Année universitaire 2014-2015

UNIVERSITÉ BLAISE PASCAL - CLERMONT IIUFR LETTRES, LANGUES ET SCIENCES HUMAINES

DÉPARTEMENT ANGLAIS

STITCHING TOGETHER FANTASY AND REALITY

IN WILLIAM GOLDMAN’S METAFICTIONAL TALETHE PRINCESS BRIDE

Mémoire présenté en vue de l’obtention du grade de Master 2 de « ÉtudesAnglophones » par Françoise BLANCHARD CHOISous la direction de : Anne Rouhette, Maître de ConférenceSoutenu le : 7 juillet 2015

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“There are many bad things about the human race.

But there are many good things too.

And one of the best is this—dreams, great dreams, die hard…”

– S. Morgenstern

The Silent Gondoliers

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Table of ContentsINTRODUCTION......................................................................................................................4

I.What is The Princess Bride?....................................................................................................9

1.The fairies in fairy tales (or lack thereof)....................................................................................9

2.The structural approach.............................................................................................................12

3.The stakes of literary realism.....................................................................................................15

II.How to read The Princess Bride?.........................................................................................19

1.Reader profiling..........................................................................................................................19

2.To believe or not to believe?.......................................................................................................22

3.Lasting suspension of disbelief...................................................................................................25

III.Passing fantasy off as reality...............................................................................................28

1.Imitating life................................................................................................................................28

2.Metaleptic “stitches”...................................................................................................................31

3.Ekphrasis and the six-fingered sword.......................................................................................34

4.Parody and deception.................................................................................................................39

5.The pseudo historical discourse.................................................................................................43

IV.Raison d'être of subversive narratives.................................................................................46

1.Educating the reader...................................................................................................................46

2.Thwarting readers’ expectations................................................................................................47

3.Metafiction and subversive fantasy...........................................................................................49

4.Diegetic mise en abyme and transcendence...............................................................................52

CONCLUSION........................................................................................................................54

Bibliography.............................................................................................................................56

Appendix A...............................................................................................................................59

Appendix B...............................................................................................................................60

Appendix C...............................................................................................................................61

Appendix D..............................................................................................................................62

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INTRODUCTION

“This is my favorite book in all the world, though I have never read it. How is such a

thing possible? I’ll do my best to explain.”1 And with those words William Goldman began to

tell a story. In fact, it would be more accurate to say that he began to tell multiple stories. The

core narrative involved characters with names such as Fezzik, Inigo, Humperdinck,

Buttercup, Westley, and Miracle Max (to name a few) who were to make a lasting impression

on readers, and later on viewers, when the book was brought to the screen in 1987. Another

narrative concerned the elusive Florinese author named S. Morgenstern, introduced as the

actual author of The Princess Bride. And finally, the meta-story that permeates all narratives

is told to us by the narrator, who not only shares the same name as the author (William

Goldman) but also the same occupation (author and screenwriter).

The back cover sells the book as “a tale of true love and high adventure, pirates,

princesses, giants, miracles, fencing, and a frightening assortment of wild beasts[…]” yet the

tale itself doesn’t begin until page 39 in my edition. Indeed, the first 38 pages are devoted to

Goldman’s account of his first ‘encounter’ with The Princess Bride as a boy, when his father

read it to him while he was recovering from pneumonia. These first pages also recount

Goldman’s struggles to get a copy of that book to his son, Jason, for his tenth birthday. His

secret hope was that Jason would enjoy it as much as he did when he was that age. But he is

soon disappointed when he finds out that Chapter Two “is where [his] son Jason stopped

reading […]” (p. 73).

Goldman finally picks up the book for the first time, and starts turning the pages to try

and understand why his son was not as passionate a reader as he himself had been a

passionate listener in his childhood. And soon enough, he finds out: sixty pages of text

dealing with genealogical facts, court etiquette and the like (p. 33). “Dreary? Not to be

believed” (p. 73). This discovery triggers the narrator’s urge to abridge the book: his wish is

to “kind of bridge where there were skips in the narrative and leave the good parts alone” (p.

1. William Goldman, The Princess Bride, Orlando, Harcourt, 2007, 1. In this paper, I refer to Goldman’s work by pagenumber in the text. Titles and publishing information are detailed in the bibliography.

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34). And by the end of this lengthy account on the book’s origins, we are made aware of the

fact that “[we]hold it in[our]hands. The “'good parts' version” (p. 35). Goldman concludes

with the following summary: “S. Morgenstern wrote it. And my father read it to me. And now

I give it to you” (p. 36). He even bothers to legitimize this introduction by mentioning the

date and place when and where it was written (“New York City, December, 1972” p. 36).

Only then does the story of Buttercup begin. And it begins “the year Buttercup was

born” (p. 39). The narrator has vanished (for the time being) in favor of a neutral

extradiegetic narrative that sets out to tell us about the world’s most beautiful women over the

course of eighteen years, from Buttercup’s birth to the year she turned eighteen. And by then,

“she was the most beautiful woman in a hundred years” (p. 69). But before she was bestowed

this title, she had found love (in the person of Westley the Farm Boy) and had lost it at once.

Indeed, after hearing her confess her love to him, Westley had left to go to America, “to seek

[his] fortune” (p. 62). Alas, a short while after his departure, Buttercup had received the news

of his death at the hands of the Dread Pirate Roberts, “the one who never leaves survivors”

(p. 68).

The next chapter introduces us to Prince Humperdinck whose father is dying and who

thus needs to get married soon, in order to provide “a male heir to the throne of Florin” (p.

90). The titles of the subsequent chapters are quite self-explanatory. “The Courtship” is about

the Prince courting Princess Noreena of the neighboring kingdom of Guilder. However, after

finding out about her baldness, he dismisses her and settles for the beautiful Buttercup, who

agrees to marry him only to avoid dying “in terrible pain in the very near future” (p. 90). Let

us point out that the actual courting of Buttercup only takes place in the last page of the

chapter.

It is only in Chapter Five that the storyline picks up pace, with Buttercup being

kidnapped by “the strangest trio she had ever seen” (p. 101). Chapter Five, entitled “The

Announcement,” is the longest chapter in the book (121 pages in my edition.) Yet we can’t

help but note (as with the courting in Chapter Three) that said announcement—namely the

“introduction of Prince Humperdinck’s bride-to-be, Princess Buttercup of Hammersmith” (p.

97)—only takes three pages to cover. The remaining 118 pages of the chapter narrate the

kidnapping of Buttercup and her rescue by a “man in black” (p. 99) who is first identified as

the Dread Pirate Roberts, but who later turns out to be Westley. We are even treated to some

background information on two of the abductors, Inigo the Spanish swordsman, and Fezzik

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the giant Turk (pp. 120-142; pp. 155-167). The third man, called the Sicilian, loses the “battle

of the wits” (p. 175) to the man in black and dies. The lovers barely have the time to enjoy

their reunion as Prince Humperdinck is on their tail. They find refuge in the Fire Swamp, and

although they manage to survive it, they are greeted on the other end by the Prince who

captures Westley and gets Buttercup to follow him in exchange for sparing the life of her true

love.

The following chapter, entitled “The Festivities,” is in fact far from being festive, as it

recounts the torture Westley is being put through by Count Rugen, the Prince’s confidant.

Meanwhile, Inigo and Fezzik have reunited and start looking for the ‘man in black,’

convinced as Inigo is that he could help him with his own agenda (a revenge on the man who

killed his father). Buttercup is of course blissfully unaware of all this, thinking Westley is safe

on his pirate ship somewhere at sea, and that he will come rescue her in time before she weds

Humperdinck. Chapter Seven, called “The Wedding,” features Inigo and Fezzik finally

coming upon the ‘man in black,’ who alas has been tortured to death. Luckily for them

however, they soon learn from Miracle Max that he is only “sort of dead” (p. 313). The

miracle man manages to bring him back to life and the chapter ends with the three of them

storming the castle just moments before the wedding.

All the chapters of the book have with no exception been embedded with narrative

interruptions on the part of William Goldman, the self-proclaimed abridger, who never fails

to remind the reader of his authority over the text. His interruptions are straightforward and

do not wish to go unnoticed. To avoid any confusion, Goldman states that “All abridging

remarks and other comments will be in this fancy italic type so you’ll know.”(p. 46). In

Goldman’s own words, these elliptic cuts allowed him to “jump wherever [he] wanted.”2

Chapter Four, “The Preparations”, is nothing but a one page meta-elliptical narrative that

begins with Goldman acknowledging he “didn’t even know this chapter existed until [he]

began the ‘good parts’ version.” (p. 93). This intervention on his part allows him to avoid

writing a possibly tedious chapter during which “nothing happens.” (p. 94). It ends on the

following ellipsis: “What with one thing and another, three years passed.” (p. 94). On several

occasions, Goldman will cut into Morgenstern’s plot using a first-person narrator

interruption: “This is me.”(p. 46) ; “This is my first major excision.” (p. 73) ; “Me again.” (p.

83) ; “This is me, and I’m not trying to be confusing, but the above paragraph that I’m

2. William Goldman, Which Lie Did I Tell?,New York, Vintage Books, 2000, 24.

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cutting into now is verbatim Morgenstern.” (p. 193) ; “Interruption, and hey, how about

giving old Morgenstern credit for a major league fake-out there.” (p. 234) ; “Little cut here,

twenty pages maybe.” (p. 319). These cuts or interruptions, as Goldman also calls them, allow

him to stress the difference between the two narrative authorities of the text, namely William

Goldman the narrator-figure and Simon Morgenstern the author-figure. Both play an essential

part in the elaborate scheme aimed at blurring the lines between fiction and reality, as we

shall see later on.

The last chapter, entitled “Honeymoon,” suggests a possible happy ending. Inigo gets

his revenge, Westley eventually finds Buttercup, and all manage to run away together on the

Prince’s horses. Yet the text eschews the final “happily ever after” and the reader is left

”hanging,” his need for closure unfulfilled. Just as he had had the first word, the first-person

narrator makes a final appearance and gives us what looks like the moral of the tale: “life

isn’t fair. It’s just fairer than death, that’s all” (p. 358).

And that is how what we could call the first “installment” of The Princess Bride ends.

Indeed, the book resembles a Victorian serial novel to some extent, with a new “installment”

coming out every anniversary edition. The 25th anniversary edition was bestowed a new

introduction in which the narrator writes about how the book became a movie, back in 1983.

Goldman also added a whole new chapter, supposedly the first of a new book (Buttercup’s

Baby, the follow-up to The Princess Bride). He ends his introduction with a promise: “before

the (ugh) 50th anniversary edition comes into existence, Buttercup’s Baby will be yours” (p.

xxix). In light of these facts, the lack of “closure” in The Princess Bride makes perfect sense:

the book is simply not finished. Actually it would be more accurate to say that the adventures

of our protagonists do not end with the book.

That said, despite its “incompleteness,” The Princess Bride manages to achieve quite

a feat: it delivers a coherent and whole tale made of two narratives that seem very distinct at

first, if not mutually exclusive. The other significant achievement of the book has to do with

the way S. Morgenstern is perceived, that is as the actual author of the tale. William

Goldman, on the other hand, claims the title of abridger and his interventions in the text are

those of a meta-narrator. With regard to the metafictional quality of this book, we are

reminded by Waugh that, despite its prominence in postmodern fiction, the practice of

metafiction is “as old (if not older) than the novel itself.”3 However, modern (and post-

3. Patricia Waugh, Metafiction, The Theory and Practice of Self-conscious Fiction, London, Routledge, 1993, 5.

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modern) literature distinguishes itself from the traditional “récit métadiégétique” by the

proliferation of what French literary theorist Gérard Genette calls “ce discours « auctorial »”,

a term that indicates both the author's presence as well as the sovereign authority present in

the text: “la présence de l’auteur (réel ou fictif) et l’autorité souveraine de cette présence dans

son œuvre”4.

As we discuss the author’s authority within his work, we will necessarily address the

role of the reader in the interpretation of the text. The number of readers that have been

fooled by the literary tricks at play is such that we are compelled to call the whole enterprise

a hoax. Deconstructing those tricks will help shed some light on the success of this particular

deception. Moreover, Genette’s analysis will allow us to pinpoint the key to solving the often

puzzling narratives of The Princess Bride, as well as tackle the inevitable questions it raises

regarding the sovereign authority which governs all fiction. The first step toward

understanding The Princess Bride requires us to the answer the question as to what type of

text5 we are here dealing with. Is it all but a hoax? A fairy tale? A self-conscious text? Or even

an essay on writing? Perhaps The Princess Bride is a little bit of all that, as it incorporates a

variety of elements, tropes, and rhetoric tools in its narrative.

4. Gérard Genette, Figures III, Paris, Éditions du Seuil, 1972, 264.5. The expression "text type" should be understood as "an abstract category designed to characterize the mainstructure of a particular text or one of its parts according to its dominant properties." It should not be confusedwith the notion of genre which is a classifying concept. Matthias Aumüller, "Text Types". In: Hühn, Peter et al.(eds.): The living handbook of narratology. Hamburg: Hamburg University. URL = http://www.lhn.uni-hamburg.de/article/text-types [view date:25 Apr 2015]

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I. What is The Princess Bride?

When buying a copy of The Princess Bride at a bookstore or online, the book will

likely be shelved under the label “Adult Fantasy”, although the publisher defines it as a

“swashbuckling romp.”6 The book's cover will probably feature Buttercup and Westley, our

two main protagonists who are also, incidentally, lovers (see Appendix A). When opening the

book, the reader will first see a colored map that spreads on two pages (see Appendix C). On

this map are drawn the borders of Guilder and Florin, the two kingdoms which are separated

by the Channel of Guilder, also called Florin Channel. Several locations and events

mentioned in the book are pictured, including the Zoo of Death, Miracle Max's Hut, the Cliffs

of Insanity and the Fire Swamp. For readers of fantasy novels, the map calls to mind other

maps of literary lands such as Middle Earth in J. R. R. Tolkien's Lord of The Rings series, to

name the most obvious example. But if we take a closer look, we cannot help but smile at

some of the labels: the word Duel marks the location where Inigo and the man in black

fought each other ; the word Ambush is where the man in black defeated Fezzik the Giant ;

the word Picnic evokes the battle of wits to the death (a lethal picnic to say the least), and so

on. When we turn to the title page (see Appendix B), we notice the following subtitle: “S.

Morgenstern's Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure” immediately followed by

another short description: “The “Good Parts” Version Abridged by William Goldman.”

Although the cover does not sell the book as a fairy tale but as a “classic tale of true

love and high adventure,” the parallel is almost ineluctable. Part of the reason for this

straightforward connection lies in our preconceptions of what the fairy tale genre is, and what

we expect a story with the word “Princess” in its title to be. Perhaps a review of what we

know of the fairy tale genre would now be fitting.

