- Title
- The Watchman and the Hippopotamus: art, play, and otherness in Thud!
- Creator
- Webb, Caroline
- Relation
- Discworld and the Disciplines: Critical Approaches to the Terry Pratchett Works p. 92-107
- Relation
- Critical Explorations in Science Fiction and Fantasy 45
- Relation
- http://www.mcfarlandbooks.com/contents-2.php?id=978-0-7864-7464-6
- Publisher
- McFarland
- Resource Type
- book chapter
- Date
- 2014
- Description
- This essay examines not only Terry Pratchett's study of the nature of racial conflict but his exploration of the power of art, including narrative, in both perpetuating and resolving that conflict in Thud! (2005). In Thud! the issue of race and how to engage with the Other, governs the text. Throughout the novel the characters are offered competing narratives of history and identity. In Thud! the significance of art in creating and sustaining identity comes increasingly to the fore across the text. The essay considers the ways in which art as story, as painting, as game is depicted within the text as a means of engagement with the human. It demonstrates how Pratchett's comic novel offers a serious reflection on the power of art as a site through which people, both individually and as racial groups, can confront and critique the notion of the Other and the tensions within the individual (as well as between groups) that obscure the commonality of the human.
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1064678
- Identifier
- uon:17621
- Identifier
- ISBN:9780786474646
- Language
- eng
- Hits: 1690
- Visitors: 877
- Downloads: 0