Kelso, Sylvia (2020) The Road and the River: Genre-Neering a Future in the Sharing Knife Series. In: Yung Lee, Regina, and McCormack, Una, (eds.) Biology and Manners: Essays on the Works and Worlds of Lois McMaster Bujold. Liverpool Science Fiction Texts and Studies . Liverpool University Press, Liverpool, United Kingdom, pp. 113-130.

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Abstract

This chapter provides a close reading of Lois McMaster Bujold’s later fantasy series The Sharing Knife to explore how the project reworks traditional narrative motifs and crosses genres to blur or mutate expectations and storylines. The chapter argues that the series is neither science fiction nor fantasy, but a hybrid based in fantasy whose setting fits early industrial society and the contours of the post-apocalypse. It draws on motifs of Western women’s writing, with a main female character, Fawn, in flight, but with settings (the road and the river) more commonly associated with the picaresque and, in particular, American road trip literature. The non-realist elements and the secondary world situate the novels as speculative fantasy fiction, only to diverge immediately and repeatedly from the modern fantasy norm.

Item ID:	76844
Item Type:	Book Chapter (Research - B1)
ISBN:	9781789627534
Copyright Information:	Copyright © 2020 Liverpool University Press.
Date Deposited:	29 Nov 2022 03:50
FoR Codes:	47 LANGUAGE, COMMUNICATION AND CULTURE > 4705 Literary studies > 470527 Popular and genre literature @ 50% 47 LANGUAGE, COMMUNICATION AND CULTURE > 4705 Literary studies > 470523 North American literature @ 50%
SEO Codes:	13 CULTURE AND SOCIETY > 1301 Arts > 130199 Arts not elsewhere classified @ 50% 13 CULTURE AND SOCIETY > 1302 Communication > 130203 Literature @ 50%
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