1. The fairies in fairy tales (or lack thereof)

When we think of fairy tales, titles such as Rumpelstilstkin, Hansel & Gretel, or Puss

in Boots instantly come to mind. In the introduction to her novel Briar Rose, contemporary

6. The Princess Bride by William Goldman - Discussion Guide - Harcourt (no date) Available at:http://www.harcourtbooks.com/PrincessBride/discussion_guide.asp [view date: May 1, 2015]

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American author Jane Yolen notes that “We call them fairy tales, although none of the above

stories actually contains a creature called a 'fairy'.”7 What they do contain, she goes on, are

those ingredients most familiar to us in fairy tales: magic and enchantment, spells andcurses, witches and trolls, and protagonists who defeat over-whelming odds totriumph over evil.8

Whether we believe them to have come down to us from ancient origins through the oral

tradition—a conviction shared by many—or to have derived from urban writings en vogue in

Renaissance Venice9, the fact is that the stories we call ‘fairy tales’ have been around for quite

some time. We are all but too familiar with their invariable introduction, which mentions

“once-upon-a-times” and “faraway lands,” and their unfailing “happily-ever-after” endings.

Yet these are not the only attributes of the fairy tale, which have often been mistaken for folk

tales. A look at any English dictionary will confirm the existence of a difference between the

two, as the folk tale is mainly defined by its oral tradition, while the fairy tale is said to be “a

story about fairies and other small magical people.”10 We owe this amalgam partly to the

inaccurate and misleading translation of the brothers Grimms’ “Märchen”, “which embraced

so many kinds of tales”11 into “fairy tale”. The term itself was coined by Madame d’Aulnoy, a

17th century French author who notably wrote tales about fairies and fairyland. Though the

term “conte de fées” may have been relevant in regards to Madame d’Aulnoy’s works, it is a

fact that numerous stories labeled “fairy tales” do not actually feature any fairies in them.

Generally speaking, we may state that folk tales “deal with familiar aspects of the

human condition.”12 They may be realistic, religious, or anecdotal. Some are even called

wisdom tales. But regardless of their category, they all share the same basic characteristics of

briefness and plot linearity, and all “reflect the world and the belief systems of their

audiences.”13 Their purpose is often to teach a lesson or convey a moral applicable in

everyday life, which accounts for their anchoring in ‘reality’ and their frequent unhappy

endings.

On the other hand, fairy tales have been much less concerned with their potential

connection to the ‘real world’ or in other words, daily life, favoring elusiveness in their time

7. Jane Yolen, Briar Rose, New York, Tom Doherty Associates, 1993, 3.8. J. Yolen, ibid.9. As Ruth B. Bottigheimer suggests in her book Fairy Tales, A New History, Albany, N.Y., Excelsior editions,State University of New York Press, 2009, 18-22.10. Longman Dictionary of contemporary English, Harlow, Essex, England, Longman, 1989, 392.11. R. B. Bottigheimer, op. cit., 41.12. R. B. Bottigheimer, op. cit., 4.13. R. B. Bottigheimer, ibid.

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and space settings. Where, when, and even who did not matter. What mattered was the fairy

tale’s ability to entertain and to make the reader dream (of a happy marriage—preferably with

royalty14,—of a better life free of want and so on...) Indeed one of the hallmarks of the fairy

tale is the sudden acquisition of wealth, which must have strongly resonated among the

literate but poor readers in early modern cities whose dreams included that of getting rich.15

Having established that the fairy tale is neither a folk tale nor just a story about fairies,

we may now turn to scholars for a more accurate description of the genre. J. R. R. Tolkien

gives perhaps the most poetic description of what he calls the realm of fairy story:

The realm of fairy story is wide and deep and high and filled with many things: allmanner of beasts and birds are found there; shoreless seas and stars uncounted; beautythat is an enchantment, and an ever present peril; both joy and sorrow as sharp asswords.16

Faerie contains many things besides elves and fays, and besides dwarfs, witches,trolls, giants, or dragons: it holds the seas, the sun, the moon, the sky; and the earth,and all things that are in it: tree and bird, water and stone, wine and bread, andourselves, mortal men, when we are enchanted.17

At first glance, the land of fairies doesn't seem that different from the land of men. It appears

to be a place where our senses are heightened, our perceptions of things more astute, as

suggested by the images of joy and sorrow “as sharp as swords”. Tolkien does specify that

“Faerie [is] the realm or state in which fairies have their being.”18 He further writes that

“Faerie itself may perhaps most nearly be translated by Magic—but it is magic of a peculiar

mood and power”, a magic, he writes, that must not be “laughed at nor explained away.”19 His

definition encompasses any story “which touches on or uses Faerie, whatever its own main

purpose may be: satire, adventure, morality, fantasy.”20 Tolkien's view of the fairy tale appears

rather inclusive, open to a variety to genres as well as mortal men, when they are

“enchanted”. We could read into this metaphor and surmises he is referring to readers under

the spell of the written work, or the spell of this lasting suspension of disbelief. Thus,

explaining the magic in such a text would come back to breaking the spell that has been cast

upon the reader, effectively banishing him or her from the realm of Faerie. Tolkien hints at

14. Even today, we are prompt to label “fairy tale-like” the wedding of a member of a royal family to a“commoner.”15. R. B. Bottigheimer, op. cit., 20.16. J. R. R. Tolkien, "On Fairy Stories", 1939, 2.17. J. R. R. Tolkien, op. cit., 4.18. J. R. R. Tolkien, op. cit., 2.19. J. R. R. Tolkien, op. cit., 4.20. J. R. R. Tolkien, ibid.

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the following suggestion: for readers to appreciate fairy tales, they must first believe in them.

But let us not get ahead of ourselves, as we will later discuss the few requirements for a

successful read of such texts.

2. The structural approach

We now turn to the Russian formalist Vladimir Propp who identifies the fairy tale

narratives based purely on their structure, giving the following definitions:

[…] a fairy tale is a story built upon the proper alternation of the above-citedfunctions in various forms, with some of them absent from each story and with othersrepeated.21

Morphologically, a tale may be termed any development proceeding from villainy or alack, through intermediary functions to marriage, or to other functions employed as adénouement.22

Out of context, those definitions require further explanation, notably in regards to the

functions of the dramatis personae of the tale, on which Propp based his whole

morphological approach. According to Propp, these functions constitute the fundamental

component of a tale. Moreover, their number is limited.23 Indeed, Propp lists about 30

functions, which go from “absentation” (“one of the members of a family absents himself

from home”24) to wedding through interdiction, violation, villainy, departure, struggle,

victory, return and so forth. Furthermore, he asserts that the sequence of functions is always

identical, which prompts him to conclude that all fairy tales are of one type in regards to their

structure.25 Though crucial for the grasping of the inner workings of the fairy tale, this

structural definition does not take into account the importance of plot or narrative trajectory.

In this regard, Bottigheimer argues that

it is not motifs structure, or happy endings alone that define fairy tales, but the overallplot trajectory of individual tales in conjunction with those fairy tale elements allbrought together within a “compact” narrative […].26

She furthermore distinguishes two types of fairy tale narratives: restoration fairy tales on one

hand, “firmly based in the world of human beings,”27 that tell the story of a royal family

21. Vladimir Propp, Morphology of the folktale, Austin, University of Texas Press, 2009, 99.22. V. Propp, op. cit., 92.23. V. Propp, op. cit., 21.24. V. Propp, op. cit., 26.25. V. Propp, op. cit., 22-23.26. R. B. Bottigheimer, op. cit., 9.27. R. B. Bottigheimer, op. cit., 10.

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member who falls into disgrace and who thus must “suffer hardships and trials [in order to

be] restored to a throne […].”28 Rise fairy tales on the contrary feature an initially poor hero

or heroine whose adventures ultimately lead to the liquidation of the misfortune or lack and

to a (happy and royal) marriage and ascent to the throne.

If we were to categorize The Princess Bride according to this classification, we would

need to look at the beginning and the end of the story to compare the initial statuses of the

characters with what they have achieved by the end of their adventures. Buttercup the

milkmaid and Westley the farm boy are both poor to begin with, and by the end of the book,

they do seem a little better off. Although the state of their actual wealth is not known,

Buttercup has become a princess over the course of her engagement to Prince Humperdinck,

and Westley now plays the part of the most fearsome pirate ever to have sailed the seas.

Given their definitely improved status, we could certainly see this tale as of the “rising” kind.

However, instead of a happy ending, we have a most uncertain one, as the story brutally stops

in the middle of a pursuit featuring Buttercup and Westley being chased by their enemy,

Humperdinck.

In light of Propp’s morphological sequence, certain functions seemed to have been

shuffled around as your typical tale would never end with a pursuit, but with a wedding.

However, having determined earlier that the tale is unfinished, it is not surprising after all that

our story lacks a wedding. The other oddity resides in an element that seems to have often

been overlooked in classic fairy tales: love. Indeed, it is not one of the functions identified by

Propp, but if we were to couple it with the function ‘wedding,’ we realize that it would

usually close the tale. However, Goldman warns us against pairing love with wedding, as

illustrated by this dialogue between Buttercup and Prince Humperdinck:

“I’ll never love you.”“I wouldn’t want it if I had it.”“Then by all means let us marry” (p. 90).

And indeed, love in The Princess Bride does not end the story but makes a sensational debut

very early in the narrative, even before anything else happens. In fact, it is love that triggers

Westley’s departure, which also happens to be Propp’s first function: absentation It is

followed by an interdiction, implicit in the case of Buttercup who tells herself that she “must

never love again” (p. 69). Propp’s third function, the violation of said interdiction,

28. R. B. Bottigheimer, ibid.

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corresponds to Buttercup’s forced engagement to Prince Humperdinck. Propp did note that

“interdictions are always broken and […] deceitful proposals are always accepted […].”29

The kidnapping of Buttercup brings about another function: that of lack, which triggers the

hero’s quest. (What makes Westley the hero is the fact that he is “that character who […]

directly suffers from the action of the villain […].”30) The man in black/Westley sets out after

his love and on his way, is attacked and tested; he overcomes his opponents and gains two

allies in the process (functions XII, XIII and XIV.31)

Apart for the previously mentioned peculiarities, the plot of The Princess Bride

matches quite effectively the Proppian sequences which anchor any given fairy-tale storyline.

Several fairy tale motifs are also featured, such as transformation (Buttercup becomes

Princess of Hammersmith and Westley turns into the Dread Pirate Roberts) and marriage to

death (no sooner is Buttercup’s engagement to the Prince made public that she is kidnapped

and taken toward Guilder where “she must be found dead” p. 103).

However, one element seems to be lacking, and that is magic. The “provision or

receipt of a magical agent”32 is a necessary proppian function. And Bottigheimer notes that

“the Aarne-Thompson-Uther Types of International Folktales avoids the term “fairy tale”

altogether, instead designating [them] as 'Tales of Magic.'”33 Yet, no matter how fairy-tale-

like The Princess Bride may be, there are no magical elements or beings of any kind featured

in the story. One may mention Fezzik the Giant for his extraordinary size and strength, but

apart from these exaggerated features, he does not possess otherworldly attributes. Turning

Buttercup the milkmaid into the Princess of Hammersmith is not done without pain or with

the help of a fairy godmother. In fact, it takes Buttercup three years of training to become a

suitable fiancée for the king-to-be Prince Humperdinck. (In this instance, we could say that

the metatextual narrative is Goldman’s wand as he spares us some 105 pages by the magic of

his abridgment, summarizing them into this single sentence: “What with one thing and

another, three years passed” p. 94.) Miracle men and “holocaust cloaks” (basically a fire-

proof cape) are the closest we get to wizards and magical items. The term wizard does appear

in the text on several occasions, in reference to Inigo. But the definition of wizard in The

Princess Bride is not that of a person who can perform magic. It is Yeste, a friend of Inigo's

29. V. Propp., op. cit., 30.30. V. Propp., op. cit., 50.31. V. Propp., op. cit., 39-45.32. V. Propp., op. cit., 43.33. R. B. Bottigheimer, op. cit., 8.

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father, who gives us the following meaning: “It is the rank beyond master in swordsmanship”

(p. 139). A wizard of the blade if you will. As for the “resurrection pill,” it takes more after

medical science than witchcraft. We may postulate that it is Goldman’s attempt at

verisimilitude which motivated his choice to eschew any enchanting or sorcerous

phenomenon or artifacts. If indeed the author was aiming for a realistic narrative, taking a

closer look at what is at stake in literary realism could give us a new outlook on the story.

3. The stakes of literary realism

The problematic of literary realism and credibility in fiction is not new. In On the Art

of Poetry, one of the earliest essays on dramatic theory in history, Aristotle reminds us that

“Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.”34 This statement,

quoted many times over the centuries, opposes two different notions: plausibility versus truth.

For a better understanding of Aristotle's phrase, I would like to quote nineteenth-century

French author Charles Nodier, known mostly for his tales of fantasy (contes fantastiques),

who once wrote:

J'ai dit souvent que je détestais le vrai dans les arts, […] mais je n'ai jamais porté lemême jugement du vraisemblable et du possible, qui me paraissent de premièrenécessité dans toutes les compositions de l'esprit.35

Nodier considered vraisemblance a necessity in fiction, as opposed to truth, which he

abhored. Indeed, a true story may not leave room for the element of surprise, which Nodier

admits he enjoys. But as a reader, he does not want to be played for a fool:

Je consens à être étonné ; je ne demande pas mieux que d'être étonné, et je croisvolontiers ce qui m'étonne le plus, mais je ne veux pas que l'on se moque de macrédulité […].36

In his essay on the Roman d'Aventure, Jacques Rivière expresses a similar demand:

En somme, lorsque nous exigeons du roman nouveau qu'il soit écrit selon lesprincipes classiques, tout ce que nous demandons, c'est que son auteur, tandis qu'il lefaçonne dans son imagination, imite le scrupule de la pensée pure ; nous voulons quela fantaisie se comporte dans son domaine comme la raison dans le sien.37

Thomas C. Foster, a university professor and author of what we could call popular literature

books, illustrates this request with an extreme (and extremely funny) example:

34. Aristotle, Horace, Longinus, T. S. Dorsch (translator), Classical Literary Criticism, Harmondsworth,Penguin Books, 1965, 68.35. Charles Nodier, La Fée aux Miettes, Paris, Flammarion, 1989, 116.36. C. Nodier, ibid.37. Jacques Rivière, Le Roman d'Aventure, Paris, Editions de Syrtes, 2000, 43.

