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@PHDTHESIS{Khler:1020050,
author = {Köhler, Anna},
othercontributors = {Wenzel, Peter and Schneider, Ralf},
title = {{G}endered magic : how cultural models shape fantasy
worlds},
volume = {98},
school = {Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule Aachen},
type = {Dissertation},
address = {Berlin},
publisher = {De Gruyter},
reportid = {RWTH-2025-08743},
isbn = {978-3-11-914966-2},
series = {Narratologia},
pages = {VIII, 337 Seiten},
year = {2025},
note = {Dissertation, Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule
Aachen, 2024},
abstract = {Why is it that storyworlds in fantasy literature, for all
their limitless potential, tend to cling to patriarchal
structures and binary notions of gender? Based on the
cognitive framework of Cultural Models Theory (CMT), this
thesis analyses the intersection between cultural models of
gender and magic in four popular contemporary fantasy
series: J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter, Terry Pratchett’s
Discworld novels, Robin Hobb’s Farseer trilogy, and
Jonathan Stroud’s Bartimaeus trilogy. Magic as a core
manifestation of the fantastic that sets fantasy apart from
other genres serves as the focal point to explore the
strategies by which fantasy engages with gender issues on
its own terms. Through the lens of gender negotiations, this
thesis pursues the larger question of how literature, by
shaping readers’ (shared) mental models, can impede but
also contribute to cultural change. Researchers in the field
of cognitive literary studies (CLS) have recognized the
potential of CMT as a framework to explain how readers
arrive at both shared and individual interpretations, but so
far there are very few applications of the theory as an
analytical tool to complement traditional close-reading
approaches. Furthermore, while the concept of literary genre
has long been recognized as an intrinsically cognitive one,
there have been no systematic explorations of genres as
cultural models that are essential to readers’
meaning-making, despite the clear potential of CLS to
advance genre theory as a whole. This thesis outlines that
potential and explores the implications of understanding
genres as cultural models for literary analysis. In
addition, cognitive approaches so far have primarily focused
on the relevance and activation of readers’ actual-world
mental models during the reading process and overlooked that
these models are frequently suspended in favour of more
salient genre models. For speculative fiction in particular,
this focus on actual-world models at the exclusion of genre
models is not tenable. This thesis therefore provides an
in-depth discussion of how cultural models work when we read
non-mimetic texts such as fantasy, as well as what a
cultural model of fantasy might look like. More generally,
this thesis demonstrates that genre fiction overall is a
particularly accessible research subject for CLS because it
foregrounds its usage of readers’ genre models. In this
thesis, I am also conceptualizing gender as a set of
cultural models, i.e. as widely shared mental frames of
masculinity and femininity that guide our expectations and
social interactions. Literary gender studies have remained
largely untouched by cognitive approaches despite the wealth
of empirical cognitive research on gender. This thesis
provides a review of these studies as a foundation for a
reconstruction of Western models of masculinity and
femininity. The findings serve as a baseline for the
subsequent analysis of how these models factor into the
reading process – of the ways in which readers bring their
own (stereotypical) gender expectations into their text
reception and of the textual cues and strategies that prompt
them to do so, or else disrupt that process and thereby
confront readers with the insufficiency of their mental
models. This thesis demonstrates how CMT can advance our
understanding of the unique challenges that fantasy poses to
author-reader communication and of the textual strategies
through which these challenges can be overcome. This, in
turn, is beneficial to any analysis of how fantasy engages
with actual-world issues. As a non-mimetic form of fiction,
fantasy has a transformative, transgressive potential to
destabilize dominant cultural models of gender through
defamiliarization – or to perpetuate binary gender models
by depicting them as universally relevant even in impossible
worlds. In each of the four texts analysed here, familiar
models of masculinity and femininity function as ways of
anchoring the impossible within the familiar. In Harry
Potter in particular, an ostensibly gender-neutral magic
system frequently relies on stereotypical notions of
femininity to make sense. While the other three texts,
equally mass-market fiction, do not fundamentally reject the
gender binary either, they do make use of the fantastic to
challenge normative binaries, particularly those related to
restrictive gender roles and the distinction between self
and Other: The Discworld novels construct a binary magic
system in which wizardry and witchcraft are two distinct
professions, providing nuanced commentary on gendered
occupations and role expectations in the actual world. In
the Farseer and Bartimaeus trilogies, readers are confronted
with magic systems that are not overtly restricted by gender
but are clearly gender-coded (in their own distinct ways)
and that the protagonists must learn not just to navigate,
but to overcome. Furthermore, all four texts imagine
alternative masculinities by emphasising the value of
communion – which studies have shown to be widely seen as
a feminine trait – for all. Finally, each text explores
actual-world power structures (not limited to but including
those of gender) through literalization in fantastic
contexts, thus providing readers with new perspectives on
that which they take for granted. Overall, my analysis
demonstrates the potential of CMT to improve our
understanding of the interplay of author, reader, text, and
cultural context and the significant role of human cognition
therein.},
cin = {793110},
ddc = {800},
cid = {$I:(DE-82)793110_20140620$},
typ = {PUB:(DE-HGF)11 / PUB:(DE-HGF)3},
url = {https://publications.rwth-aachen.de/record/1020050},
}
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