Table of Contents

List of Figures
List of Contributors
Acknowledgements
Building a Fantasy Civilization. Introducing Power and Society in the Discworld
Justine Breton
Part 1: Social Power Dynamics
Chapter 1: Collective Strength, Collective Weakness: Crowds and their Uses on the Discworld
Bettina Juszak, York University
Chapter 2: Where the Streets Are Paved with Glod: The Role of Civil Society in Ankh-Morpork Community and Civic Life
Jon Dean, Sheffield Hallam University
Chapter 3: Freedom! Truth! and Justice! In the Big Wahoonie: Ankh-Morpork’s neo-Victorian Urbanity
Helena Esser, Independent Scholar
Chapter 4: (Imaginary) Genealogies of Power as Utopian Incitement: Reading Pratchett with Graeber (and vice versa)
Jann Kraus, Zurich University of Applied Science
Part 2: Tools for Building, Tools for Destroying
Chapter 5: Maps of the Future: Spatial Revolution in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld
Chris Lynch Becherer, University of Glasgow
Chapter 6: A ‘Vetinarian’ World Order: Diplomacy, Great Powers and Morals in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series
Guilhem Jean, Independent Scholar
Chapter 7: Political Idealism in the Discworld Novels
Ruchira Mandal, Lady Bradbourne College
Chapter 8: King Carrot and Fantasy Tropes: Refusing Power to Build a Better Society
Justine Breton, University of Lorraine
Part 3: The Power of Language
Chapter 9: Greatness and Small Miseries: Journalism in the Discworld Novels
Jean-Christophe Piot, Independent Scholar
Chapter 10: ‘People listen to me when I’m screaming’: Language and Empowerment in The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents
Anne Hiebert Alton, Central Michigan University
Chapter 11: ‘Let him be whoever he thinks he is’: Magic Conjuring Truth in Terry Pratchett’s Wyrd Sisters
Sarah Richardson, University of London
Chapter 12: The Power of Stories: Narrative Causality and Coercive Narratives in Pratchett’s Witches books
Yevheniia Orestivna Kanchura, Zhytomyr Polytechnic State University, and Jane Suzanne Carroll, Trinity College
Index

The first academic series with an exclusive critical focus on Fantasy, Perspectives on Fantasy publishes cutting-edge research on literature and culture that brings sophisticated discussion to a broad community of debate, including scholars, students, and non-specialists.

Inspired by Fantasy's deep cultural roots, powerful aesthetic potential, and reach across a broad range of media – from literature, film and television to art, animation and gaming – Perspectives on Fantasy provides a forum for theorising and historicising Fantasy via rigorous and original critical and theoretical approaches. Works in the series will cover major creators, significant works, key modes and forms, histories and traditions, the genre’s particular affordances, and the ways in which Fantasy’s resources have been drawn on, expanded and reconfigured by authors, readers, viewers, directors, designers, players, and artists. With a deliberately broad scope, the series aims to publish dynamic studies that embrace Fantasy as a global, diverse, and inclusive phenomenon while also addressing oversights and exclusions. Along with canonical Anglophone authors and texts, the series will provide a space to address Fantasy creators and works rooted in African, Asian, South American, Middle Eastern, and indigenous cultures, as well as translations and transnational mediations.

Topics may include (but are not restricted to) examinations of world-building, the development of narrative conventions, the operation of magic systems, the construction of evil, the (re)negotiation of myths and histories, and creators’ engagements with ethical, social, and ecological issues. The series will be alive to Fantasy’s flourishing fan cultures, studying how audiences engage critically and affectively and considering the ease with which participants in Fantasy communities move from being readers and watchers to players, writers, and artists.