User:Nico Zorn
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Contents
Proposal Magisterarbeit
still in work
Metafiction and Intertextuality in Jasper Fforde’s “First Among Sequels” Series
In a 2005 article, Erica Hateley (University of Melbourne) published an article on The Eyre Afair, the first novel of the Thursday Next series, and its relation to Jane Eyre. In this article, she mainly explores the relation of the two novels with special regard to the mimicking instances of Fforde’s novel going as far as to identify the protagonist as a recurring Jane, which is on some levels certainly true. Since that article, 4 more books have been published and thus furthered the “Next Universe”. While being “popular literature” in the realm of the Fantastic [sic], there are more points of interest then were explored by Hateley, who dealt exclusively with the Jane Eyre/The Eyre Affair relation. Some of her points can be taken up for an analysis of the later novels.
This Magisterarbeit aims to focus mainly on the fifth book, illustrating the main points in which the series work with the instances occurring there. At occasions some comparison with earlier depictions will probably become necessary, notably when utterances complement each other. The choice of the fifth book as main object has several reasons: First, it gives a definite focus on one part of the series; Second, the title itself is not intertextual (as had been The Eyre Affair and Something Rotten) but directly points to metatextuality. Third, it is the first book after a “core” of four books that ended at least one major plot (while others continue). Lastly, apart from The Well of Lost Plots (III), First Among Sequels is the book that focuses most on the interior of the BookWorld and within it on the construction of books and the book as medium in our contemporary world. It seems also unnecessary to say that a couple of issues that arose in previous stories are reiterated and actualised.
The world of the series as whole is a world with a thin line between literature and life; the complete Shakespeare is placed in hotel rooms together with the Bible and other religious books; streetfights between Surrealists and Realists, Marlowians and Baconists are not unusal; new artforms get abolished; and even the crossing of the border between fiction and reality became possible, which Hately describes “a reified form of intertextuality”. Bourdieu’s “cultural capital” has come true and solidified. While belonging to the popular literature, the “high” culture is taken very seriously in Fforde’s universe. This seriousness is often iterated in the form of parody, all in all it is a “realist narration that is inflected through the fantastic” (1024). The core of the “classic” texts can be observed in all novels and mostly it is clear which novel(s) form(s) the major background for the respective novel – although never a similarity got as strong again as in the first; Genette’s hypertextuality does not really fit. One of the overarching questions will be, if the author does not simply indulge in clever allusions (and the reader also) – the series certainly “presumes a certain level of reader competence” as Hately states.
The main Fantastic feature of the series is the“BookWorld”. This is the world in which the characters of books live, who are categorised into classes and governed by the Council of Genres et. al. Most notably, there is “Jurisfiction” the Literary Detectives who ensure that all plots run properly. In this metafictional background, Fforde comments upon issues of the actual literary apparatus: he applies criticism to books, by their own characters or others; he reinterprets; he plays with conventions, layouts (“Lorem Ipsum” as actual language) and other physical parts of books. Most interestingly, Fforde develops a model of the creation of books in which the author seemingly vanishes and is replaced by an – lastly unexplained – “imaginotransference device”; the real work is given to the reader. The books itself are created inside the BookWorld and the process is likened to both the construction of a giant engine and the (repetitive) performance of a play. The author remains as a kind of gateway/interface for writings – and changes have to be applied to the BookWorld or in the imagination of the reader which links back to it. In this context, author-text-reader relationships will have to be analysed in a postmodern environment. Does Fforde play with the ideas of this very theory or is he an example that the nouveau nouveau roman has reached popular literature as well?
The metafiction finally (so far) culminates into the appearance of the books of the series itself in the books (including an allegedly totally obliterated one), creating a mise-en-abyme par excellence, after a lot “lesser” creation of this kind. This, happening in the fifth (sixth?) book, will be another point to look at, together with the question of de facto biographical novels that are thematised in the same issue and the retrospect view of a guide telling all authors to never use time travel plots… a plot Fforde himself used up to one page before.
Above all though, there is the question how the intertextual and the metafiction (and also allusion to other “high culture” achievements of our world) are linked together. Is there a central running theme concerning literature in literature; does the presented view change among the series? What aspects does the “cultural conservativism” in- and exclude; how does it deal with canons? Does the inside-genesis of books relate to the “death of the author”? How does the series play and instrumental the literary apparatus leading from author to printer, publisher, and reader, not leaving out the usual place for advertisement after the end of the story itself? How is intertextuality made use of? And finally, can Fforde’s novels be characterised as “postmodern” novels? Are they still novels with the “version updates” he provides on his website and directly advertises at the very beginning of his story?
