“A silence of three parts”connecting identity, narratology, and high dark fantasy in The Kingkiller Chronicle’s storywolrd

Abstract

This dissertation will research The Kingkiller Chronicle’s storyworld in order to suggest that there is a connection between identity and narratology that makes high dark fantasy a privileged place to be explored, since it allows the reader to delve into both terms without being prejudiced by elements from the referential world. Furthermore, the dissertation will argue that, within the storyworld, identity is present as a holistic conceptualization of discourse, mindset and embodiment. The dissertation will explore, in its three sections respectively, identity as a discourse, identity and mindset, and identity and embodiment, as well as the connection between each of them and narratology. Each section will cover different stories within the storyworld, so the whole corpus is analyzed and explored within the most relevant section. The first section will cover the two published novels of the, by June 2019, unfinished trilogy The Kingkiller Chronicle (The Name of the Wind and The Wise Man’s Fear) in order to study the ways in which the narration of certain events vary depending on the identity of each character, as well as the way in which identity is explored in connection to the chronotope in which characters live, and therefore the connection between world-building and identity. The second section will cover Trauma and Identity, as well as alternate mindsets, by studying The Slow Regard of Silent Things, a companion novella to the main trilogy, the Chronicle. Finally, the third section will cover the two short stories, The Lightning Tree and “How Old Holly Came to Be” and focus on the ways in which alternate embodiment is conveyed. In all three sections, this will be done by exploring both form and content, and the way in which these are intertwined. What this dissertation aimed to suggest, that narrativity and identity are connected both ways through readers and their interpretations, and therefore through the tools that readers have to interpret narratological cues, such as reading tendencies and the establishment of empathic links between them and characters, can be, potentially, translated to other storyworlds, especially those from the twenty-first century that focus on character development: By establishing the focus of the analysis on the reader’s interpretation of the narrative voice, as well as on the connection between the narrative voice and the character’s identity discourse, this dissertation allows for an exploration of the storyworld that focuses on the means by which identity is conveyed, and on the means by which identity affects narratology.