Browsing by Author "Pakkanen, Johannes"

This thesis explores how William Goldman’s The Princess Bride (1973) engages its readership with the use of an autofictional frame story. The frame story involves a narrator-character with the author’s name (referred to as Bill for clarity) abridging a fictional author’s book, which acts as a story within the story. The approach used in this thesis is a combination of close reading and the application of narratological theory relating to autofiction, narrative as rhetoric, reader engagement, metafiction and fictionality. I assert that these various methods of engaging and communicating with the reader are not only effective but intentional. The analysis begins by examining the book’s background, providing a synopsis of the relevant events of the story, as well as a brief biography of the author, William Goldman, whose contrasting life experience with the narrator-character Bill is an important point of analysis. Mention is also given to the lack of prior academic research on Goldman’s body of work and The Princess Bride in particular. This is followed by a thorough examination of the frame story and the ways in which it is constructed to appeal to readers. This is accomplished through application of Seymour Chatman’s narrative communication model, an analysis of Bill’s character arc and how Goldman wields autofiction to tell a heartfelt and personal story in the face of the “death of the author” and New Criticism. The analysis is then turned towards the high adventure fantasy story within the frame, and how it interacts with the frame story to create a novel and engaging whole. This is accomplished through an exploration of the central themes of the fantasy story and how they are paralleled in the frame story, an exploration of Goldman’s use of cliffhangers and, finally, the metafictional elements of the narrative that directly ask for the reader’s participation in the autofictional lore of book. In addition to the above findings, I conclude that Goldman’s novel is a complex and enthralling work deserving of academic analysis, despite prior lack of such. My thesis shows that The Princess Bride should be of particular interest to scholars currently researching autofiction, as it uses its autofictional framing in unique and engaging ways.