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The novel may or may not obey the laws of our universe, but it must certainly obeythe laws of its own. If we're reading a novel by, say, Henry James, and a hobbit turnsup, we're not buying. […] When a hobbit turns up in a work by J. R. R. Tolkien, onthe other hand, we're not surprised in the least. […] Internal consistency, then, is oneof the main things an audience demands of a literary work.38

In other words, authors (who are also readers) acknowledge the fact that fiction is not

required to follow the same scrupulous guidelines as philosophical essays or historic

accounts, but it does have to follow its own equally rigorous set of rules at the risk of

alienating its readers. Furthermore, French literary theorist Roland Barthes notes that

vraisemblance is not even required in a text, as long as the constraints of the descriptive

genre are upheld:

la description n'est assujettie à aucun réalisme ; peu importe sa vérité (ou même savraisemblance) ; il n'y a aucune gêne à placer des lions ou des oliviers dans un paysnordique ; seule compte la contrainte du genre descriptif ; le vraisemblable n'est pasici référentiel, mais ouvertement discursif : ce sont les règles génériques du discoursqui font la loi.39

An author then is allowed to write anything, but not in just any way. The constraints imposed

on texts deal with its form, not its content. In other words, Goldman is perfectly free to create

kingdoms such as Guilder and Florin and fit them into Europe, as long as his narrative stays

coherent.

Tackling the subject of reader's expectations and aspirations, Rivière suggests that the

“new novel” as he calls it must first and foremost create something real: “Nous attendons un

roman […] dont tout l'intérêt se réduira à ceci qu'avant il y avait quelque chose qui n'existait

pas et que maintenant ça existe.”40 This statement hints at the novel's creative power. Yolen,

quoting Aristotle, elaborates: “I think those of us who write fantasy are dedicated to making

impossible things seem likely, making dreams seem real.”41 What we can take away from this

last quote is that, if authors should aim at realism when writing fiction, authors of fantasy are

under even more pressure to make their stories absolutely believable, rigorously plausible,

and utterly realistic.

But we have yet to define realism. NTC’s Dictionary of Literary Terms gives the

following definition:

38. Thomas C. Foster, How to Read Novels Like a Professor, New York, Harper Collins, Publishers, 2008, 82.39. Roland Barthes, « L'effet de réel » in Littérature et Réalité, Paris, Éditions du Seuil, 1982, 84.40. J. Rivière, op. cit., 62.41. J. Yolen, op. cit., 4.

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Generally, accuracy in the portrayal of life or reality, or verisimilitude; a recurringgoal in literature, often seen in contrast to the aims of romanticism, impressionism,and expressionism.42

It also defines verisimilitude as “the appearance of truth, actuality, or reality; what seems to

be true in fiction.”43 The logical follow-up question an author would ask at this point is: how

does one achieve verisimilitude—or realism―in one's narrative?

Throughout the history of literature, authors have sometimes gone to great length to

confer credibility or realness to their story. Ruth B. Bottigheimer reminds us that in early

fairy tales, storytellers

tried to create a sense of verisimilitude by making it seem likely that the particulargroup of people shown in the (fictitious) frame tale had (really) gathered and toldstories.44

Driven by their desire “to foster believability,” they aimed at creating the illusion that “both

the tellings and the plots did, or could well have taken place.”45 Inserting a frame tale into the

narrative was a way of conveying believability.

Rivière on the other hand states that, in order to achieve reality, the novel requires

complexity. He writes the following about events and characters in a novel: “Un évènement

ou un personnage imaginé commencent à prendre vie à mesure qu'ils se compliquent”.46 He

mentions all these little details that are added to one another (“tous ces détails qui s'ajoutent

les uns aux autres”) and end up forming such a difficult and absurd knot that it cannot be

undone (“un certain noeud si difficile, si absurde qu'il ne peut pas être défait”).47 This knot

refers to what he calls “quelque chose qui existe”, which can be seen and felt: “nous le

voyons, nous éprouvons directement sa présence; nous sommes mis en contact immédiat avec

le réel.”48

For Barthes also, the realism of a work of fiction lies precisely (and exclusively)

within the abundance of details: “la litterature réaliste est, certes, narrative, mais c'est parce

que le réalisme est en elle seulement parcellaire, erratique, confiné aux « détails » [...]”.49 And

the accumulation of these details in a text generate what he calls the “reality effect” or effet

42. Kathleen Morner, Ralph Rausch, NTC’s Dictionary of Literary Terms, Lincolnwood, Illinois, NationalTextbook Co., 1994, 182.43. K. Morner, R. Rausch, op. cit., 233.44. R. B. Bottigheimer, op. cit., 77.45. R. B. Bottigheimer, ibid. 46. J. Rivière, op. cit., 61.47. J. Rivière, ibid.48. J. Rivière, op. cit., 62.49. R. Barthes, op. cit., 88-89.

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de réel.50 With its 450 pages and its multiple voices and narratives, which we shall explore

later, it is fair to say that The Princess Bride does not lack details and qualifies as a complex

novel.

As for German literary scholar Wolfgang Iser, “it is [the] very shifting of perspectives

that makes us feel that a novel is more 'true-to-life.'”51 Iser, citing nineteenth-century English

novelist William Makepeace Thackeray, uses the expression “sentiment of reality”, which

“implies the novel does not represent reality itself, but aims rather at producing an idea of

how reality can be experienced.”52 Gaining the “sentiment of reality” requires the reader to

“participate in the organization of events.”53 The reader is thus asked to actively participate in

the creation of this fictional reality presented to him through novelist narratives. How he or

she should go about doing that is the subject of our next chapter.

50. R. Barthes, ibid.51. Wolfgang Iser, The Implied Reader, Baltimore, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980, 288.52. W. Iser, op. cit., 104.53. W. Iser, ibid.

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II. How to read The Princess Bride?

1. Reader profiling

The reader-response criticism is a theory which advocates the importance of the

reader whose apprehension of the text through the act of reading must be taken into

consideration when studying any literary text. Iser notes that “the study of a literary work

should concern not only the actual text but also, and in equal measure, the actions involved in

responding to that text.”54 Indeed, the meaning of any text is not just produced by the author

himself but it is also in part constructed by the reader. Roland Barthes is notably known for

having argued in favor of the purposely provocative “death of the author” in order to “give

writing its future” by “giv[ing] birth to the reader.”55 It is thus important to identify the

author’s intended public if any before attempting to figure out how to read a given book.

Goldman, being the prolific author that he is, has dedicated a whole chapter to the

genesis of The Princess Bride in his autobiographical screenwriter’s manual Which Lie Did I

Tell? That is how we learn that his first intended readers (or listeners rather) were his two

daughters, who had asked him for a story about princesses and brides, respectively.56

Goldman admits “it was to be a kid’s saga.”57 What remains of the initial children story are

the “silly names” of Buttercup and Humperdinck. But the first pages he wrote disappeared,

“as did the notion of writing something for [children]”.58 The Princess Bride’s intended

readership is thus of the mature kind. Goldman does not elaborate but goes on describing the

creative process behind his writing. Now, it is left up to us to figure out what kind of reader

he wants us to be.

Why is it relevant to address the profile of the reader? In his Rhetoric of Fiction,

American critic Wayne C. Booth writes:

54. Wolfgang Iser, The Act of Reading, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981, 20-21.55. Roland Barthes, Image, Music, Text, London, Fontana, 1977, 148.56. W. Goldman, Which Lies Did I Tell?, op. cit., 22.57. W. Goldman, Which Lies Did I Tell? op. cit., 22.58. W. Goldman, Which Lies Did I Tell? op. cit., 23.

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The author creates, in short, an image of himself and another image of his reader; hemakes his reader, as he makes his second self, and the most successful reading is onein which the created selves, author and reader, can find complete agreement.59

This would mean that within a text lie two images: one of its author and one of its reader. And

these “images” can only “meet” through the act of reading. To clarify this notion, let us turn

to Wolfgang Iser, who insists on the distinction that must be made “between the man who

writes the book (author), the man whose attitudes shape the book (implied author), and the

man who communicates directly with the reader (narrator).”60

He notes that “The narrator, of course, is not always to be identified with the implied

author.”61 For Booth, “the implied author of each novel is someone with whose beliefs on all

subjects I must largely agree if I am to enjoy his work.”62

Obviously, readers aim at a successful read, or “a good read” as Doody calls it, “for

what we must do is acknowledge that we are reading.”63And in order to do that, we must

identify both the implied author and the “fictitious reader”64as Iser calls him or her and whom

he describes as follows:

He is generally an embodiment of particular, contemporary dispositions―he is aperspective rather than a person, and as such he takes his place alongside (andintermingled with) the other perspectives of narrator, characters, and plot.65

Tzvetan Todorov, in his study of the Fantastic, gives a similar clue as to the perception of this

implicit reader: “La perception de ce lecteur implicite est inscrite dans le texte, avec la même

précision que le sont les mouvements des personnages.”66 Doody also notes that “There is

always to be a precise, skeptical reader at the other end, a scrupulosus lector, weighing and

thinking about what is going on.”67 This statement suggests that authors take into account all

possible readers when crafting a text.

In order to illustrate this statement, let us look at the way Goldman allows this

implicit reader to make his voice heard within the text. Narrator-Goldman never fails to give

the most accurate time and date settings surrounding a particular event. On the other hand,

59. Wayne C. Booth, The Rhetoric of Fiction, Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 1983, 138.60. W. Iser, The Implied Reader, op. cit., 103.61. W. Iser, The Implied Reader, ibid.62. W. C. Booth, op. cit., 137.63. Margaret Anne Doody, The True Story of the Novel, New Brunswick, Rutgers University Press, 1996, 143.64. W. Iser, The Act of Reading, op. cit., 153.65. W. Iser, The Act of Reading, ibid.66. Tzvetan Todorov, Introduction à la littérature fantastique, Paris, Editions du Seuil, 1976, 36.67. M. A. Doody, op. cit., 155. Emphasis in the original.

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the narrative voice supposedly created by Morgenstern does not concern himself with such

precision. The repetition of the words before and after (“this was before glamour” p. 46; “this

was after mirrors” p. 40) throughout the first chapter (and beyond) denotes a dual and most

contradictory motivation: exactitude and ambiguity. Providing clues to the reader as to when

the story took place balances off the game author-Goldman plays with us, prompting with

each instance of the phrases “this was before...” and “this was after...” additional frustration

caused by our inability to effectively determine the era referred to (and with reason). Author-

Goldman is well aware of this, and voices the reader's annoyance through Denise, the copy

editor, who according to narrator-Goldman “had never been as emotional in the margins with

[him] before” (p. 47). Denise asks questions such as “How can it be before Europe but after

Paris?” and makes statements which perfectly reflect the reader's own state of mind at this

point: “I am going crazy. What am I to make of these parentheses? When does this book take

place? I don’t understand anything. Hellllppppp!!!” (pp. 46-47). Author-Goldman gives the

fictitious reader (and by extension, the actual reader) a rather explicit voice in his narrative.

The unique experience of reading one's thoughts onto the page bears witness to the

playfulness of the novel. We could also read it as a wink at the reader, as if the author was

saying: “look what I can do!”

One can argue that there is evidently not just one possible fictitious reader, as there is

not just one way to read a text, but there are not that many either. In fact, American critic

Louise Rosenblatt identifies only two ways to approach a text. She notes that “the same text

may be read either efferently or aesthetically.”68 These two approaches distinguish themselves

by their focus, which targets either the meaning the text provides (i.e. “what will remain as

the residue after the reading”69), or the pleasure one may derive from its content (i.e. “what

happens during the actual reading event”70). The term “focus” here allows for a meaningful

metaphor: we could compare the efferent approach to a close-up reading, while the aesthetic

stance could be paralleled with a global vision of the text.

To sum up, we may say that the efferent reader of The Princess Bride will have a

different reading experience from the aesthetic reader. And the final conclusion both are

bound to draw once they turn the last page will differ as well, depending on each reader’s

mindset (or ‘stance,’ to use Rosenblatt’s terminology)—which ultimately affects our response

68. Louise Rosenblatt, The Reader, the Text, the Poem: the Transactional Theory of the Literary Work,Carbondale, Southern Illinois University Press, 1994, 25.69. L. Rosenblatt, op. cit., 23.70. L. Rosenblatt, op. cit., 24.

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to/interaction with the text. Our analysis will first focus on the benefits (and pitfalls) of an

aesthetic reading of the text before taking a step back to look at the issues it manages to bring

up from an efferent perspective.

2. To believe or not to believe?

Nodier, writing about his preferred readership, once wrote the following:

si je refaisais jamais une histoire fantastique, je la ferais autrement. Je la feraisseulement pour les gens qui ont l'inappréciable bonheur de croire, les honnêtespaysans de mon village, les aimables et sages enfants qui n'ont pas profité del'enseignement mutuel, et les poètes de pensée et de coeur qui ne sont pas del'Académie.71

He was basically wishing for the readers of his works of fantasy to believe in the stories,

stating that the ability to do so procures happiness. However, such ability requires an innocent

heart and a mind untainted by schooling and academic teachings. His targeted audience can

be paralleled with efferent readers, those who take pleasure in reading.

Booth writes from a reader’s point of view the following statement: “I must

subordinate my mind and heart to the book if I am to enjoy it to the full.”72 In the introduction

to her novel The Left Hand of Darkness, science fiction author Ursula K. Le Guin declares

the following: “Distrust everything I say. I am telling the truth.”73 The reason for this parallel

between the above statements is to show the existence of a tacit pact between author and

reader—pact which, on the one hand basically allows the author to tell the most outrageous

lies, and on the other hand asks of the reader to believe in them unconditionally, at least while

the reading lasts. To define lie in narrative terms, we could reflect on what the truth is, by

contrast. To do so, I turn to René Wellek and Austin Warren for an accurate definition:

There is factual truth, truth in specific detail of time and place – truth of history in thenarrow sense. Then there is philosophic truth: conceptual, propositional, general.From the points of view of 'history', so defined, and philosophy, imaginative literatureis 'fiction', a lie.74

This take on fiction, proper to the early eighteenth century in particular (but not only), has

much evolved. Indeed, Le Guin defines the truth as a lie, a symbol, and a metaphor, only to

71. C. Nodier, op. cit., 119.72. W. C. Booth, op. cit., 138.73. Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness, New York, Ace Books, 2000, xvii.74. René Wellek, Austin Warren, Theory of Literature, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, Penguin Books, 1966, 212-213.

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conclude later that “all fiction is metaphor.”75 To understand precisely what she means, we

must first clarify our understanding of the trope that is the metaphor. The Chicago School of

Media Theory, in its online glossary, provides an extensive definition, of which I have

selected the following statements:

metaphors are often a way of describing an abstract concept with accessible tools.

An inventive metaphor represents an inventive thought, a new connection discovered.

A fresh metaphor is a kind of puzzle for the mind.76

All these statements hint at the inherent didactic quality of the metaphor, which is meant to

show us or teach us something new about ourselves, about fiction. Stating that “all fiction is

metaphor” suggests that there are new things to be discovered, new lessons to be learned in

every fictional text.

