Book 1: The Colour of Magic

Like most creation myths, the beginning of the first story of the Discworld is set against the background of chaos. The great city of Ankh-Morpork is in flames, observed by two barbarian heroes on top of a hill. This event is the prolepsis of the first part of the story, ostensibly told in its allegorical context by the narrative-figure of Rincewind. His introduction is followed closely by the introduction though his saga of the true hero of the book, Twoflower.

Of most interest here is the hermeneutic metanarrative. Rincewind himself is cast in the role of a storyteller: it is he who has followed Twoflower on his personal odyssey through perils undreamt-of; like the Ancient Mariner, he is forever scarred and forever changed by his experiences, and like that worthy, he feels compelled to tell his tale to others.

These parallels are significant because they point to what Pratchett is doing here. The city in flames is not Ankh-Morpork, but Gormenghast, Erehwon, Minas Tirith, even Atlantis. Before constructing his utopia, Pratchett needs to defamiliarise the preconceptions bred by earlier writers: like a poet, he does this through a careful process of foregrounding the absurdity of fantasy. In the semiotics of fantasy, a barbarian hero is the hero: here he is relegated to the role of listener, while Rincewind the bard unfolds his psychographic allegory.

This is a true Aristotelian peripety of Twoflower's own world-view. He came to Ankh-Morpork because he had heard stories of these legendary heroes told by bards of dubious reliability; as he leaves Ankh-Morpork in flames, two of those very heroes are compelled to sit and listen to his story, told with ruthless accuracy by Rincewind.

An underlying theme here, as through so much of Pratchett's work, is the distance between story and narrative. Ostensibly a comic fantasy, the author has sublimated much of the ideology of post-scientological pessimism into a utopian longing for consistency that permeates the series like a damp teabag. Thus the reader is engaged not merely in humour, but also in sympathy as the parnassian deconstruction of paleoliterary archetypes reveals ever more that seems 'true' or 'lifelike' to the desentimentalised contemporary reader.

Pratchett goes on to systematically deconstruct several other genres of fantasy: the high heroic nonsense of Robert E Howard, the childish naivite of C S Lewis, the pseudo-science of Anne McCaffrey, the pretentious 'speculative fantasy' of Farmer and Vance, all fare equally badly before the Pratchett lance. The Discworld is a blunt instrument, with which these earlier authors are mercilessly and deservedly beaten around the skull.

Mike Kew

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