(De)constructed binaries: dialogue and monologue in contemporary popular fantasy

Abstract

This thesis explores three works of contemporary popular epic fantasy and the way in which binary oppositions are constructed and resolved in these texts. I argue that the three texts studied represent a wider trend in contemporary fantasy which questions the idea of binary opposition, while working within that same structure. I analyse the resolution of these binaries through the terminology provided by Mikhail Bakhtin, whose work on dialogue and monologue offers a way of comparing the different oppositions prioritised by each author. The texts studied are Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn trilogy (2006-2008), Robin Hobb’s The Farseer Trilogy (1995-1997), and N.K. Jemisin’s The Broken Earth trilogy (2015-2017).

My work focuses on three binary oppositions that appear in all three primary texts, and so offers a point of comparison between them. The oppositions studied are the good/evil binary, the Self/Other binary, and the achievement of immortality, which is represented as a result of the contact between binary opposites in all three texts. This thesis will make use of a variety of theoretical frameworks in order to analyse the key oppositions in the texts. When discussing Sanderson, ‘good’ and ‘evil’ are understood through the work of Simon Baron-Cohen’s The Science of Evil (2011), which uses the presence of empathy as the determining moral factor. In The Farseer Trilogy, the work of Ernest Becker is useful in describing how immortality is represented as the fusion of two opposed elements of humanity, the animal and symbolic. For this I turn to Becker’s The Denial of Death (1973). Finally, Jemisin’s representation of the Self is understood using the terminology of Dialogical Self Theory, in which the Self is the result of the interaction between Others, both within and outside the Self.

I suggest that each text portrays the interaction between opposites as either dialogical or monological, using the terminology provided by Bakhtin. Ultimately, I show that, rather than simply featuring binary opposition, each of the trilogies studied actively questions the legitimacy of those same oppositions. In this way, these texts resist a common criticism of fantasy literature, which is often seen as ‘simplistic’ precisely because of its reliance on binary opposites.