I would like to quote Nodier again, as he had some thoughts on the matter:

Pour intéresser dans le conte fantastique, il faut d'abord se faire croire, et qu'unecondition indispensable pour se faire croire, c'est de croire. Cette condition une foisdonnée, on peut aller hardiment et dire tout ce que l'on veut.77

Believing, Nodier suggests, is a requirement for readers of the fantastique, a genre French

scholars define as follows : “le fantastique fait […] violence au rationnel ou à la

perception.”78 However, Nodier did not indend for his phrase “say anything one wants” to

mean “anything goes”. As we have seen earlier, Nodier does not want the author to mock his

credulity.79 One may wonder why it is relevant to study the fantastique. The reason for this is

outlined in the statement below:

[si le fantastique] jette un trouble, c'est parce qu'il est une enquête sur l'ordre deschoses (ou leur désordre), sur les dimensions du réel et sur la représentation qu'il estpossible d'en avoir.80

75. The etymology of the term metaphor can be traced back to the Greek tropeïn (‘to turn’) which gave the word'trope'. It thus refers to a moment in the text where the meaning turns, undergoes some kind of torsion. It isHenry James’s turn of the screw. When such torsion, such shift is applied to language, all fictional undertakingbecomes a constant reconstruction of meaning.76. Abraham Orden, Metaphor-metonymy. Available at: http://csmt.uchicago.edu/glossary2004/metaphormetonym.htm[view date: April 29, 2015]77. C. Nodier, op. cit., 118.78. Héloïse Raccah-Neefs, « Champs de lectures », in Mérimée, La Vénus d'Ille et autres nouvelles, Paris,Flammarion, 1982, 266.79. C. Nodier, op. cit., 116.80. H. Raccah-Neefs, op. cit., 266.

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An efferent stance allows the reader to be aware of this fact when picking up a work of

fiction, while an aesthetic stance will focus on forgetting “that [one] is reading a pure

invention, a history that never took place anywhere but in that unlocalizable region, the

author’s mind.”81 Both reading experiences are, however, not mutually exclusive. The reader

may constantly be shifting from one stance to another. We may not even be consciously

aware of it, but as we read, we do make choices of either stepping back to look at the broader

picture, or stepping in and being immersed in the world of fiction that is presented to us.

In The Princess Bride, Goldman addresses directly the reader in this regard, asking

him or her to choose a stance by first suggesting that “this [story] isn’t real; it never

happened” (p. 47), then by immediately denying it, claiming that in fact it did happen (p. 47).

Finally, he leaves the choice (to believe in the story or not) to the reader, requesting him to

decide between an aesthetic and an efferent approach: “All I can suggest to you is, if the

parentheses bug you, don’t read them” (p. 47). These parentheses are scattered throughout the

text to provide ‘clues’ as to when the story took place (although the more clues are given, the

more clueless we actually are). By choosing not to read them, we discard the possibility that

the events ever took place, thus taking an efferent stance vis-à-vis the text. By reading them,

we allow ourselves to be drawn into/fooled by the diegetic illusion that is constructed within

the text. But Goldman knows that ultimately, this choice is ours to make.

So what are we to do? Le Guin openly admits her penchant for the aesthetic reader,

whom she calls the “attentive ear” (the one who pays attention to the “harmonic sequence” of

a sentence or paragraph) as opposed to the “attentive intellect”, less aware of the music

behind the words, and thus potentially missing out on a clearer grasp of the text.82 She goes

on giving the following advice: “In reading a novel, any novel, we have to know perfectly

well that the whole thing is nonsense, and then, while reading, believe every word of it.”83

This is Le Guin’s rewording of the well-known “willing suspension of disbelief” concept,

initially coined by English poet and critic Samuel Taylor Coleridge in his Biographia

Literaria.84 Coleridge used it to define “poetic faith,” required to believe in the “dramatic

truth” of emotions stirred by “incidents and agents [that] were to be, in part at least,

supernatural […].”85 Patricia Waugh points out that it is precisely because of our ability to

81. U. K. Le Guin, op. cit., xvi.82. U. K. Le Guin, op. cit., xviii.83. U. K. Le Guin, ibid.84. This book is available online, at Project Gutenberg [http://www.gutenberg.org].85. S. T. Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, available at http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/6081/pg6081.html [viewdate: August 25, 2011]

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“suppress the knowledge [that what we are reading is not ‘real’] in order to increase our

enjoyment”—or in other words, our willingness to “suspend our disbelief”—that we can read

novels.86 What she is suggesting here is that the notion of pleasure is clearly contingent upon

the reader’s ability to transcend his or her referential reality in order to accept as “real” the

characters and events presented to him or her in the text.

Le Guin claims that “Sanity returns (in most cases) when the book is closed.”87 This

echoes Booth’s own conclusion:

One of the most common reading experiences is, in fact, the discovery on reflectionthat […] the beliefs which we were temporarily manipulated into accepting cannot bedefended in the light of day.88

In my opinion, the two key words in the above comment are “temporarily” and “reflection.”

The aesthetic stance is a temporary stance that ends with the book only to be followed by the

adoption of an efferent stance. In other words, after the enjoyment comes the thoughtful

reflection. We have been fooled into believing in a fictitious world, but now that we are done

reading, we ought to take a step back and look at the work through critical lenses. However,

there are numerous aesthetic readers of The Princess Bride (including myself) whose sanity

did not return after the book was closed. Our suspension of disbelief lasted beyond the book.

I refer to the illusions that some readers have maintained after having read the text, including

the illusion that Simon Morgenstern was the actual author, and the illusion that narrator-

Goldman and author-Goldman are one.

3. Lasting suspension of disbelief

How many readers of The Princess Bride have thought to themselves, after turning the

last page of the book, “I really would like to read the unabridged version”? Some of us may

even have googled Simon Morgenstern to try to get our hands on that elusive book, only to

realize that all our searches lead back to Goldman’s release. We eventually went back to our

senses and figured Morgenstern was but a literary hoax. It is easy to dismiss us as gullible

fools. I, for one, certainly felt quite foolish after having had to admit the nonexistence of

Morgenstern. This led me to wonder about the act of reading itself: what exactly took place

during this act of reading? How come my own suspension of disbelief lasted beyond the

text? I realized that in fiction, they are processes at work that are far more complex than I

86. P. Waugh op. cit., 33.87. U. K. Le Guin, op. cit., xvi.88. W. C. Booth, op. cit., 139.

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first suspected. In fact, the literary devices featured in The Princess Bride are so efficient that

some readers are still under the “spell”, as illustrated by some of the feedbacks given by

readers of The Princess Bride on the online retail site Amazon.com. Some readers, like the

commentators below, admit to having being fooled by the novelistic device:

“I would have liked to read the whole story.” (Amy, from Washington DC, USA);

“I can't seem to find an original copy anywhere (…)” (Anonymous reader).89

“I was one of those people who thought that this book was actually written byMorgenstern.” (Joel Nicholson)90

“(…) for a while I believed it!” (Taylor)91

On the other hand, there are commentators who perpetuate the novel's trick, turning into

“accomplices” by fueling the illusion of the existence of another book:

“If you want to read the Princess Bride, try getting the original by S. Morgenstern.”(Anonymous reader);

“Bypass this abridgement and seek rather for the original masterpiece.” (Anonymousreader);

“This is an okay substitute to the original (…)” (Okami);

The book gathers over 1500 customer reviews92, many of which could also be quoted here.

These samples are however sufficiently relevant and illustrate this common “lasting (and

quite oblivious) suspension of disbelief.”. The first reviewers are under the impression that an

“original” book exists. This raises the following relevant question: how could it be that a

work of fiction could have made (some of) us believe in its fictive reality?

It is also interesting to note that among the commentators quoted above, those who

have poorly rated the book are the ones who also express disappointment, sharing their

sentiment of betrayal, of having being duped—the irony being that they do not know to what

extent. On the other hand, those praising the book have also admitted having been fooled by

it, testifying to the “genius” of Goldman. Feelings of discontent or satisfaction after reading a

book are directly linked to the readers’ expectations.

89. I am quoting these reviews with the permission of the Amazon.com website.90. The rest of the review says: “Upon finding out that the entire book was the genius imagination of WilliamGoldman (including putting himself into his own story and making up complete "abridgment" notes), I was inawe with how well put together this story is.”91. The reviewer also writes: “And the fact that he was "taking" it from S. Morgenstern's "classic" made it allthe more enjoyable, and showed he was truly a talented writer.”92. As of May 12, 2015. The reviews online are available at http://amzn.com/0156035219.

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In the case of The Princess Bride, the book’s adaptation on the big screen (under the

same title) ranked number 3 on its wide opening weekend in October of 1987, making over

$4 million in four days.93 Nominated at the Academy Awards for its title song, “Storybook

love”, it is fair to say that the film did not go unnoticed. However, some argue that the film

“didn't do particularly well during its initial theatrical release, earning a middling $30

million.”94 According to the same article, “the movie only acquired a rabid fanbase some

years later when viewers began to discover it on VHS and DVD.” With numerous video and

DVD releases, the film has given the book (which had been released fourteen years earlier) a

second life by widening its audience to lovers of the big-screen adaptation. However, those

who have seen the film before reading the book may be setting themselves up for frustration.

Indeed, while the film focuses on the love story and the adventures of Buttercup and the

Dread Pirate Roberts, the book does not. What the book does is provide a unique reading

experience by taking the “dialogue that the author wishes to conduct with his reader”95 to a

whole new level. In the following chapter, we will take a closer look at the writing choices

and strategies that have contributed to creating such a unique reading experience.

93. The exact numbers are available at http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=princessbride.htm [viewdate:February 27, 2013]94. Reed Tucker, “Inside the Hilarious Making of 'The Princess Bride'”, New York Post, October 12, 2014.[http://nypost.com/2014/10/12/true-tales-from-the-cult-classic-the-princess-bride/] [view date:April 25, 2015]95. W. Iser, op. cit., 102.

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III. Passing fantasy off as reality

1. Imitating life

From a reader’s perspective, verisimilitude definitely enriches the reading experience

and increases the gratification we gain from it. As Bottigheimer noted, the frame tale of a

story may be considered a narrative device whose purpose is precisely verisimilitude.

Furthermore, Waugh points out that “the outer frame always defines ‘reality’.”96 A look at the

outer frame of The Princess Bride confirms this assertion. The “reality” it describes is indeed

quite familiar to ours. The narrator travels in a world filled with familiar landmarks such as

New York or Los Angeles, interacts with persons and entities that are present in our “reality”

(such as the publishing house Random House along with celebrities like Stephen King, André

the Giant—in fact, he talks about the whole cast of the film), makes well-known cultural

references (mentioning authors such as Robert Louis Stevenson, Sir Walter Scott, Alexandre

Dumas, and Victor Hugo), and refers to existing books and films (for instance, Butch Cassidy

and the Sundance Kid, and The Stepford Wives, both incidentally penned by Goldman). The

result for the reader is a sense of acquaintance with the narrator’s surroundings.

So far, the text seems to stick to a rather straightforward realism. Narrator-Goldman

now recalls his time on the film set of The Princess Bride, which came out 1983. Between

takes, he sits down with actor Andre who plays Fezzik and they start talking. Andre admits to

having done “much resear” for his character (p. xiii). Curious, narrator-Goldman asks what

kind of research and Andre replies: “Eye clime thee cleefs” (p. xiii). Narrator-Goldman is

stunned. And so is the reader. At this point, narrator-Goldman, seeking confirmation, repeats:

“The Cliffs of Insanity?” (p. xiii) (emphasis in the original). The initial reaction of the reader

at this point would be to question the existence of said cliffs. The reader half-expects

narrator-Goldman to reflect this by saying something to the effect that this is simply an

absurd allegation to make. But narrator-Goldman's reaction, on the contrary, corroborates

Andre's statement. He turns to the reader for a brief comment: “You cannot imagine how

steep they are.” (p. xiii). We may not think much of this detail when we first read the book,

but it is the accumulation of such remarks that, little by little, contribute to the blurring of the

96. P. Waugh, op.cit., 110.

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boundaries between fiction and reality, as we have demonstrated in our first chapter, section

3, “The stakes of literary realism.”

After the lengthy introduction by William Goldman-the narrator, the voice of

Morgenstern eventually takes over (p. 39), but the readers are kept in terra cognita with the

mention of Paris, another ‘real’ landmark. An additional landmark of the authentic sort is then

mentioned (Bengal, India), followed by the plausible ‘Sussex on the Thames’ (p. 40). There is

no such place as Sussex on the Thames. However, there is a Sussex county in England, and

there is a Thames river. The random association of the two creates a fictitious place that still

retains a feeling of vraisemblance. In fact, if we had not looked it up, we might very well

have believed in the actual existence of this place. This is Goldman’s way of introducing

elements of fantasy into his so far likely story. As illustrated by the example above, these

elements are subtly and carefully scattered so as not to abruptly raise our suspicions regarding

their (un)likelihood. Yet without our knowing, we have entered the realm of the fantasy

genre, which lies precisely in indecisiveness. As Todorov notes, “c’est l’hésitation qui (…)

donne la vie [au fantastique].”97 He later adds the following comment: “L'hésitation du

lecteur est la première condition du fantastique.”98 If I were to transcribe this remark into a

reader’s observation, it could probably sound like the following: “I do not know this place

called Sussex on the Thames, but it certainly sounds as if it could actually exist. I simply am

not sure.”

It takes a while before the land of Florin and its geographical situation are eventually

brought up (p. 45). And when it is, it is only in relation to “where Sweden and Germany

would eventually settle” (p. 45). This piece of information is precise enough for the reader to

draw the conclusion that Florin is a European country, but vague enough to elude its exact

location in Europe. Goldman obviously counts on the implicit reader’s partial knowledge of

European geography to ‘squeeze’ this land of Florin into the vague map we are bound to draw

in our mind when given such geographical details. The ‘real’ landmarks are thus placed on

the same ‘level of existence’ or, in Waugh’s words, “share the same ontological status”99 as

the fictive locations which include Sussex on the Thames as well as Florin and its

neighboring kingdom Guilder, “the country that lay just across Florin Channel” (p. 82).

97. T. Todorov, op. cit., 35.98. T. Todorov, op. cit., 36. Emphasis in the original.99. P. Waugh, op. cit., 33.

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This notion of ontological status can also be understood in relation to diegesis. What

Genette refers to when talking of diegesis is the “spatiotemporal universe of the story.”100

When reading a text, we as readers are systematically placed on the same extradiegetic level

as the author and, by extension, the narrator. Narrator-Goldman is an extradiegetic narrator

because he “is on equal footing with the extradiegetic (real) public […].”101 As a

homodiegetic narrator (who “simulates autobiography”102), he utters a first narrative (the

outer frame) with its own diegesis. If we refer to the narrator’s level of narration as

extradiegetic, and to Buttercup’s level of narration as diegetic, then S. Morgenstern’s level of

narration would be qualified as metadiegetic according to Genette’s classification. Genette

uses the example of Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, whose story is told by the “fictive author”

Crusoe103. We could say that The Princess Bride is penned by “fictive author” S.

