• 2 A subgenre also called ‘sword and sorcery’ which received a more mixed critical history than Tolkie (...)
• 3 Like any consensual definition, this one is caricatural. Fantasy tends to be reduced to high fantas (...)
• 4 ‘[L]a dimension ludique […] permet de nuancer le paradoxe […] : la coexistence […] d’une high fanta (...)
• 5 ‘Pour que l’humour et la satire puissant exercer leur coupable industrie, la cible se doit d’avoir (...)
• 6 Written by Henry N. Beard and Douglas C. Kennedy, published in 1969 by the Harvard Lampoon. It is o (...)
• 7 Though they will not be elaborated in the body of the paper, parallels with the theories of the gro (...)
• 8 According to its wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bored_of_the_Rings). The precision ‘ (...)

1The Discworld is a world shaped like a disc, traveling through space on the back of four elephants, themselves standing on the shell of the great space turtle A’Tuin. And as far as jokes are concerned, the cosmology of Terry Pratchett’s famous series is only the tip of the iceberg. The first book, The Colour of Magic, published in 1983, notably sets failed wizard Rincewind and oblivious tourist Twoflower on a great epic quest… determining the turtle’s sex by dangling from the rim of the Disc in a medieval spacecraft. The original publisher, Colin Smythe, tried to describe Pratchett’s genre and style by adding the subtitle ‘Jerome K. Jerome meets Lord of the Rings (with a touch of Peter Pan)’: a summary which seems appropriate as the heroic fantasy2 dimension lessens after the first two novels, yet also misleading. The adjectives used are eloquent: ‘light’ (or comic, or low) fantasy consists in subverting and deflating the romantic, epic, and melodramatic (thus, often ponderous) tendency of ‘high’ fantasy à la Tolkien.3 Light fantasy occupies a precarious role within the critical tradition: although Anne Besson, for instance, sees humour as a fundamental generic component of fantasy,4 it rarely warrants more than a quick mention (however laudatory), and is more often used as a badge of honor, a sign that the genre in general has grown notorious enough to be recognized.5 This is mostly a strategic choice: fantasy is not a well-established research topic, and its comic sub-genre is a minor one amongst the number of books published every year. But we could also connect this with humour’s ability to disturb the established order and categories. Even though Pratchett is hailed as the figurehead of the parodic vein, his work operates on a completely different level from straightforward parodies like Bored of the Rings⁶—which is not to say that Pratchett is above toilet humour, as the corporeal7 dimension is an essential comic and poetic feature of the Discworld. But while Bored of the Rings ‘has the distinction for a parody of having been continuously in print since it was first published’,8 Pratchett’s magnum opus now consists of forty-one novels with a host of companion books and merchandise, not to mention several adaptations to television, radio and the stage, and has earned him critical and popular acclaim, a huge (and committed) fan community, a Carnegie Medal, a World Fantasy Award, and a Knighthood.

• 9 We will not elaborate on this dimension in the paper, but Lewis Carroll’s influence is visible firs (...)
• 10 ‘Du mécanique plaqué sur du vivant’ (Bergson 29).
• 11 ‘[C]es esprits chimériques, ces exaltés, ces fous si étrangement raisonnables [...] des coureurs qu (...)
• 12 ‘*Rains of fish, for example, were so common in the little landlocked village of Pine Dressers that (...)

