not even JRR Tolkien, who famously developed the concept of the Secondary World and firmly believed that no trace of the Real World should be evoked in the fictional world, was able to remove potatoes from his literature. this is a man who developed whole languages and mythologies for his literary world, who justified its existence in English as a translation* simply because he was so miffed he couldn't get away with making the story fully alien to the real world. and not even he, in extremis, was so cruel as to deny his characters the heavenly potato. could not even conceive a universe devoid of the potato. such is its impact. everyone please take a moment to say thank you to South Americans for developing and cultivating one of earth's finest vegetables. the potato IS all that. literally world-changing food. bless.
this but it’s terry pratchett calling porcelain tableware “china”
I'm actually sooooo happy you mention this because the reason why I had been reading about the secondary world when I wrote this post was that I've been writing my thesis on Terry Pratchett, and part of the stuff I found was somebody discussing how Pratchett purposefully breaks the secondary world conventions. like obviously Tolkien was not the only author applying the technique or the only scholar discussing it in academia, but treating the secondary world as a serious fictional construction is what set apart LOTR at the time from other fantasy stories, and that's sort of why he is considered the "father" of modern fantasy, at least in Britain or the English speaking world. but the article i was reading highlighted that Pratchett is one of those authors who prove rules are meant to be broken. in theory, the secondary world works to keep the fictional universe cohesive on its own as a literary construction. but Pratchett does away with the approach gleefully. his discworld does not occur on earth, yet he constantly makes references to things that only exist on earth, like the example of calling porcelain "china". the article was talking about how Pratchett still makes it work in a way the references feel organic and unobtrusive, all due to his mastery of language and the way he constructed the discworld to allow such "4th wall breaks" without breaking the illusion of fantasy. it's pretty neat stuff!!! the fact Pratchett uses "china" probably without thinking goes exactly in the same vein, so common for him to call it china without considering where porcelain comes from that he simply uses the moniker the way Tolkien simply puts in potatoes without thinking. it's always very interesting to see what things authors take as a given and which are used on purpose for the construction of their fictional worlds.