Morgenstern, but what of “fictive abridger” William Goldman? We are here faced with two

fictive authors, whose respective levels of narration are distinct from one another. Thus to

distinguish them, we refer to Morgenstern’s narrative as metadiegetic, a term which defines a

story within the story. Morgenstern’s voice in the text is that of a heterodiegetic narrator (who

“simulates historical narrative”104). He thus becomes the intradiegetic narrator uttering a

metadiegetic narrative (the narration within a narration.) Buttercup, Westley and

Humperdinck are thus metadiegetic characters.

Defining the various levels of diegesis within The Princess Bride seems quite

straightforward. We know precisely when we first enter the metadiegetic narrative (p. 39) as a

change of narrator is being operated. Yet it does not ‘feel’ as if we have entered a different

spatiotemporal universe. Indeed, when Buttercup is first mentioned, it is only to inform us of

her age when the events narrator-Morgenstern describes take place. That is how we know that

the year the French scullery maid named Annette was the most beautiful woman in the world

was the year Buttercup was born (p. 39). Once again, this overlapping of events puts

Buttercup and Paris on the same ontological level. We are hardly disoriented because the

author makes sure we always feel like we are in a diegetically coherent, unified environment.

Avoiding the mention of any precise date allows for the temporal factor to be rather universal.

The events seem to have taken place long ago, “before Voltaire” (p. 40), but then suddenly

the anachronistic appearance of Westley wearing “torn blue jeans” (p. 52) puts the story

100. G. Genette, Figures III, op. cit., 280.101. Gérard Genette, Narrative Discourse Revisited, Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 1990, 84.102. G. Genette, Narrative Discourse Revisited, op. cit., 77.103. Gérard Genette, Discours du récit, Paris, Éditions du Seuil, 2007, 238.104. G. Genette, Narrative Discourse Revisited, op.cit., 77.

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chronologically much closer to us than we had first assumed. By blurring the boundaries

between the different layers of diegesis, Goldman achieves continuity, permanence between

the now and the then, the here and the there. At the same time, he successfully creates what

Raccah-Neefs calls “hors-temps”:

Le passé fait irruption dans le présent, l'anachronisme renvoie le présent dans le passé.Le lecteur est pris dans cette instabilité déconcertante. Le récit fantastique se crée untemps qui lui est propore : hors-temps.105

This time-out-of-time can be seen as a clue pointing at the fictional nature of the events that

have been recorded and shared.

2. Metaleptic “stitches”

Genette defines metalepsis as the “deliberate transgression of the threshold of

embedding”106, giving the example of the author who “introduces himself into the fictive

action of the narrative or [that of the] character in that fiction [who] intrudes into the

extradiegetic existence of the author or reader […].”107 Despite the lack of temporal markers,

it is clear that the events described in the metadiegetic narrative took place before narrator-

Goldman’s time. Therefore, it is unlikely for narrator-Goldman to interfere in any way or

influence the outcome of a given situation within the metadiegetic plot. That said, there are

many intrusions on his part and on the part of other parties that “disturb, to say the least, the

distinction between levels.”108 These intrusions are what we shall call stitches, because they

have a purpose. The stitch, by definition, “is passed through a piece of material” 109 in order to

combine two pieces of fabric.The metaphor of the knitting stitch as a metaleptic device is one

I chose on purpose. It implies the mastery of one’s craft (storytelling, in this case). The

metaleptic stitch is inserted within a text to combine two or more diegeses. In order to

understand how these stitches work, where they are found in the text and what diegesis they

combine, I have compiled the following chart which illustrates the three levels of narration,

and distinguishes between three different sorts of stitches: people, places and objects.

105. H. Raccah-Neefs, op. cit., 269.106. G. Genette, Narrative Discourse Revisited, op.cit., 88.107. G. Genette, Narrative Discourse Revisited, ibid.108. G. Genette, Narrative Discourse Revisited, ibid.109. Merriam-Webster’s Learner’s Dictionary. The definition is available at http://www.learnersdictionary.com/search/stitch[view date: March 5, 2013]

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Metaleptic stitches

Extradiegetic stitches (narratorGoldman’s and readers’ diegesis)

Intradiegetic stitches(Morgenstern’s diegesis)

Metadiegetic stitches(Buttercup’s diegesis)

People

Voltaire Voltaire

Morgenstern Estate

Morgenstern MuseumSimon Morgenstern

Places

Paris

Florin

Cliffs of Insanity

Florin/Guilder Fire Swamp

Thieves Quarter

Florin

Florin/Guilder Fire Swamp

Paris

Florin

Cliffs of Insanity

Florin/Guilder Fire Swamp

Thieves Quarter

ObjectsSix-fingered sword

The Princess Bride (book) The Princess Bride (book)

Six-fingered sword

One may question the necessity to distinguish between the intradiegetic elements and

the metadiegetic ones, since if they are mentioned in the metadiegetic narrative, they are also

obviously part of Morgenstern’s diegesis. Yet, if the above statement is true, the reverse is

not. Indeed, Morgenstern may mention Voltaire, Voltaire is not part of the metadiegetic plot

as he is posterior to it.

If we take the Florin/Guilder Fire Swamp as an example, we notice that it is present is all

three diegeses. Westley and Buttercup fall into the ravine that leads to the Fire Swamp which

they must now traverse in order to reach safer grounds. At this point, Morgenstern cuts into

the narrative to share some general points regarding fire swamps and to point out the

particularities of the Florin/Guilder Fire Swamp (p. 199-200). That is how we learn that this

location was used to frighten children (p. 200). At the end of the book, in a chapter entitled

“Buttercup’s Baby, an explanation”, narrator-Goldman mentions the Swamp and how it is

“still as deadly as ever” and how he saw “the spot not that far away where local scholars

believe that Buttercup and Westley held each other after she pushed him off the cliff” (p.

386). The Fire Swamp is thus a three-level stitch that combines three different diegeses. The

Cliffs of Insanity and the Thieves Quarter, which narrator-Goldman claims to have also

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visited, achieve a two-level stitching by combining Buttercup’s diegesis with our own (since

we identify our reality with that of narrator-Goldman’s).

Morgenstern is both a diegetic and extradiegetic character. In fact, he appears most

prominently in narrator-Goldman’s diegesis, in the shape of the Morgenstern Museum and the

Morgenstern Estate with which narrator-Goldman has had “horrible legal problems”. S.

Morgenstern is also part of Goldman’s childhood. The Princess Bride is the book his father

read to him when he was bedridden, recovering from pneumonia (p. 8). The book itself is an

essential stitch as it brings together Morgenstern’s and narrator-Goldman’s respective

diegesis. This illustrates how such a breakdown works on both the micro-structure of the

narrative as well as the macro-structure. Artifacts from the intradiegetic tale, such as the six-

fingered sword (whose initial owner is none other than Inigo), also make their way into the

extradiegetic narrative, turning up in places like the Morgenstern Museum in Florin, which

the narrator ends up visiting for research purposes (pp. xvii-xix).

There are other stitches that do not fit in the above chart because they do not

appear in more than one diegesis, yet they still manage to transgress the threshold of

embedding, to paraphrase Genette. That is the case of narrator-Goldman’s father who “came

from Florin” (p. 8). Narrator-Goldman’s father only appears in Goldman’s diegesis yet is able

to achieve a powerful metalepsis by putting Florin and America on the same map: “He came

from Florin (the setting of The Princess Bride) and there he had been no fool. […] The facts

are when he was sixteen, he got a shot at coming to America […]” (p.8). The “leading

Florinese experts in America” at Columbia University (p. 73) also fall in the metalepsis

category. Florin is this non-existent fantasy land, yet experts on its history are said to teach in

one of the United States’ most prestigious universities. This metalepsis110 puts Florin and

Columbia University on the same ontological map, as both seem to share an identical

diegesis.

The result of this stitching is twofold. On the one hand, the metaleptic elements

“reinforce the connection between the real and the fictional world”111. The deliberately

110. Despite its disputed etymology, the meaning of metalepsis “can readily be grasped from the word’s Latinequivalent—transumptio: 'assuming one thing for another.'” Pier, John: "Metalepsis (revised version; uploaded12 May 2014)". In: Hühn, Peter et al. (eds.): The Living Handbook of Narratology. Hamburg: HamburgUniversity. [http://www.lhn.uni-hamburg.de/article/metalepsis-revised-version-uploaded-12-may-2014] [viewdate: September 6, 2014] It is, in other words, ‘a step aside.’111. P. Waugh, op. cit., 32.

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disoriented reader is led to believe that he shares the same ontological status as the narrator.

As Gabriel Thoveron so matter-of-factly puts it, “si les êtres présumés de fiction côtoient des

personnages réels, n’est-ce-pas qu’ils sont, eux aussi, réels ?”112 In other words, if the narrator

(whose diegesis is identified by the reader as his own) shares the same ontological status as S.

Morgenstern—as suggested by the recollection of narrator-Goldman’s visit to the

Morgenstern Museum in Florin, (p. xvii)—then so does the reader. And if S. Morgenstern

also shares the same ontological status as Inigo Montoya and Fezzik—according to their

artifacts on display at the Morgenstern Museum—then by deduction, we may conclude that

Buttercup and we readers are part of the same ontological ‘reality.’ We could extend this

comment to include fictitious and real locations.

On the one hand, we have the digressive narrative of narrator-Goldman who shares

the same ontological and extradiegetic status as us readers. And on the other hand, we have

this fantasy-like metadiegesis set is the non-existent country of Florin, peopled with beautiful

milkmaids, dreadful pirates, friendly giants, cruel princes and ruthless swordsmen, taking

place sometime in the past, though we are not quite sure when. Metalepsis abound at all

levels of narrations, ‘stitching’ together these diametrically opposed plots (contemporary vs.

old times, plausible vs. improbable…), thus contributing to the illusion that they are

diegetically one.

3. Ekphrasis and the six-fingered sword

Margaret Anne Doody once wrote that “we always know that icons in novelistic

narrative mean “something,” but we are rarely able to see the full meaning at the time.”113

That is why I would like to take a moment to do a “close-reading” of the six-fingered sword,

the only object in the text that possesses its own genesis. By genesis I mean the story of its

coming to being, which can be found in Chapter Five, The Announcement, under the subtitle

INIGO. The background story for Inigo is told while Inigo waits for the man in black who is

currently climbing the Cliffs of Insanity, and is introduced by a short description of the

sword: “How it danced in the moonlight. How glorious and true” (p. 120). By kissing its

blade, Inigo delves back into childhood memories, remembering his father, Domingo

Montoya, a bladesmith who lived in the mountains behind Toledo. One day, a nobleman who

was also a great swordsman came to place a very peculiar order. He desired to have made for

112. Gabriel Thoveron, « Perpétuels mouvements des grands héros mythiques », in Jean-Olivier MajastreandAlain Pessin (dir.), Du Canular dans l’Art et la Littérature, Paris, L’Harmattan, 1999, 246.113. M. A. Doody, op. cit., 388. Emphasis in the original.

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his six-fingered right hand “the greatest sword since Excalibur” (p. 126). It took Domingo

one year and much trouble to complete the task but when the nobleman came back, he

decided that the sword was not “worth waiting for” and “certainly not worth five hundred

pieces of gold” (p. 130-131). The sword maker took offense, gave this ungrateful client his

deposit back and asked him to leave. The stingy nobleman insisted on taking the sword but

Domingo refused and it cost him his life. Inigo was too young to avenge his father but he

inherited the sword and thus began his personal quest to become a great fencer in order to kill

the man who murdered his father.

What is interesting to note about the six-fingered sword is that this item does not

belong to our hero, Westley, but to a secondary character or a sidekick, in film jargon. In spite

of the advantage conferred by his great weapon, Inigo the sword wizard ends up beaten by

the man in black a few pages later. The sword serves here as testament to Westley’s

extraordinary fencing skills.

But the great blade has another function in the story: it allows for the introduction of

the notion of art. Indeed, upon completing his chef-d'oeuvre, Domingo utters the following

words: “After a lifetime. Inigo. Inigo. I am an artist” (p. 130). If the sword maker considers

himself an artist, that means the sword itself is a work of art. He says as much to the ignorant

nobleman: “Art was involved and you only saw money.” “You're an enemy of art and I pity

your ignorance” (p. 131). A few pages later, the man in black also calls Inigo, the wielder of

the sword, an artist, saying that killing him would amount to destroying da Vinci (p. 152). If

we consider the six-fingered sword a work of art, then every time it is mentioned in the text,

we can say we are witnessing an ekphrastic event. Before we analyze what this means for the

narrative, let us address the notion of ekphrasis and see what purpose this literary device

serves in a text.

Reminding us that the term takes it original meaning from ancient Greece, Ryan

Welsh explains:

Ekphrasis was generally understood as a skilled way of describing art and otheraesthetic objects after it was learned as a tool of rhetoric. Using the rhetoricsuccessfully was a means of demonstrating prowess, as a scholar and writer andeventually ekphrasis became an art that described art.114

114. Ryan Welsh, (2007) Ekphrasis. Available at: http://csmt.uchicago.edu/glossary2004/ekphrasis.htm [viewdate: April 30, 2015]

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Doody further notes that “the visual image has a special place and a peculiar status.”115 She

elaborates as follows:

It reminds us of the visible world, and thus of the sensible universe, but it also speaksof stasis, and artifice—of things out of nature. […] it also humbles us, making usrecall that the “real” world is visible and knowable to us only through interpretationsand re-visions.

This means that the presence of ekphrasis in a text directly influences our reading experience.

By drawing our attention to an “inset work of art”116 as Doody calls it, the novel speaks “its

own representation.”117 Furthermore, “in dealing with the visual icon and its meaning-ful-

ness, a novel must succinctly express its own drive to meaning, and its own artifice.”118

Doody writes that “the work of the artist within a novel may be considered as a parallel to the

work of the novelist himself, a crafty mise en abyme,”119 suggesting that the novel is the

author's own work of art. She adds that

The presence of the art object […] tells us that the novelist knows his/her work isbeing looked at—i.e., read. The ekphrastic moment, with its filmic effects, is amoment of textual self-consciousness that is even aggressively directed toward us.120

In other words, ekphrasis works as a mirror and is a way for the author to temporarily

highlight the novel's own status as the result of an artistic endeavor.