7A reference to the Cheshire Cat appears self-evident at this point, since nonsense is among Pratchett's many influences9 and the Discworld often feels like a giant lunatic asylum in which the reader is asked to play along and humour the inmates. Those single-minded characters seem to illustrate Henri Bergson's famous analysis of laughter as a response to the recognition of ‘something mechanical encrusted on the living’10, which only grows with every repetition: ‘C'est que la vie bien vivante ne devrait pas se répéter. Là où il y a répétition, similitude complète, nous soupçonnons du mécanique fonctionnant derrière le vivant’ (Bergson 26). Laughter is a social censorship, always enacted at someone’s expense, and seen from the outside, the characters from the various examples we have just considered certainly resemble Bergson’s dreamers and idealists, who stumble over reality and become more ridiculous, less life-like every time they persevere.11 The twist being that obviously, the rules of reality are somewhat different in a light fantasy novel: Pratchett informs us in Reaper Man that ‘[i]nexplicable phenomena [are] not in themselves unusual on the Discworld*’, illustrating the statement with one of his whimsical footnotes.12 Single-mindedness seems more powerful than any magic, and it is ironic that wizards, in particular, rise within their own hierarchy not through their powers or wisdom, but mostly by being too stubborn to die. As it turns out, Otto’s phlegmatic response is entirely appropriate, since he only needs a drop of blood to come back to life whenever he crumbles to dust, and the Nac Mac Feegles actually are the most fearsome warriors of the Disc (even trolls are afraid of them). So if you laugh at them, the joke is on you. Everybody might be mad there, but ultimately, if you only bang your head against a wall long enough, somebody might move the chair for you. Bergson’s theory can only go so far, not just because of the chosen genre, but the intended message. Pratchett’s brand of comedy of repetition engineers a laughter which connects and includes instead of dehumanizing. The reader is invited into this strange community, laughing with the characters and not at them, and in any case laughing in the face of reality—regardless of his level of familiarity with Pratchett’s universe.

• 13 ‘The only reason you couldn’t say that Nobby was close to the animal kingdom was that the animal ki (...)
• 14 The famous certificate can, of course, be consulted in Feet of Clay: ‘I, after hearing evidence fro (...)
• 15 Also humorously called ‘figgins’ within the reader community: ‘a figgin in Discworld editorial disc (...)
• 16 In addition, Carrot ‘operates as a guardian of the comedic stability of the Discworld’ (Clute 26).

8As a rule, every novel in the series can be read on its own: a new reader is always provided with enough information on the universe and the characters to join in the general merriment and insanity. But of course, reading them in chronological order only adds to the sense of belonging, as most of the information develops into inside jokes. One example is the constant doubt concerning the species to which police officer Nobby Nobbs belongs, which starts out as metaphoric jokes in Guards! Guards! and Men at Arms (to emphasize the fact that he is not a great example of physical and moral beauty13) and recurs in every novel in which he makes an appearance, until Commander Vimes finally admits in Thud! that he is human, ‘just like many officers. It [is] just that he [is] the only one who ha[s] to carry a certificate to prove it’ (Pratchett 2005, 21).14 This kind of running jokes15 creates over-arching connections inside the series, but also a feeling of fixity (which particularly seems to affect officers of the Watch). Comic relief, as a rule, does not allow for a great deal of character growth, and both Nobby and his diametrical opposite, the candid and admirable Captain Carrot,16 function as types. Often, the Disc’s comedy of character borders on slapstick, and a committed reader quickly learns to predict storylines, as almost all characters move in recognizable patterns. For instance, every novel with Death as a protagonist revolves around an (ultimately failed) attempt to quit his job. This predictability can be interpreted in widely different ways: after all, fantasy belongs to genre literature, and therefore caters more openly to its readership’s desire of reading more of the same, but with variations. Story-wise, Pratchett seems to embrace repetition as a poetics to knit the fabric of his fictional universe, and his community of readers, more tightly together—usually in a self-reflexive way. However, the recurring, and seemingly pointless struggle between Death’s compassion for humanity and the narrative necessity for him to do his job also has tragic undertones. Regardless of whether the characters embody anthropomorphic personifications or bring comic relief, they appear at times to be mere puppets manipulated by a higher power, another comic mechanism analyzed by Bergson: ‘Le pantin à ficelles—Innombrables sont les scènes de comédie où un personnage croit parler et agir librement, où ce personnage conserve par conséquent l'essentiel de la vie, alors qu'envisagé d'un certain côté il apparaît comme un simple jouet entre les mains d'un autre qui s'en amuse’ (Bergson 59). And why should they not appear that way? They are, after all, characters in a story.

• 17 ‘En simplifiant à l’extrême, on tient pour ’postmoderne’ l’incrédulité à l’égard des métarécits. .. (...)

