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“places are not landmarks: they are routes, patterns worked out by people. They are not static either; places are continually being rebuilt, and this construction creates a sense of place as process” (Mendlesohn XXVI). The castle in this case is not static. It moves and keeps changing its shapes. It is not a landmark, or more precisely, a setting.
Instead, the castle has important metaphorical meanings. Since both novels include
“castle” in their titles, we might ask: what is Jones’s message behind the
ever-changing castle? What does Jones try to express through the image of the mobile castle?
The rich metaphorical and changing meanings of the castle in these two novels thus create a variety of possible interpretations. The uncertainty of meaning
determines the major characters’ destiny, at least from a reader’s perspective.
Different interpretations of the same phrases would lead to different consequences.
For example, Abdullah, the protagonist of Castle in the air, cannot figure out his own destiny by the saying of being “raised above all others in this land” in the prophecy. It can fit into at least three different meanings in the context and each of them may lead to different endings. In some cases, even when the ending is revealed, the readers cannot be certain whether the meaning is really settled or not. Jones’s Castle in the Air especially demonstrates a problem for interpretation. I argue that the ever-changing castle in both works reveals Jones’s attempt to mobilize meanings beyond the fairy tale convention, an attempt further reinforced by the Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki, who adapted the novel and presented the castle in different images and meanings.5
II. Literary Review
5 Jones’s two novels will be my main discussion, which occupies the first two chapters. Miyazaki’s adaptation of Howl’s Moving Castle, due to its remarkably presentation of the castle, will be discussed in the third chapter.
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國立 政 治 大 學
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Originating from folk tales, the literary fairy tale started to prosper in Europe during the Renaissance. Charles Perrault was among the authors of early ages that created fairy tales from oral tradition. However, the golden age of the fairy tale genre is the nineteenth century: such writers as Brother Grimms and Hans Andersen created
“family fairy tales” for the household (Zipes, Happily Ever After 64, 66). In contrast to traditional fairy tale, the “new” fairy tale came into being in the late 1960s. Under the impact of counter-culture movement, fairy tales underwent many revisions partly as a revolt against the Vietnam War: “one of the slogans of the anti-war movement in Europe and America was ‘power to the imagination’, that is, ‘empower the
imagination’” (Zipes, Oxford Companion xxx). By the 1980s, more famous writers joined in, including authors such as Angela Carter, Salman Rushdie, and A. S. Byatt.
Some overthrow the hierarchy of gender, revealing different sides in the role of women. Some question the issue of social codes and narratology and also break through different genres. By retellings of fairy tales, contemporary writers and artists
“offer alternatives to the standard formulas that stimulate readers/viewers to rethink their aesthetic and ideological notions of what a fairy tale is” (Zipes, Oxford
Companion xxx-xxxi). Among these writers, Jones had also written more than 30 original fairy-tale novels and some of her works can certainly be called “new” fairy tales (Zipes, Oxford Companion 271).
The other significant development of the genre in the early twentieth century is Walt Disney’s animations based on renowned fairy tales. Disney’s use of Technicolor and other technologies created a big success, turning classical fairy tale into Disney Corporation’s trademark (Zipes, Oxford Companion xxx). Such Disney animations include predictable plots and fixed elements, like castles and princesses, and have greatly influenced public perceptions of fairy tales. But Jones’s recreation and Miyazaki’s adaptation have turned the castle, an important motif in Disney’s
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animation, into an essential character rather than a setting, and thus departs from Disney’s conventions.
Even though Jones is not one of the well-known authors of contemporary fairy tales, she is the most innovative writer, known for “breaking the traditional fairy-tale pattern” and turning the “conventional and well-known into something unexpected”
(Zipes, Oxford Companion 271). Though Howl’s Moving Castle and Castle in the Air have not received extensive attention from literary critics, the figurative meanings and images of the unconventional castle are worthy of further examination. Of such criticism that does focus on these two works, most focuses on Jones’s use of language while some on Miyazaki’s adapted animation. The adaptation actually draws more attention than the original so that readers as well as critics who are interested in the story of Howl’s Moving Castle start to explore the fascination of Jones’s original.
The popularity of Hayao Miyazaki’s Howl’s Moving Castle (2004) has aroused audience’s interest in Jones’s original (1986). Matt Kimmich maintains that
Miyazaki’s adaptation is only partially successful in its interpretation of Jones’s story.
The plot between the two is different owing to Miyazaki’s preference to certain
themes appearing in his previous films, like war, flying, and brave female protagonists.
Osmond suggests that Miyazaki’s intention differs from Jones’s so that the latter part of the film departs from the original plotline in the novel and develops into a new story. Besides, due to the different genres between fiction and film, the presentation of
“different equivalences,” that is, “adaptation proper” should be considered in this case.
Although the “double nature” is perceived in the film, as Kimmich terms it, Jones’s verbal wit and lightness are recalled by Miyazaki’s visual humor (137). The visual humor from one of the most remarkable adaptations is the castle with the grotesque appearance and its different phases of development throughout the entire film. This will be further explored in my chapter three. Jones’s original and its sequel, however,
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occupy most of the criticisms.
