In this mini-episode, Valkyrist discusses postmodernism within George R. R. Martin’s fantasy series, and the various ways in which “metanarratives” are explored and challenged.
Contains spoilers for the first three books of A Song of Ice and Fire, and some minor spoilers regarding the emotional states of two characters in book 5.
Credits:
Written and Edited by Valkyrist
Closing music taken from Malukah’s YouTube channel
Episode 23:
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Links:
The Postmodern Condition: A Report on the Understanding of Knowledge (by Jean-François Lyotard)
Vassals of Kingsgrave 
This podcast was bomb! When you brought up discursive modes my nipples tingled a little. Seriously, I was halfway to getting a chubby. If this presentation had gone down in any of my college english classes it would have been followed by about 20 minutes of crickets, and the teacher would certainly not have fueled further discussion. Great episode, though I think you might have gone a little too far to make your point when you alluded to Tyrion in DoD; that was dangerously close to serious spoiler territory. Good stuff though, gonna read the full paper as soon as I get a chance.
Hehe. Thanks for listening man.Yeah, the Tyrion comment was a dumb slip of the tongue, though I do give spoiler warnings for the episode.
Really good! I never thought about ASOIAF in these terms before. My only quibble: at the end, I couldn’t hear the questions being asked. BTW, this is No True Lady posting under my Hannibal podcast’s account. 😉
Thank you m’lady. Yes, I literally popped my iPhone on the lectern and hit record, so the audio is less than ideal for some of the audience discussion.
I think the question you are referring to was a girl who was talking about why she loved the nostalgic, earthy feeling of fantasy (over sci-fi), and how it summoned up the aesthetics of biblical and mythic stories, while also reconfiguring their narratives for more modern modes of thought and discourse.
I wasn’t quite sure what the very final person was critiquing: something about Martin mythologizing the Machiavellian figure, and being more interested with the means than the end.
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