9Drawing from the idea that the central symptom of the postmodern condition is the loss of metanarratives,17 developed in Jean-François Lyotard’s seminal essay, Kirby Olson argues that ‘[p]ostmodernism and comedy are aligned in that they function by overturning master narratives and ridding metaphysics of transcendence and closure’ (Olson 6). As might be expected, Terry Pratchett echoes both of these analyses while conforming to neither when he explains the core of his whimsical universe over the course of the first three volumes of The Science of Discworld:

• 18 The plot of Witches Abroad, for example, is about stopping a delusional fairy godmother who has ann (...)
• 19 ‘This is it!’ said Carrot. He glanced towards the Hub, in case any gods had forgotten what they wer (...)

10Thus, stories metaphorically and literally hold the world together. Although narrativium carries its own contradictions in-universe,18 it explains for example how characters can routinely reference the generic tropes which they are fulfilling or subverting. They are aware that their reality is governed on certain literary patterns, like the idea that a last-ditch, million-to-one chance will succeed nine times out of ten.19 And although there is no central definition of postmodernism, it is generally agreed that ‘[w]hat we tend to call postmodernism in literature today is usually characterized by intense self-reflexivity and overtly parodic intertextuality. In fiction this means that it is usually metafiction that is equated with the postmodern’ (Hutcheon 1). Narrativium, though a spectacular alliance of fantasy, comedy and metaphysics, is not the only way in which Pratchett’s ‘fictional writing […] self-consciously and systematically draws attention to its status as an artefact’, thus aligning him with Patricia Waugh’s definition of metafiction (Waugh 2). The Disc's reality is narrative, textual, and therefore, the references to ‘Roundworld’ appear as parodic intertextuality, as we shall see now.

• 20 ‘In the postmodern philosophers we see a delight in this world an and enjoyment of humour for its o (...)
• 21 In his essay ‘Theories of Humour’, Andrew M. Butler examines the novel Mort through the prism of se (...)

11In The Colour of Magic, Twoflower’s cheerful attempts to explain the workings of insurance policies and economics elicit incomprehension in the pseudo-medieval inhabitants of Ankh-Morpork and hilarity in the reader. Furthermore, due to the language barrier, the words come out on the page as ‘inn-sewer-ants-polly-sea’ and ‘reflected-sound of underground-spirits’ (Pratchett 1983, 55). The distortion undergone in this fake translation fits the kind of deconstructive linguistic games which we expect from postmodernism, reenchanting very mundane elements of our reality to make them almost poetic.20 But it does not necessitate any highbrow reference to decode, instead falling back on the very simple, child-like pleasure of solving a charade. In the same way, the magical computer Hex consists of ram (RAM) skulls, ‘small religious pictures’ (icons), ‘ants’ and ‘bees’ (bugs) and a mouse which somehow stops the whole contraption from working ‘whenever they forg[e]t to give it its cheese’ (Pratchett 1997, 129). The end result looks as though its builder, Ponder Stibbons, heard the names of the components, but enacted a bad translation due to the lack of appropriate industrial development. Although perfectly accessible to any reader who has ever handled a computer, the allusions require effort to be decrypted (notably a far-fetched paronomasia on ‘anthill’/intel inside), until the reader bursts out laughing because he has solved the puzzle and ‘gets’ the joke. Hex also produces delightfully absurd error messages, such as ‘+++ Out of Cheese Error +++’ or ‘+++ Divide by Cucumber Error. Please Reinstall the Universe and Reboot +++’. The parallel to carnivalesque parody21 is quite visible here, as references to food ground Pratchett’s humour, allowing metaphysical (‘Reinstall the Universe’) and meta-literary (‘…no story, no purpose, no destination’) issues to be breached in a very down-to-earth way. One could also simply note that saying the word ‘cheese’ makes anyone smile, and thus automatically lightens the atmosphere. Pratchett seems to enjoy maintaining the ambiguity, and one precept of postmodernism which he definitely puts into practice consists in breaking down the opposition between high and low culture. Or, as the Archancellor would say: ‘That statement is either so deep it would take a lifetime to fully comprehend every particle of its meaning, or it is a load of absolute tosh. Which is it, I wonder?’ (Pratchett 1997, 183).