In The Princess Bride, the six-fingered sword is one such instance where

“hermeneutic qualifications are being tested.”121 Although the sword itself is not often

described in the text, it is presented to us through its legend and the awe that surrounds it. The

first time it appears in the text is in the introduction to the thirtieth anniversary edition, but it

looks as if the author is careful not to give any specific details as to what it looks like. This is

perhaps the author's way of allowing his readers to use their imagination in order to recreate

in their minds the mighty blade. Instead of a description, Goldman focuses on the narrator's

reaction and that of the visitors starring at it in its “large and beautifully lit glass case” (p.

xvii):

I knew it was there, […] but I still was not close to being ready for the impact it hadon me. I'd heard of it for so long, asked my father all those decades ago when I was

115. M. A. Doody, op. cit., 387.116. M. A. Doody, ibid.117. M. A. Doody, op. cit., 388.118. M. A. Doody, ibid.119. M. A. Doody, op. cit., 398. Emphasis in the original.120. M. A. Doody, op. cit., 403.121. M. A. Doody, op. cit., 389.

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ten, what made it so special, so magical, what could it have looked like?—and nowthere it was. Inigo's father had died for it, Inigo's whole life had been changed becauseof it, this magical blade, the greatest sword since Excalibur (p. xviii).

This distance between the artefact and its perception (the reader's gaze is on Narrator-

Goldman, who himself is gazing at the object) illustrates the fact that we cannot directly

experience a work of art in literature. The only way to do so is through the eyes of a

middleman, whether it be the narrator or another character. But this does not make the

experience less real. In fact, Doody argues that “Characters looking at sculptures, mosaics,

and paintings […] become more 'real.'”122

Some might argue that the above passage (which is the closest to a description of the

item I have found in the text) does not qualify as ekphrasis since it is not an actual “pictorial

representation,” to quote Doody defining the term.123 To be honest, when I first started

elaborating on this idea, I was convinced I would find an extremely detailed depiction of the

sword in the text. My mind had created a vivid image of it, an image I could only have come

up with thanks to the book (and perhaps the film as well). It came as a surprise to discover

how scrupulous Goldman had been in his non-description of the artifact. I was ready to

discard altogether what looked more and more like a dead end when a thought occurred to

me: the text had managed to raised this item to the rank of masterpiece and establish its

qualities as a work of art while at the same time eluding a direct portraiture. This is

undoubtedly a remarkable feat that should not be overlooked.

So, what do we know of the sword? We know that it was made by an artist, for a six-

fingered swordsman. We know it is now on display in a Museum and is a widely popular item

among visitors, but that is about it. We know very little about the way it looks. We do not

know how big it is, what color it is, nor what the hilt looks like. Yet we do have some image

of what its appearance could be in our minds. This was achieved through non-description and

illustrates the fact that sometimes, making things “real” means imagining them.

When we think of Alice, Lewis Carroll's heroine who travels to Wonderland, we

might imagine a girl with blond hair and a blue dress, as depicted by the 1951 Disney Studio

animated adaptation, or we might not. The fact is that Carroll's text does not say much about

Alice's physical appearance. There are a few clues in it that allow us to envision a girl with

straight hair, because Alice once utters that she is sure she is not Ada “for her hair goes in

122. M. A. Doody, op. cit., 396.123. M. A. Doody, op. cit., 387.

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such long ringlets, and mine doesn't go in ringlets at all.”124 But that is about it. It is

interesting to note that the lack of descriptive language to portray Alice somehow echoes her

quest to find out who she is, as she tells the Caterpillar: “I'm not myself, you see.”125 This

example illustrates how reading novels allows our creativity to develop. Characters in a novel

are just verbal constructs who can only be grasped through the words on the page. The

fleshing out of these characters is left up to the reader. After all, “The characters in any novel

exist in the “boundary world” between the “real life” with which we supply them and the

shadow-world of figment and image.”126 Iser describes the creative process that is the act of

reading as follows:

The literary text activates our own faculties, enabling us to recreate the world itpresents. The product of this creative activity is what we might call the virtualdimension of the text, which endows it with its reality. This virtual dimension […] isthe coming together of text and imagination.127

Likewise, the reader is required to build upon fictional props based on a few words. And

when it comes to interpreting ekphrasis, Doody emphasizes the fact that it “immediately

introduces our own duty to interpret.”128 Not only is it a duty, it is something we cannot cease

to do when engaged in the act of reading:

As the presence of the work of art forcefully reminds us, nobody—not the character,not the reader—can rest for a moment from the ceaseless activity of interpretation.129

If we are to truly interpret the six-fingered sword, we must attempt to read into this particular

ekphrasis further. In doing so, we could consider the blade as a metaphor for the artifice of

fiction, which Goldman celebrates by turning it into the central piece of a museum. Perhaps it

is his way of acknowledging the power of fiction over the sensible universe. Indeed, if

physicality means temporality, then fiction could be considered the key to immortality. The

carefully crafted six-fingered sword now has its place in the pantheon of literary artifacts. The

Morgenstern Museum that hosts it could very well “embody” that pantheon, turning into a

shrine for all things fictitious. It hints at the undisclosable wish of all authors: a shot at

posterity. Although they do not publicly acknowledge it, we can safely surmise that authors

wish for their stories to find their place in the pantheon of immortal narratives. If we look at

124. Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Feedbooks, (no date), PDF file, 10.125. L. Carroll, op. cit., 28.126. M. A. Doody, op. cit., 402.127. W. Iser, The Implied Reader, op. cit., 279.128. M. A. Doody, op. cit., 388.129. M. A. Doody, op. cit., 395.

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the success of The Princess Bride as a book130 and as a film131, it is reasonable to admit that

Goldman's narrative has a fair shot at longevity. It is perhaps on its way to becoming for its

author what the six-fingered sword has become for the Morgenstern Museum: an enduring

legacy. The book's readership has been renewed and interest in both the book and the film

does not seem to fade.132 This attests to the fact that the world of fiction, forever reborn in the

eyes and minds of future generations, surpasses the fading physical world in which nothing

lasts.

4. Parody and deception

Genette reminds us that it is the generic perception which guides the expectations of

the reader: “la perception générique (…) oriente et détermine dans une large mesure l’«

horizon d’attente » du lecteur, et donc la réception de l’œuvre.”133 This generic perception,

which he also calls “contrat (ou pacte) générique”134 is directly associated with the text's

influence on its reader.135 What this means for the author is that his influence on the reader

may be exerted outside the text itself. Indeed, authors have access to what Genette calls

paratextual elements. These include:

titre, sous-titre, intertitres ; préfaces, postfaces, avertissements, avant-propos, etc. ;notes marginales, infrapaginales, terminales ; épigraphes ; illustrations ; prièred’insérer, bande, jaquette, et bien d’autres types de signaux accessoires, autographesou allographes […].136

And this is exactly where author-Goldman makes his first moves. What was it that made

some readers think in the first place that there even was an unabridged version out there? The

answer it quite simple: because the book cover said so. Genette rightfully notes the following:

“Il y a [...] dans le titre une part, très variable bien sûr, d'allusion transtextuelle, qui est une

ébauche de « contrat » générique.”137 In case of The Princess Bride, the book cover

130. On the publisher's website (http://www.harcourtbooks.com), The Princess Bride is said to have sold “morethan one million copies since it was first published by Harcourt in 1973.” [view date: May 1, 2015.]131. If charts on the Internet Movie Database (IMDB) are any indication of a film's popularity, the screenadaptation of The Princess Bride has made it into the top 250 films of all time, ranking at number 182 as of May1, 2015. IMDB's chart is based on the votes of regular IMDB users and is available athttp://www.imdb.com/chart/top [view date: May 1, 2015]132. DVD sales have been stable over the past few years, averaging 37 000 copies a week (thanks notably to aspecial offer in November 2014, when Amazon.com customers could purchase the DVD for as little as $1.99).Numbers are available at http://www.the-numbers.com/movie/Princess-Bride-The#tab=video-sales [view date:May 1, 2015]133. G. Genette, Palimpsestes, op. cit., 12.134. G. Genette, Palimpsestes, op. cit., 10.135. G. Genette, Palimpsestes, ibid.136. G. Genette, Palimpsestes, ibid.137. G. Genette, Palimpsestes, op. cit., 54.

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introduces S. Morgenstern as the author of this “Classic Tale of True Love and High

Adventure” (see Appendix A). What it does is add the following extra information: “The

“Good Parts” Version, Abridged by William Goldman” (see Appendix B). Genette had

noticed the following regarding titles and short statements:

Tout énoncé bref, notoire et caractéristique est pour ainsi dire naturellement voué à laparodie. Le cas le plus typique et le plus actuel est sans doute celui du titre. […] Letitre, comme un nom d'animal, fait index : un peu pedigree, un peu acte denaissance.138

What this means is that the title is the first reference the book gives, the first clue as to what

is is about. And if the content of the book is meant to be parodic, then the title is also a great

place to start with the caricature. The short statement “Classic Tale of True Love...” is of

parodic nature because, when a book first comes out, it cannot already be identified as a

“classic.” This term is rather used for texts that have stood the test of time in terms of

popularity and sales.

This illustrates how deceiving paratextual elements such as book titles, subtitles,

authors’ names and the like can be, because we usually take them for granted. Jeandillou

acknowledges the existence of a profound coalescence between the text and the name

attached to it, calling it “la cohésion indissoluble du texte et de cette signature qu’il porte”.139

This is the reason why “la pseudonymie constitue un instrument de mystification idéal”.140 On

the book's title page, Goldman is not introduced as the author, but as the abridger of the text.

Goldman admits that he only came up with this idea of abridgement in order to make

his work easier, allowing him to “jump wherever [he] wanted.”141 But it turns out that the

creation of heteronym Simon Morgenstern is a key element in this attempt to pass this work

of fiction off as real. For an accurate definition of heteronym, we turn to Jeandillou who

defines it as the “nom donné (ou prêté) par le scriptor à un autre imaginaire”.142 What is a

scriptor? Jeandillou describes what happens during the act of writing as follows: “l'instance

du « je »-écrivain se scind[e] en un « moi »-scriptor et un « elle »-auctor”.143 He means to

make the distinction, between the scriptor—the one scripting, putting the words down on

paper—and the auctor—the one who holds auctoritas, who claims authority on the text. This

138. G. Genette, Palimpsestes, op. cit., 53.139. J.-F. Jeandillou, op. cit., 74.140. J.-F. Jeandillou, op. cit., 73.141. W. Goldman, op. cit., 24.142. Jean-François Jeandillou, Esthétique de la mystification, Paris, Les Éditions de Minuit, 1994, 80.143. J.-F. Jeandillou, op. cit., 74.

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idea of a split echoes Doody's own observation of “Marcel Proust's own splitting of himself

into the author who actually writes the novel, and the moi, the character who narrates it as if

its events were lived experiences.”144

In order for a scriptor to “simulate people” (“feindre des personnes”145), the fictitious

name—or heteronym—usually comes with the production of a biography, and miscellaneous

documents that contribute to the fleshing out of the auctor behind which hides the scriptor

(“[qui] se cache derrière une véritable personnalité d’auctor”.146) Furthermore, by putting his

heteronym on the book cover, the scriptor gives his auctor legitimacy, authority.

Both the names Goldman and Morgenstern are of Germand and Jewish origins.

Goldman's etymology can be traced back to gold, but also to the Old English Golda, which

was a nickname for someone with fair hair.147 As for Morgenstern, it means morning star in

German. The association of the Jewish origin and the word star sends chills down our spine

because of the images it evokes. The book came out 28 years after the end of World War II

but visions of these crowds of men, women and children, all wearing the Star of David, are

still vivid in the collective consciousness. In light of these comments, we look back at what

Goldman wrote in Chapter Six and the words take on a new meaning: “The wrong people die,

some of them, and the reason is this: life is not fair” (p. 238). The man with fair hair and the

morning star: the combination of the two in this novel could reflect the author's wish to

perhaps forgive but certainly not to forget. Whatever the case, it reminds us of the fact that

the choice of fictitious names is rarely an innocent one.

In The Princess Bride, the fact that both narrator and author share the name William

Goldman makes it rather difficult to distinguish between the narrator, the implied author and

the scriptor. In the light of the many personal details shared in the text (such as Goldman's

recollection of anecdotes from when they were filming the movie), we may wonder if at

times, it is the actual voice of William Goldman the scriptor (who writes books and

screenplays) talking to us. This confusion is intentional. In fact, this identity game is one

essential facet of hoaxes, as Jean-Olivier Majastre explains in his essay on the subject:

“Hétéronymie et homonymies ont les deux ressorts essentiels d’un jeu sur l’identité et

144. M. A. Doody, op. cit., 408.145. J.-F. Jeandillou, op. cit., 80.146. J.-F. Jeandillou, ibid.147. Surname Database: Goldman Last Name Origin (no date) Available at http://www.surnamedb.com/Surname/goldman[view date: May 2, 2015]

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l’altérité (…).”148 If we include Morgenstern’s, we may say that there are a total of four voices

in this text (scriptor, auctor/implied author, narrator-Goldman, narrator-Morgenstern). By

bestowing upon the heteronymic entity some authority over the text, the author admits his

will to “give life to the onomastic entity” (“donner corps, de prêter vie à l’entité

onomastique”149). One way to achieve this is to allow this entity access to personification.

One must acknowledge that, for readers to actually believe in the existence of Morgenstern,

Goldman the narrator (and ultimately, Goldman the scriptor) has been rather convincing in

fleshing out Morgenstern’s authority, and by extension, Morgenster's actuality. At the same

time, the text manages to “give life” to another authoritative yet fictitious entity: narrator-

Goldman.

Genette acknowledges the confusion that may arise when we address the issue of

narration in terms of point of view and when we identify the narrative instance with the

instance of writing:

on identifie l'instance narrative à l'instance d'écriture, le narrateur à l'auteur et ledestinataire du récit au lecteur de l'oeuvre. Confusion […] non [légitime] lorsqu'ils'agit d'un récit de fiction, où le narrateur est lui-même un rôle fictif, fut-il directementassumé par l'auteur, et où la situation narrative supposée peut être fort différente del'acte d'écriture […] qui s'y réfère […].150

Indeed, he insists later by adding the following remark: “la situation narrative d’un récit de

fiction ne se ramène jamais à sa situation d’écriture.”151 In The Princess Bride, the

extradiegetic cuts in the story reflect the author’s freedom152 to do as he please with narrative

time and narrative voices while at the same allowing the narrator-figure to comment on the

writing process and to share personal anecdotes, thus contributing to the illusion of his

actuality. These interferences blur the line between “situation narrative supposée” and “acte

d’écriture”.153 Narrator-Goldman's interventions in the text fuel the illusion of

simultaneousness, the process of which Genette describes as follows:

la très grande proximité entre histoire et narration produit ici, le plus souvent, un effettrès subtil de frottement, si j'ose dire, entre le léger décalage temporel du récit

148. Jean-Olivier Majastre, « Le canular, le désir » in Du Canular dans l’Art et la Littérature, Paris,L’Harmattan, 1999, 20.149. J.-F. Jeandillou, op. cit., 80.150. G. Genette, Palimpsestes, op. cit., 220-221.151. G. Genette, Palimpsestes, op. cit., 221.152. Goldman admits he “was free” once he came up with the idea of the abridgment. He no longer had to writewhat he did not want to. Op. cit., 24.153. G. Genette, Palimpsestes, ibid.

