Attending Daedalus Gene Wolfe, Artifice and

This new study of the fiction of Gene Wolfe, one of the most influential contemporary American science fiction writers, offers a major reinterpretation of Gene Wolfe's four-volume The Book of the New Sun and its sequel The Urth of the New Sun. After exposing the concealed story at the heart of Wolfe's magnum opus, Wright adopts a variety of approaches to establish that Wolfe is the designer of an intricate textual labyrinth intended to extend his thematic preoccupations with subjectivity, the unreliability of memory, the manipulation of individuals by social and political systems, and the psychological potency of myth, faith and symbolism into the reading experience.

Peter Wright is a lecturer in English Literature and Film at Edge Hill College of Higher Education College, Ormskirk.

Acknowledgements

ix

Preface

xi

A Note on Editions

xiii

Abbreviations

xiv

Part I Initiations

1. 'Silhouette': An Introduction to Gene Wolfe

3

(20)

2. 'Trip, Trap': Psychology and Thematic Coherence

23

(14)

3. 'In the House of Gingerbread': Interpretative Games and the Psychology of Reader Response

37

(12)

4. 'The God and His Man': Critical Responses to The Urth Cycle

49

(20)

Part II Investigations: The Urth Cycle

5. 'The Toy Theatre': Uncovering the Story of The Urth Cycle

69

(17)

6. 'The Last Thrilling Wonder Story'? Intergeneric Operations

86

(18)

7. 'How the Whip Came Back': Directing Reader Response

104

(22)

8. 'Cues': The Function of Unfamiliar Diction

126

(19)

9. 'There Are Doors': Memory and Textual Structure

145

(21)

10. 'A Solar Labyrinth': Metafictional Devices and Textual Complexity

166

(19)

Part III Conclusions

11. 'The Map': The Multi-volume Novels and Metafictional Cartography

185

(22)

Notes

207

(14)

Bibliography

221

(12)

Index

233

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Attending Daedalus Gene Wolfe, Artifice and the Reader

Summary

Author Biography

Table of Contents

Supplemental Materials