Howl’s Moving Castle is compared with Lyman Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz.
As a unique American fairytale, The Wizard of Oz sets a model for children’s fantasy literature: “there and back again” (Bar-Hillel 385). As Gili Bar-Hillel points out, many similar events that occur in both stories suggest Jones’s homage to Baum. He further indicates that the images echoed in both texts are due to their common source from fairytales. Besides, the use of color on a visual level immediately links The Wizard of Oz to Howl’s Moving Castle, and even to the film version of the former one
(Bar-Hillel 390). Adapted later in 2004 by Hayao Miyazaki, Howl’s Moving Castle presents vivid images which may be inspired by the original colorful description in the novel. The ever-changing colors, especially on Howl and the castle, correspond to the shifting nature of Jones’s ambiguous meanings. Jones’s language is mostly
explored; the most notable ones are Deborah Kaplan, David Rudd, and John Stephens.
In “Diana Wynne Jones and the World-Shaping Power of Language,” Deborah Kaplan especially explores the language in Jones’s works. Kaplan states that in Howl’s Moving Castle, “language is forever fluid, forever dangerous, but nonetheless not to be abandoned” (62). According to Kaplan, language, especially idiomatic English, is usually connected to magical power in most of Jones’s works. This is especially true of Sophie’s magical power in Howl’s Castle series, which makes things alive by talking in idiomatic English. Language is also connected with reality:
“Truth, reality, and language are all endlessly shifting, and power rests with those who are aware of the many possible readings of the language all the characters use and do not try to deny the essential fluidity of both reality and language” (Kaplan 56-57). The
“endless shifting,” “the many possible readings of the language,” and “the essential fluidity of…language” indicate Jones’s efforts to deconstruct conventional ideas of language and reality.
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In his “Building Castles in the Air: (De) Construction in Howl’s Moving
Castle,” David Rudd argues that Jones applies deconstruction to her story, reflected in its language, violence of linear time, subversion of gender hierarchy, unconventional ending, and the floating castle. Jacques Derrida’s idea that “the meanings and
referents of language are never stable, but ever shifting” can be applied to the uncertain meanings scattered in Howl’s Moving Castle and Castle in the Air, particularly the important image of the moving castle (Rudd 257).
Rudd’s ideas have importantly exposed the connection between the unstable meanings in the novel’s use of language and the multiple meanings of the castle, but this link needs to be developed further, in my view. Such a link may also be applied to the sequel Castle in the Air.
Jones’s strategic use of language in Castle in the Air is explored in great details in John Stephens’s Language and Ideology in Children’s Fiction. Stephens adopts Jacque Lacan’s idea of the sign and states that “the key to all events in Castle in the Air…is likewise in front of everybody” (273). The game Jones plays is “to place all missing objects under the reader’s nose, but by shifting the signifiers floats meaning along a series of deferrals” (Stephens 274). Stephens’s emphasis on a metaphorical reading of the story overlooks the fact that the literal reading is equally important in the genre of fantasy. Not only does Jones conceal the signifier from the signified, but she also plays around the intriguing interaction between metaphoric and literal meanings.
While the above authors point out the importance of language, the fluidity and shifting nature in Jones’s two works, this thesis hopes to further study these aspects and particularly propose a study at the interaction between the metaphorical and the literal dimension of Jones’s works.
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In this thesis, I will explore the connection between the use of language and the changing images of the castle. I will start with my discussion of language with Tzvetan Todorov’s and Vladimir Propp’s structuralist approach. Propp formulizes thiry-one functions in fairy tales, components that drive a story forward. These functions constitute a sequence of events that demonstrate a fixed pattern in a fairy tale. While a tale may not contain all the functions, the order of the sequence of functions remains the same (Propp 21-23). In what follows, I will introduce some of the functions that can apply to my discussion of Jones’s texts.6
The first seven functions in Propp’s theory include interdiction addressed, villain appeared, and victim deceived. The insufficiency or lack of the hero leads to a quest. Later the hero leaves home, is on his way to be tested, and acquires a magical agent. Then he or she is led to the place where the object is. The hero fights and defeats the villain, thereby liquidating the initial misfortune or lack. The story ends at this point with the hero’s marriage or ascension to the throne (Propp 26-63). This pattern can be roughly applied to Howl’s Moving Castle and Castle in the Air, though not completely conform to it in detail.
While Howl’s Moving Castle and Castle in the Air can fit into Propp’s theory of fairy tale, Jones modifies some details regarding the various functions. For example, Jones grants her protagonists magical powers rather than assisting them with a magical helper (Zipes, Oxford Companion 271). However, readers still can perceive that this is the same function, judging from the similar acts, i.e., both aid protagonists with magical power but in different ways. Starting from fairy tale convention, I shall first indicate the fairy tale pattern that Jones adopt, based on Propp’s fairy tale
6 While Jones’s Castle series is regarded as postmodern, its content fits into Propp’s structuralist system. As I will show later, Jones’s use of language is post-structuralist, yet the plotline of the Castle series follows traditional structure of fairy tales.