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d'évènements (« Voici ce qui m'est arrivé aujourd'hui ») et la simultanéité absoluedans l’exposé des pensées et des sentiments (« Voici ce que j'en pense ce soir »).154

This process, widely used in the book, feeds the confusion that we mentioned earlier,

contributing to the illusion (and in worst cases, the belief) that we are reading words from the

author himself, and not those of his literary doppelgänger. In one of these instances, narrator-

Goldman recalls “one of my biggest memories of my father reading” (p. 234), and he goes on

by telling the story of his younger self getting upset that his father was not getting the story

right because Buttercup had to marry Westley and not “that rotten Humperdinck” (p. 235).

There is a sense of immediacy between the narrator’s retelling and the reminiscence. Several

of the “narrations intercalées”155 (to use Genette’s terms) are located within a very specific

diegesis: the reading of the story by narrator-Goldman’s father when he was a sick little boy,

as illustrated by the following cuts: “'She does not get eaten by the sharks at this time,' my

father said.” (p. 107); “My father stopped reading.” (p. 280); “'And they lived happily ever

after,' my father said.” (p. 356). Others are located within the act of abridgment by narrator-

Goldman. When the narrator writes “When this version comes out,[…]” (p. 73), it implies that

the abridgment has not come out yet and that narrator-Goldman is still in the process of

“abridging”. Once again, we get the sense that Goldman’s thoughts on the whole process are

shared on the spot.

By granting Morgenstern’s text some academic authority while at the same bestowing

“final cut” authority to his fictive abridger, Goldman not only contributes to the

personification process, but also to the illusion that the text is somewhat historical.

5. The pseudo historical discourse

When addressing the topic of pseudo historicity in relation to a text, looking at

examples of pseudo scientific literature might prove useful. In a study on hoax writing,

professor Claudette Oriol-Boyer takes a closer look at Cantatrix sopranica l. et autres écrits

scientifiques, a collection of texts by French writer Georges Perec (1936-1982), which—as

the title suggests—are meant to be scientific while at the same invoking parody, as the

soprano is considered an animal species. In reality, the only scientific thing about the texts

this book consists of is their codified form. Indeed, Perec has taken over the typical items

found in serious scientific research papers and turned them into a caricature, over-inflating

the praises de rigueur in the forewords of such publications, inventing improbable Nobel

154. G. Genette, Discours du récit, op. cit., 225.155. G. Genette, Discours du récit, ibid.

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prizes and Academies, taking liberties with the scientific lexicon and being creative with

bibliographic references. Oriol-Boyer argues that even “an informed reader” (“un lecteur un

peu informé”156) may be able to identify the text as a hoax and not be fooled by what she calls

“l’effet de scientificité”157 and “l’apparence de sérieux”.158 To entertain the more informed

readers (and perhaps to fool the less scrupulous readers), Perec plays with the following

assumption: if it looks like a scientific text, then it must be one. This statement also works for

historical-looking texts. In his article entitled “Fictionality and Mimesis: Between Narrativity

and Fictional Worlds”, Richard Walsh goes as far as to state that:

The categorical difference between real and imagined events is overwhelmed by theartificiality of narrative representation in either case: all narrativity, from this point ofview, shares in the properties of fictionality.159

In other words, whether events recounted in a text are real or imagined bears no relevance to

what Walsh calls “the artifice of narrativization”, to which both fictional and nonfictional

narratives are subject. According to Walsh, the only distinct difference lies in “rules of

authentication (documentation, testimony)” and “certain supplementary constraints

(connoting historicity, objectivity, etc.) that serve to establish a rhetoric of veracity.”160

This suggests that for fiction to take on the attributes of nonfiction, all it needs is the

illusion of veracity, of historicity. In the case of The Princess Bride, we notice that it is filled

with authoritative assertions such as the following: “[…]if you read any book on Florinese

history, it did happen” (p. 47). Attentive readers will perhaps notice the lack of any

bibliographic references attached to the above statement.

No text could claim historical authority without the reference to a few scholars.

Goldman is aware that mentioning Columbia University and its leading Florinese experts (p.

73) is bound to bestow upon his text a semblance of seriousness while at the same, fueling the

parody of historicity. In Chapter Two, Goldman gives a little more vraisemblance to the

history of Florin, by asserting that Morgenstern’s interest mainly lay in “the history of the

monarchy and other such stuff.” (p. 73). Not only does Florin appear to have a history, it has

a monarchical history. The narrative later mentions Florin and its neighbor Guilder warring

156.Claudette Oriol-Boyer, « Perec et l’écriture canularesque : l’amitié du scientifique et du littéraire » in DuCanular dans l’Art et la Littérature, Paris, L’Harmattan, 1999, 33.157. C. Oriol-Boyer, ibid.158. C. Oriol-Boyer, op. cit., 32.159. Richard Walsh, "Fictionality and Mimesis: Between Narrativity and Fictional Worlds" in Narrative 11.1,2003, 110-121. Project MUSE. [http://muse.jhu.edu/] [view date: November 30, 2014].160. R. Walsh, ibid.

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on each over the centuries, listing the main conflicts: the Olive War, the Tuna Fish

Discrepancy, the Roman Rift, and the Discord of the Emeralds (p. 82).

Yet these enumerations do more than merely contribute to the illusion of historical

background; they give us clues as to the text’s own fictionality. Oriol-Boyer notices that

Perec’s text reveals itself as both pseudo-scientific and literary thanks to the contrast between

the appearance of seriousness and the langage games that fall under the prank category (“les

jeux de langage canularesques”161). She draws up the inventory of these games as follows:

“des combinatoires folles et complètement ludiques par rapport au réel”, “la contradiction, la

culture du paradoxe et les jeux langagiers jubilatoires”,162 “associations baroques et

homophonies désopilantes” and “contraste burlesque”.163 We gather that the key to

deciphering an authentic nonfiction piece from a fictional narrative lies in the amount of

humorous lines found in the text. Thus, when writing about the Tuna Fish Discrepancy (p.

82), Goldman is also telling us: “Please, do not take this seriously.”

Discussing a text’s authority inexorably leads to the question of the authority of any

written work and by extension, of history itself. In the process of creating a fictive kingdom,

Goldman crafted a museum, artifacts and manuscripts out of words, suggesting that the mere

creation of history (or at least the illusion of a historical background) needs nothing more

than written words (perhaps along with the mention of Columbia University scholars). The

amount of authority given to those words is in the end left up to us. The same can be said for

what we perceive as “reality,” which is only as “real” as we decide it to be. The question is,

what is reality in reference to fiction and how are we to call it so if we are only able to grasp

it through frames which are themselves constructed and subjective?

This brings us to the other possible reading of the text, one that focuses on the

narrator’s interventions as mere devices used to “expose the levels of illusion[…] instead of

reinforcing our sense of continuous reality.”164 So the more intrusive the narrator is, the more

“we are forced to recall that our ‘real’ world can never be the ‘real’ world of the novel.”165

161. C. Oriol-Boyer, op. cit., 32.162. C. Oriol-Boyer, op. cit., 34 for both quotes.163. C. Oriol-Boyer, op. cit., 36 for both quotes.164. P. Waugh,op. cit., 33.165. Patricia Waugh, Practicing Postmodernism, Reading Modernism, Hounslow, Arnold, 1992, 33.

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IV. Raison d'être of subversive narratives

1. Educating the reader

Back in the nineteenth century, Nodier commented on the act of reading thus: “Je ne

sais pas à quoi sert la lecture, si ce n'est à amuser ceux qui lisent. Ce n'est probablement pas à

les instruire ou à les rendre meilleurs.”166 Although Nodier's comment is not to be taken at

face value, is does reflect the fact that reading was then mostly considered a mere pastime, a

leisure activity. But when we look at the following statement by Rivière, we notice that things

have changed over the course of a century:

Dans le plaisir de notre lecture, il n'y aura pas que cette sourde sensation de présence,que cette sensibilité immédiate et continuelle ; il y aura aussi la joie qu'éprouvel'intelligence à pressentir, à calculer, à rapprocher les évènements, à les deviner, à seles expliquer ; il y aura une sorte de va-et-vient de l'agrément.167

This description reflects a very different approach to reading. The reader is still looking for

enjoyment (plaisir, agrément), but he finds it in his intellectual involvement with the text. The

above statement indicates that the reader will get more gratification from a text by adopting

an active reading posture, trying to guess what will come next, connect the dots and explain

the events before they fully unfold on the page. When talking about “l'émotion pathétique du

roman d'aventure,” Rivière further notes the following: “nous employons à l'éprouver plus

d'initiative et d'agilité ; elle nous fait faire plus de chemin.”168 In other words, we have to go a

longer way (than we used to) in order to feel the poignant emotion of the novel. But Rivière's

view on the act of reading and, by extension, the constitution of meaning, remains rooted in

emotion. He talks of the “joy” that our intellect supposedly experiences when it asks itself

“what next?” Certainly, there is more to it than joy.

In his book on The Act of Reading, Iser dedicates quite a few pages to the question:

“What happens to the reader?”169 His premise is that “The constitution of meaning […] gains

its full significance when something happens to the reader.”170 That “something,” for Iser,

166. C. Nodier, op. cit., 116.167. J. Rivière, op. cit., 76.168. J. Rivière, op. cit., 77.169. W. Iser, The Act of Reading, op. cit., 152.170. W. Iser, The Act of Reading, ibid. Emphasis in the original.

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does not amount to mere joy but to a re-assessment of one's views, as illustrated in the

following statement:

the educated reader's expectations, […] are now to be shattered so that his view willbe opened up to something he had hitherto not considered possible in the novel.171

According to Iser, the novel is teaching the reader how to think differently, how to look at

things in a new light. This is where the fictitious reader finds his raison d'être:

the views put forward by the fictitious reader have the function of arousing the realreader's attention in such a way that he finds himself quite involuntarily opposingattitudes and ideas he had previously taken for granted.172

Iser recognizes that “Ultimately, the whole purpose of the text is to exert a modifying

influence upon [the reader's own] disposition […].”173 The text takes on a didactic role,

teaching the readers about their own prejudices and showing them how to perhaps overcome

them. One way for authors to achieve this is by tackling and playing with readers'

expectations.

2. Thwarting readers’ expectations

One of the reasons that would lead an author to subvert narrative conventions is to

challenge our own expectations. Educated readers find it hard not to compare texts. Goldman

voices this very concern in the following statement: “I didn’t want to risk, when the book’s

building to climax, the reader’s saying, ‘Oh, this is just like the Oz books.’” (p. 319). His goal

is not to rewrite tired narratives, but to write something new and original. We may argue that

utter uniqueness cannot be achieved since all fiction is, to some extent, informed by what was

written before. As Foster puts it: “Every novel grows out of other novels.”174 But one way to

instil a sense of originality into a narrative is to insert events that completely mislead the

reader.

In Chapter One for instance, no sooner does Buttercup realize and confess her love to

Westley that he disappears, literally and narratively. Because the author had devoted several

pages to the elaboration of the farm boy character, we had expected him to stay with us a

little while longer. It is not until Chapter Five that Goldman brings him back from the dead—

so to speak—as the Dread Pirate Roberts, making use of the fairy tale motif of

171. W. Iser, The Act of Reading, op. cit., 153.172. W. Iser, The Act of Reading, ibid. 173. W. Iser, The Act of Reading, ibid. 174. T. C. Foster, op. cit., 218.

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transformation. Westley had to “die” to become what he now is: the worthy hero of our story.

But his worth is put to the test by the villain, who succeeds in capturing the two of them.

Buttercup’s expectations that Westley “will come for [her] and that [they] will be gone”(p.

280) echo our own expectation that such a tale must indeed end happily for the protagonists.

She could be the literary incarnation of the naïve reader, whose faith in the promised happy

end is infallible, despite numerous events pointing toward a gloomier resolution. The

implication here is that rationality is no match against narrative expectations which are

deeply ingrained in the mind of readers. The metaphor of the author compelled to drastically

upend the narrative plot to eschew meeting readers’ expectations is embodied by Prince

Humperdinck who, upon hearing of Buttercup’s unflagging belief in her salvation by Westley,

heads toward the Zoo of Death (where Westley is held captive) in order to do what we least

expect the author to do (narratively), and that is, kill the hero (again!).

Upon reading this unexpected turn of event, the reader’s indignation is voiced by

Goldman’s ten-year-old self, who first denies it (“He’s only faking though, right?” p. 282),

then attempts to get confirmation that justice will be dealt out, no matter what (“Who kills

Prince Humperdinck? At the end, somebody’s got to get him.” p. 282). Because that is what

tales have taught us to expect: happiness for the “good guys”, and punishment for the “bad

guys”; in other words, a poetic justice for all. We long for such endings because we cannot

have them, not in our raw empirical reality. Hutcheon recognizes the reality of “the need and

desire”175 for an ordered vision, which she describes as a “consolation for living in a world

whose order one usually perceives and experiences only as chaos.”176

Though Goldman manages to bring Westley back from the dead (this time literally),

he denies us the happy end we want and expect, reminding us that in fact, life is not fair (p.

358). Those words could be Goldman’s motto, as reflected by the following monologue that

seems to openly condemn the fairy tale-inspired lies we deliberately perpetuate generation

after generation:

Life isn’t fair, Bill. We tell our children that it is, but it’s a terrible thing to do. It’s notonly a lie, it’s a cruel lie. Life is not fair, and it never has been, and it’s never going tobe (p. 237).

175. Linda Hutcheon, Narcissistic Narrative: The Metafictional Paradox, Waterloo, Ontario, Wilfrid LaurierUniversity Press, 1980, 77.176. L. Hutcheon, ibid.

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In this light, The Princess Bride seems quite ‘realistic’ in its accurate portrayal of

life’s lack of divine-like justice. The subversiveness of The Princess Bride may precisely lie

in its realism.

3. Metafiction and subversive fantasy

The term “metafiction” was coined in 1970 by William H. Gass in an essay entitled

“Philosophy and the Form of Fiction” and is generally associated with Postmodernist

literature. Postmodernism is not easily defined. It has been called a “slippery term as it spans

many disciplines and means different things to different critics.”177 Richard Ruland and

Malcolm Bradbury talk of postmodern literature in terms of “stylistic phase that ran from the

1960s to the 1980s” that reflects “a deep-rooted search for a late modern form and style in an

age of cultural glut that has been called an age of no style.”178 (First printed in 1973, The

Princess Bride would chronologically fit this description.) The characteristics of the early

postmodern aesthetics include “playful irony, parody, parataxis, self-consciousness,

fragmentation.”179 Makinen also reminds us that “Intertextuality is an important trope of

postmodern fiction […].”180 And so is metafiction.

