to literature. After falling out with his keyboard he now talks to his computer. Occasionally, these days, it answers back. www.terrypratchett.co.uk @terryandrob Professor Ian Stewart is the author of many popular science books. He is the mathematics consultant for New Scientist and a Professor of Mathematics at the University of Warwick. He was awarded the Michael Faraday Prize for furthering the public understanding of science, and in 2001 became a Fellow of the Royal Society. Dr Jack Cohen is an internationally-known reproductive biologist, and lives in Newent, Gloucestershire. Jack has a laboratory in his kitchen, helps couples get pregnant by referring them to colleagues, invents biologically realistic aliens for science fiction writers and, in his spare time, throws boomerangs. Jack, who has more letters to his name than can be repeated here, writes, lectures, talks and campaigns to promote public awareness of science, particularly biology. He is mostly retired.

This study examines the children’s books of three extraordinary British writers—J.K. Rowling, Diana Wynne Jones, and Terry Pratchett—and investigates their sophisticated use of narrative strategies not only to engage children in reading, but to educate them into becoming mature readers and indeed individuals. The book demonstrates how in quite different ways these writers establish reader expectations by drawing on conventions in existing genres only to subvert those expectations. Their strategies lead young readers to evaluate for themselves both the power of story to shape our understanding of the world and to develop a sense of identity and agency. Rowling, Jones, and Pratchett provide their readers with fantasies that are pleasurable and imaginative, but far from encouraging escape from reality, they convey important lessons about the complexities and challenges of the real world—and how these may be faced and solved. All three writers deploy the tropes and imaginative possibilities of fantasy to disturb, challenge, and enlarge the world of their readers.

The doctorial thesis argues that the term Subcreation with its revised and broadened definition, in part differing from J.R.R. Tolkien's original term sub-creation, may be used for the discussion of the making of fictional worlds in literary discourse. The successful conception of a fictional world depends on the reader's willing suspension of disbelief. This depends both on the author and his skilled composition of the world and all its aspects, as well as on the reader's acceptance of this invented fictional world. The author needs to create a narrative with an inner consistency, which is crucial to achieving the effect of the reader's immersion in the fictional world. The fundamental aspects that an author needs to realize to achieve successful Subcreation have been structured into and analysed in four categories: Language and Linguistic Variation, Physiopoeia, Anthropoeia and Mythopoeia. Furthermore, this thesis shows that, as contemporary examples of fantastic literature, both Tad Williams's and Terry Pratchett's fictional worlds are successfully created through the realization of these aspects of Subcreation. Apart from commenting on the success of the subcreative process, this thesis also remarks upon the cultural influences both authors include in their writings. While both may be considered Anglophone in a general categorization, Pratchett's Discworld retains a feeling of 'Britishness' that is not to be found in Williams's Otherland. The thesis proposes several approaches to Subcreation that may be studied subsequently. So, for example, it may be possible to determine the success of an author's Subcreation by collecting empirical data. Apart from literary works this field of studies may also include other media.