Joe Abercrombie’s ‘Red Country’ as a Fantasy Western: the Genre Features of the Novel

Abstract

The article analyzes the novel Red Country (2012) written by the outstanding modern British fantasy author Joe Abercrombie. All his works can be characterized as postmodern play with genre conventions and genre mixing. Red Country unites the characteristics of the fantasy and the Western – genres that seem to be incompatible. The aim of the article is to look into how the elements of each of the genres are connected in the novel and how they are transformed in this process. The article gives a short overview of the characteristic features of both fantasy and Western based on works by Russian and foreign researchers. The text of Red Country is analyzed at the levels of plot, conflict, characters, setting, values, and ideology. For this novel, inside the already existing world of his books, Abercrombie creates a new territory organized in accordance with the story setting principles of the Western genre. The writer uses a lot of plot devices characteristic of the Western and some elements of a typical Western character, although depriving him of his traditional mysteriousness by employing a character known from his previous novels. However, most of Red Country’s characters do not conform to the stereotypes about Westerns, and the ideas and values conveyed in the novel undermine those of the Western genre. Responsibility, cooperation, freedom, reprehension of violence come in place of order, lawfulness, masculinity, and self-sufficiency. Such values are much more typical for the fantasy in general and for Abercrombie’s works specifically. The number of Western clichés in the novel itself indicates their unusual interpretation by the author. At the plot level, these shifts create a game with the reader, who is provoked to predict the outcome of events basing on his knowledge of the Western genre. Such expectations are often not met, which creates a strong effect of surprise and arouses more interest in the plot.