In practice, the “essential deconstructive method of metafiction [is provided by] the

alternation of frame and frame-break.”181 Waugh further describes the process as “the

construction of an illusion through the imperceptibility of the frame and the shattering of

illusion through the constant exposure of the frame.”182 The metaphor of the puppet master

comes to mind: the metafictionist who interrupts his narrative to attract the reader’s attention

on its structural conventions (and by extension, its fictive nature) is like a puppeteer who

stops in the middle of his puppet show in order to draw attention to the strings of his puppets.

This “shattering” of illusion often takes the form of an intrusion on the part of a narrator

(who, more often than not, will attempt to pass himself off as the author—such is the case in

The Princess Bride), in order to distract the reader from the story to the plot, or from the

“histoire” to the “discours,” to use Genette’s narratological terminology.183 The distinction

made by Genette suggests that the story (the events that are being recounted) is always

177. Merja Makinen, “Theorizing Fairy-Tale Fiction, Reading Jeannette Winterson,” in Contemporary Fictionand the Fairy Tale, Detroit, Wayne State University Press, 2008, 145.178. Richard Ruland, Malcolm Bradbury, From Puritanism to Postmodernism: a History of AmericanLiterature, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, Penguin, 1992, 324-325.179. P. Waugh, op. cit., 60.180. M. Makinen, op. cit., 145.181. P. Waugh, op. cit., 31.182. P. Waugh, ibid.183. G. Genette, Narrative Discourse Revisited, op. cit., 13.

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subject to narrative alterations, however discreet the narrator may be. In other words, the

telling of a story is never neutral, always informed to some extent by narrative choices. And

by choosing a metafictional narrative to “draw attention to [the writing’s] status as an

artefact,”184 the author will not allow the reader to be fooled by the illusion of existence—

purely literary as it may be—of alternative worlds, which are but linguistic constructs. (Then

again, the reader may choose to be fooled anyway, as he is the one who ultimately constructs

his own meaning of the text).

The Princess Bride features numerous frame-breaks, which attest to its metafictional

qualities. Waugh has more to say about frame-breaks: “while [they] appear to bridge the gap

between fiction and reality, [they] in fact lay it bare.”185 The reader decides to do just that (i.e.

bridge the gap between fiction and reality), if he or she chooses the enjoyment of the reading

experience. He or she may also respond to its invitation to reflect on the novel as a fictional

construct.

When it comes to resurgence of fantasy and fairy tales in contemporary narratives, it

is interesting to note that despite an apparent lack of room for manoeuvre due to its rigid and

static structure, the fairy tale genre is not being avoided by authors who keep going back to it

gladly, as attested by the abundance of fairy tale motifs and references in contemporary

literature. Atwood, Barthelme, Carter, Coover, Byatt, Rushdie are but a few names that come

to mind among the number of contemporary authors who have tackled the genre. We have to

turn to Stephen Benson for an explanation:

The fairy tale offers to fiction a ready-made store of images and plots of genderrelations, class conflicts, scenarios of sexuality, and dramas of ethnicity, each ripe forscrutiny and overhaul via a contemporary ideological agenda committed to theoverturning of conventions of inequality and restriction.186

The beauty of this “ready-made store of images and plots” lies in the fact that authors are not

the only ones familiar with it; readers are too. The fairy tale’s nearly canonical resonance

among today’s readers is certainly one of the reasons why contemporary writers keep

drawing on its foreseeable plot structures and recognizable motifs. Aware of the reader’s

familiarity with the genre, authors make use of these prior texts to “draw attention to the

formulaic conventions of fairy tale in order to confound those conventions […].”187 They

184. P. Waugh, op. cit., 2.185. P. Waugh, op. cit., 33.186. Stephen Benson, Contemporary Fiction and the Fairy Tale, op. cit., 12.187. This is Andrew Teverson talking about “Salman Rushdie and the Fairy Tale,” an essay published in thecollection edited by Benson, op. cit., 52.

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count on our ability to recognize typical motifs which they purposely subvert in order to

make a point, or point to a truth we would otherwise have not seen. According to Teverson,

these subversive stories “are “lies” that tell the “truth” by other means.”188

As for the pairing of metafiction with the fantasy genre and fairy tale narratives, Tiffin calls it

a “marvelous geometry”,189 arguing that the “structure and assumptions” of the fairy tale

along with its “problematical relationship with reality”190 resonate with the self-conscious

nature of metafiction. We cannot help but wonder why the use of the metafictional trope to

underline the nature of fantasy—which we know to be fiction—as fiction, is at first at all

relevant. That said, the reason for such union in postmodern literature lies precisely in their

connection (or lack thereof) to “reality,” however malleable the substance we choose to call

reality may be (to paraphrase Atwood191). Hutcheon’s take on the subject of “metafiction

which structures its temporal and spatial relations with the reader on the model of fantasy

literature”192 is that

the act of reading […] involves (perhaps at a more fundamental level) the very act ofimagining the world, of giving shape to the referents of the worlds that go to make upthe whole of the world that is the “concretized” text being read.193

She further identifies the world of fantasy as the paradigm of the novelistic universe which

competes with the empirical, underlying the tension between fictiveness and empirical,

“unreality” and “reality.” This distinction is of course latent in all novels but decidedly

foregrounded in all metafictional prose, and even more so in metafictional fantasy.

To summarize, we could say that postmodernism allowed fiction to explore ways to

renew itself, to set new rules, to change tones, to embrace humor, pastiche and parody. As for

metafictional fantasy, we are tempted to say that as a parody of its old self, it is playing

around with its predictable plot, its clichéd characters, and its rather rigid codes and

conventions in order to take the reader by surprise through its newly revamped morphology,

but also to draw attention to its fictionality, and by extension to the construction of any such

fiction. It is also a powerful tool for authors pursuing an ideological (and sometimes also

political) agenda by pointing the finger at archaic conventions and prejudices informed by

188. A. Teverson, op. cit., 48.189. Jessica Tiffin, Marvelous geometry: narrative and metafiction in modern fairy tale, Wayne State UniversityPress, 2009.190. J. Tiffin, ibid., 20.191. Margaret Atwood, Earl G. Ingersoll, Conversations, London, Virago, 1992, 246.192. L. Hutcheon, op. cit., 76. 193. L. Hutcheon, ibid. Emphasis by me.

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outdated views, and which should be expunge from our collective consciousness once and for

all.

4. Diegetic mise en abyme and transcendence

Although Hutcheon admits “there is no convenient English equivalent”194 for the

phrase mise en abyme, we could draw a colorful parallel with the image of Matryoshka dolls

which open up to reveal an ever smaller version of themselves. French writer and theorist

Jean Ricardou defines the mise en abyme as follows: “la mise en abyme est avant tout la

révolte structurelle d'un fragment du récit contre l'ensemble qui le contient.”195 This means

that, while the etymology of mise en abyme suggests a deeper immersion into the narrative, it

is actually a revealing tool. And what does it bring to light? Ricardou explains how the mise

en abyme reveals itself and its own fictionality:

Dès que le récit se conteste, il se pose donc aussitôt comme récit, il évite certainobscurantisme. En quelque manière il se présente comme la prise de conscience durécit par lui-même. Il devient un récit, qui, en se faisant, s'efforce de définir le faitqu'il y a récit.196

He further compares it to a mirror: “si la mise en abyme peut se définir comme un

narcissisme, la micro-histoire qu'elle produit […] est un miroir.”197 As a miror, the mise en

abyme raises the question of whether life imitates art or whether it is the other way around.

This dilema is raised by Goldman through multiple mises en abyme throughout the text.

American novelist John Barth once said about art that “you can’t get rid of it anyhow.”198 To

echo this quote, let us go back to chapter Seven, The Wedding. In one of those blancs

métadiégétiques (to use Genette’s terminology), Goldman gives the following piece of trivia:

“Morgenstern’s folks were named Max and Valerie and his father was a doctor. Life imitating

art, art imitating life; I really get those two confused […]”. (p. 320-321). We have determined

previously in chapter II (1. Imitating life) that Buttercup’s diegesis precedes Morgenstern’s.

Max and Valerie are two characters who are part of Buttercup’s diegesis. Having them named

after Morgenstern’s parents not only challenges both the text’s chronology and the integrity of

the diegesis, it makes for an ad infinitum mise en abyme.

194. L. Hutcheon, op. cit., 53.195. Jean Ricardou, Problèmes du nouveau roman, Paris, Éditions du Seuil, 1967, 181. 196. J. Ricardou, op. cit., 182.197. J. Ricardou, ibid.198. Comment quoted by Gerhard Joseph, John Barth, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1970, 8.

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Goldman criticizes Morgenstern for making such a “dreary” book which children will

not read, yet at the same time, Goldman’s frame narrative does the same. By sharing details

of his narrator’s married life (among other adult themes), he ends up writing a non-children

book. If someone decided to read The Princess Bride to a child, he or she would have do as

narrator-Goldman did (and as Goldman's father did when he first read it to his son): abridge

it, and edit out all the frame-breaks in order to bring out its core narrative. This mise en

abyme goes beyond the text itself, it transcends it. Genette understands the word

transcendence as “[ce] qui unit le texte à la réalité extratextuelle […]”.199 This definition

seems to fit this instance quite perfectly.

There is another instance of such transcendence, which features a rather literal

illustration of Bakhtin’s concept of dialogism.200 On more than one occasion, our narrator

talks of Morgenstern as a deceased author, a “man dead at least a million year […]” (p. 363).

Yet in a book entitled The Silent Gondoliers, published ten years after The Princess Bride, the

alleged author S. Morgenstern addresses the American editor in a letter, asking him to correct

in his next edition of The Princess Bride an inaccuracy of importance to him, and which is

the fact that he is not dead. “I am old, but alive. Perhaps as you age, you will find the two are

not mutually exclusive.”201 The on-going dialogism (in the Bakhtinian sense) at work in these

texts illustrates to playfulness of author-Goldman who interacts with his own work while at

the same time, inviting us to watch and be entertained.

199. G. Genette, Palimpsestes, op. cit., 11.200. The Living Handbook of Narratology defines the term as one “most commonly used to denote the qualityof an instance of discourse that explicitly acknowledges that it is defined by its relationship to other instances,both past, to which it responds, and future, whose response it anticipates.” In: Hühn, Peter et al. (eds.): TheLiving Handbook of Narratology. Hamburg: Hamburg University. [http://www.lhn.uni-hamburg.de/] [view date:December 5, 2014]201. William Goldman, The Silent Gondoliers: a fable, New York, Ballantine Books, 1983.

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CONCLUSION

When I first started to look for the subject of this graduate thesis, I came upon a

comment that struck me as quite relevant. Someone on a forum had suggested that since a

dissertation was something that we would be working on for a while, we might as well

choose a subject we enjoyed. At the time, I had just finished reading The Princess Bride, and

I had been baffled by my initial reaction after closing the book. Before I go on, I would like

to say that I consider myself a good but not gullible reader. I knew, diving into this novel, that

I was reading a piece of fiction. Yet by the time I had finished the book, my first thought had

been to go online and look for the unabridged version of the novel. It took a few minutes for

me to realize the absurdity of my endeavor: I was looking for an actual novel written by a

fictional character!

My mind started spiraling and I felt actual dizziness. I asked myself how I could have

possibly believed, even for one second, that S. Morgenstern was an real author. And then I

traced back the implications of that premise. « If S. Morgenstern is a real author, then that

would mean that Florin is a real country. And if Florin does exist, then so does the Florin

Museum. And if there is such thing as the Florin Museum, then it would certainly have on

display the magnificent six-fingered sword. And if such sword did exist, then it would mean

that its original owner, Inigo, had also existed at some point. (I was so dizzy by then that I

believe I lost my balance. But I kept tackling those spiraling thoughts.) So, if Inigo had lived

sometime in the past, and had hung out with Westley and Buttercup...» That is when I came

back to my senses.

Recalling that moment, I thought to myself that I would very much enjoy dissecting

the narrative tools that had fooled me into believing in the existence of a fictional construct.

This journey, which lasted quite a few years, has enriched my reading experience in more

ways than one. I have also been humbled by my experience with the fantasy genre, one I used

to consider a “sous-genre,” unworthy of the title of literature. Doody noticed that “As the

twentieth century draws to a close, we observe a return to fantasy, foreignness, and the larger

novel.”202 She also makes the following remark regarding realism, stating that

202. M. A. Doody, op. cit., 299.

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[it] has faded away like the Cheshire cat, leaving its smile of reason behind; whennovels by admired novelists deal with barons living in trees and with girls born withgreen hair it is time to drop the pretense that the primary demand of a long work ofprose fiction is that it should be “realistic.”203

Authors turning to fantasy while at the same redefining realism is no coincidence. Fantasy,

with its complex relationship to reality, is quite fit to inspire a reflection on the world around

us which, it would seem, is becoming more and more difficult to comprehend.

Novels in general have much more to teach us as they pursue their evolution, in the

Darwinian sense, pushing the limits of narration, adapting to social and contemporary

demands, casting perpetual doubt on our interpretation of what they are while at the same

time, hinting at what they could be. Novels have a bright future ahead of them. In light of our

study, it is safe to conclude that this future holds even more reader involvement. Indeed, it is

difficult to imagine future readers unlearning what the novel has taught us so far. English

author Neil Gaiman puts it quite nicely. In the introduction to his collection of short stories,

Smoke and Mirrors, he states the following:

Fantasy—and all fiction is fantasy of one kind or another—is a mirror. A distortingmirror to be sure, and a concealing mirror,[…] but it’s a mirror nonetheless, which wecan use to tell ourselves things we might not otherwise see.204

If fantasy is a mirror of life which can tell us things about our own reality, then it is

reasonable to conclude that metafictional fantasy is a mirror of literature, drawing attention to

the many ways our literary background informs our interpretations and views.

Hutcheon acknowledges the fact that fantasy has often “been denied the critical

treatment allowed to “serious” literature.”205 I hope that through dissertations such as this one,

this inequality may one day be dissipated.

I would like to express my gratitude toward Madame Denise Ginfray for providing

many leads for this research as well as for her support. I would also like to thank Madame

Anne Rouhette for her constructive criticism and her encouragements.

203. M. A. Doody, op. cit., 16.204. Neil Gaiman, Smoke and Mirrors: Short Fictions and Illusions, New York, Avon, 2005, 2.205. L. Hutcheon, op. cit., 77.

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Fantasy and Fairy-Tale Theory

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Appendix A

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Appendix A: Book cover of the 2007 Harvest mass market edition

Appendix B

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Appendix B: First page of the novel(2007 Harvest massmarket edition)

Appendix C

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Appendix C: Map

Appendix D

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Appendix D: Theatrical release poster of the screenadaptation of The Princess Bride