Intertextuality in T. Pratchett’s Novel Maskerade

Abstract

The category of intertextuality and playing with the reader have become an integral part of mass literature in the era of postmodernism. The aim of this article is to analyse the intertextual inclusions in Maskerade (1995), a novel by Terry Pratchett, a British writer who achieved success in comic fantasy and is well-known for his book series Discworld and the use of different cultural references which play a crucial role in the construction of the storyline. The research refers to the original text of Maskerade, the primary precedent texts, i.e. The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux and the musical of the same name by Andrew Lloyd Webber, as well as several musical works of the last century. The distinctive features of the novel include a predominance of musical references over literary ones, which can be explained by the primary plot of the book developing on the stage of the Ankh-Morpork Opera House. In the very paratitle of the novel, the writer begins an intertextual game with the reader, hinting at the main narrative line, the duality and masquerade of what happens. All the plot-forming intertextual connections analysed in this article have no attribution and are expressed in the form of marked quotations, quasi-quotations, and allusions. However, taking into consideration “the white knowledge” and the readers’ horizon of expectations, Terry Pratchett reconsiders many images of the characters and seemingly well-known plot twists of The Phantom of the Opera. Furthermore, showing the backstage of the theatrical world with its prejudices and difficulties, the author thereby connects the real world with the secondary fictional world which turn out to be hardly distinguishable from each other.