• 22 In Wyrd Sisters, Snuff, Hogfather, The Truth and Jingo, respectively.
• 23 ‘Another aspect of Discworld’s eclectism comes from what Pratchett has self-deprecatingly referred (...)
• 24 Just to give an idea, The Annotated Pratchett File, which collects any and all allusions garnered b (...)

12Reading the Discworld can mean meeting Leonardo Da Vinci or Jane Austen, getting an allusion to Pascal's Wager on the existence of God, another to Sisyphus, and having the theory of the multiverse referred to as the ‘trousers of time’,22 all that in quick asides woven into the storylines as seamlessly as the references to cheese. Nothing is too high (or too low) to warrant a joke, because nothing is off-limits, and such treatment of knowledge23 is intrinsically didactic. Although that dimension is more noticeable in the books explicitly marketed for children, like the Tiffany Aching novels, the access to culture is always democratic: given the staggering amount of jokes about anything from pop culture to quantum physics that Pratchett makes, every reader is bound to miss some no matter their level of education.24 They can be discovered in later re-readings, and the sense of potential, of a bottomless source of echoes and Easter eggs, wins out over the impression of ‘missing out’ or being excluded from a joke. On the other hand, Pratchett’s almost excessive use of the quid pro quo as a comedic device means there is a frightening amount of information being lost in translation whenever the characters try to communicate something, especially jokes.

• 25 ‘“Uh...why does your partner keep saying ‘ing’, Mr Pin ?” said a chair.

14Here, Pratchett is poking fun at the kind of erudite puns reserved to the happy few. The original joke is bad, but the more Susan tries to explain it, the less Bilious understands, rendering the conversation almost surrealistically absurd. Susan’s helpless accumulation of words only seems to disintegrate meaning further. This is a typical example of how conversations usually unfold in the Discworld, because a lot of the humor hinges on misunderstandings—once again, a classic comedic device is taken to the extreme. Most gods, like Bilious, do not have a sense of humor because they are not really alive. Some characters (like Captain Carrot) are immune to sarcasm and irony, and many species (dwarves especially) always take metaphors literally—an understandable reflex, since on Discworld, ‘everything that there is exists as a thing’. Factoring in malapropisms, foreign languages, accents, ‘speech impediments’25 and the average IQ, it is a wonder that any communication comes through, since more time is spent translating, explaining and correcting than actually communicating. The metaphorical ‘noise’ is deafening, and the Discworld appears ridden with entropy—the thermodynamic concept applied to information theory as ‘a measure of disruption of information, a measure, that is to say, of what information theorists call “noise”. Noise is the distortion factor in any communication system’ (O’Neill 9). Objectively, the logorrheic way in which conversations unfold, and subsequent erosion of meaning at work in Pratchett's books brings him quite close to the Theatre of the Absurd. And yet, rather than dissolve into silence, the characters’ flawed attempts at communication and translation never falter, and thanks to narrativium, the deus ex machina, everything always turns out fine.

• 26 The lyrics are sung by the protagonist and other characters, all strung up on crosses at the very e (...)

16Common sense, like a shared joke, makes for a very fragile point on which to balance an entire turtle-shaped universe, but it holds. At the end of Hogfather, Death concludes that humans need fantasy to be human, that they have to believe in the little lies, like Santa Claus, so that they can believe in the big ones, like truth and justice—so that the sun will rise the next morning, and not just ‘a mere ball of flaming gas’ (Pratchett 1997, 422-423). Susan rolls her eyes at this melodramatic and frankly cheesy conclusion—an appropriate tendency for a Discworld book. Terry Pratchett’s whimsical universe reflects the potential absurdity of the world while rejecting it, instead choosing to embrace comedy and the power of myth, the funny vegetables and tiny blue heroes. It is not just light fantasy, but enlightened fantasy, endeavoring to ‘always look on the light side of life, always look on the bright side of life’.26 Pratchett’s playfulness is not shallow, and neither does it fall under the usual accusation of self-referentiality lobbied at postmodernism. On the contrary, he seems to embody the ‘spectacular irreverence that breaks all the standards of rational thought […], the very lack of solemnity that the postmodernists have looked for, [which] is in fact the virtue of iconoclasm’ (Kirby 3). Much as studying Pratchett’s puns, slapstick and word games helps to understand the purpose of his humor, it is the emotions behind the forms that remain with the reader long after the books have ended. Joseph Campbell’s words perhaps express the spirit of the Discworld best when he writes that ‘[t]ragedy is the shattering of the forms and our attachment to the forms; comedy, the wild and careless, inexhaustible joy of life invincible’ (Campbell 21).