Structural Outline
(A-Part: Theory)
1. Postmodernism
1.1 The Quest for Meaning
1.2 Pastiche
1.3 The Author
1.4 …
2. Metafiction
2.1 Theory of Metafiction
2.2 History of Metafiction
2.3 Metafiction and Postmodernism
3. Intertextuality
3.1 Theory of Intertextuality
3.2 Intertextuality and Postmodernism
(B-Part: Application)
4. Jasper Fforde’s ‘First Among Sequels’
4.1.1 Fantasising the Literary Apparatus {BookWorld, “bookish elements”, printing(?), literal cultural capital”}
4.1.2 The Reader, the Author, and the ‘Actors’ {Reader Model, Imaginotransference, Construction of Books}
4.1.2.1 Landen Parke-Laine: The Author Inside
4.1.2.2 The End of the Novel Past the End {Continuation of the novel in movie-like special features; advertisement from the story past the en of the story…}
4.2.1 Playing with Text {Lorem Ipsum, Font Style, Footnotes, “text-void”…}
4.2.2 Rewriting Oneself {TN 1-6 totally rewritten at the end of TN5, time paradoxes, ending/plot of canonised texts}
4.3.1 Intertextuality: Open Allusions and direct Quote – Scenery Reused {old novels as scenery, evoking devices for allusions; including the critical apparatus and discussion on the prior works}
4.3.2 The Covert Intertext {Is there a difference to the more indirect mentions of and allusions to prior art?}
5 Conclusion
Preliminary Bibliography
Primary Literature
Fforde, Jasper: The Eyre Affair. London: Hodder & Stoughton 2001.
Fforde, Jasper: Lost in a Good Book. London: Hodder & Stoughton 2002.
Fforde, Jasper: The Well of Lost Plots. London: Hodder & Stoughton 2003.
Fforde Jasper: Something Rotten. London: Hodder & Stoughton 2004.
Fforder Jasper: First Among Sequels. London: Hodder & Stoughton 2007.
Secondary Literature
Barthes, Roland: Der Tod des Autors. In: Texte zur Theorie der Autorschaft. Ed. Fotis Jannidis et. al. Stuttgart: Reclam 2003. pp. 181-93.
Bourdieu, Pierre: The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature. Ed. Randal Johnson. Cambridge: Clarendon Press 1989.
Bourdieu, Pierre; Jean-Claude Passeron: Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture. Trans. Richard Nice. London: Sage, 1990.
Dentith, Simon: Parody. The New Critical Idiom. Ed John Drakakis. London: Routledge 2000.
Flieger, Jerry Aline: Postmodern Perspective: The Paranoid Eye. New Literary History 28 (1997): 87-109.
Hateley, Erica, "The End of The Eyre Affair: Jane Eyre, Parody, and Popular Culture", Journal of Popular Culture, 38:6 (2005 Nov), pp. 1022-36. Accessed 25/06/2007 via <http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1540-5931.2005.00174.x>
Horstkotte, Martin: The Postmodern Fantastic in Contemporary British Fiction. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier 2004.
Horstkotte, Martin, "The Worlds of the Fantastic Other in Postmodern English Fiction". In: Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, 14:3 (2003 Fall). pp. 318-32.
Hutcheon, Linda: A Theory of Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction. 2nd ed. London: Routledge 1996.
Hutcheon, Linda: A Theory of Parody. 2nd ed. London: Methuen 1985.
Hutcheon, Linda: Narcissistic Narrative. The metafictional paradox. London: Methuen 1985.
Lanier, Douglas: Shakespeare and Modern Popular Culture. Oxford Shakespeare topics. Ed. Stanley Wells. Oxford: Oxford UP 2002.
Lusty, Heather, "Struggling to Remember: War, Trauma, and the Adventures of Thursday Next". In: Popular Culture Review, 16:2 (2005 Summer). pp. 117-29.
Pratchett, Terry: Imaginary Worlds, Real Stories. Folklore October (2002): 159-68.
Stoneman, Patsy: Bronte Transformtions: The Cultural Dissemination of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. London: Harvester Wheatsheaf 1996.
