Humour in the Mystic Fantasy World of <i>The Wee Free Men</i>

The paper deals with the study of humour in Terry Pratchett’s The Wee Free Men (2003). The paper provides a reading of the humour in a text belonging to the comic fantasy genre and argues that though the comic element in the book may entertain readers, the humour in the book is used to raise a series of issues and invite readers into a meaning-making process. The paper will refer to Julie Cross’s “new ‘compounds’ of humour” and Bakhtin’s theory of carnival to discuss the complexities of humour and the ways of its actualisation in the fantasy genre. The paper also refers to the gender aspect of humour and discusses the elements that subvert gender expectations. The analysis of humour and its impact on the implied reader is carried out with an account of the plot, the authorial intention, and the textual structure and its elements.