• 27 The ludic dimension, which has been mentioned several times in the course of this paper and is cent (...)

17The existence of a postmodern and humorous parody should not surprise us that much. As Margaret A. Rose points out, the drab image of postmodern irony can be attributed to ‘late-modern’ efforts like Linda Hutcheon’s ‘virtual elimination of the comic from parody’ in a ‘laudable, if not novel, criticism of the reduction of parody to the negative and one-dimensional form of ridicule with which the modern definition of parody as burlesque has been associated’ (Rose 239). So Pratchett, reconciling the metafictional, intertextual dimension with the comic, follows postmodern parody as defined by Bradbury, Lodge and Eco (Rose 282–283). Thus proving that light fantasy can go well beyond parody (defined as a negative and one-dimensional form of ridicule) while still making readers laugh out loud. Humor in Terry Pratchett's Discworld comes in all shapes and sizes, and though it is, at times, heavy to stomach, and might take a while to digest, the sheer length of the series almost guarantees that everyone can find the right flavor for them. And unlike Bergson's final comparison of laughter with sea foam, it does not leave a bitter aftertaste after the bubbliness and the whimsical have faded. On the Disc, humour is a way to rebel against fatality, both low and high, physical and metaphysical. No essential difference exists between a vampire photographer and the potential absurdity and emptiness of the universe. Pratchett's playful relationship with language hinders, but also enables communication, and things are more often won than lost in translation, as the misunderstandings and puns outline unwritten stories and potential worlds.27 Incidentally, Pratchett's humor translates very well on a linguistic level: he is read in 37 languages, and his French translator Patrick Couton won the Grand Prix de L'Imaginaire in 1998 for his outstanding work on the Discworld series. Humor connects, creates, unites, and like narrativium, this more evolved form of suspension of disbelief, it holds the universe together. It enlightens. The expression ‘enlightened fantasy’, apart from being a useful pun, also underlines how important the ideals of the Enlightenment are for Pratchett, who uses his comic writing to educate and to fight against ignorance.

• 28 See for example Andrew Rayment’s study on postmodern fantasy.
• 29 This quote is actually applied to Otto, when Commander Vimes realizes that the little vampire is ac (...)

18Satire is always present in the Discworld, and the side of Pratchett’s humor which has attracted the most critical attention,28 which is partly why it was not the primary focus of this paper. It is also almost too blunt, and any smile it elicits from the reader will be a grim one. On the contrary, Pratchett’s brand of gallows humor warrants a second look. While not a new idea in and on itself, it is the popularity of his Death character that is surprising, as it has become one of the most beloved in the Discworld series. There seems to be something inherently endearing about a seven-foot-tall skeleton trying (and failing) to tell a knock-knock joke. And humor comes once again with a purpose: ‘make them laugh, and they're not afraid’.29 When Pratchett’s satire and gallows humor are put side by side, things like ignorance, intolerance and hatred appear more frightening than death. This seems all the more relevant if we consider, in closing, Pratchett's personal life. In 2007, he was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's disease. From that point on, he lobbied for the right to assisted suicide very publicly, even participating in a documentary entitled Terry Pratchett: Choosing to Die. In the face of physical and mental decay, Death can be seen as an ally or even a friend. Pratchett even reports in The Art of Discworld to have received letters from terminally ill children hoping that Death will resemble its Discworld incarnation. The power of humor, its ability to bring joy in a manner that makes both life and death bearable, is part and parcel of the series’ legacy. On March 12^th, 2015, Terry Pratchett passed away, and his daughter Rhianna chose to announce this news on Twitter through the voice of the Reaper: At last, Sir Terry, we must walk together.