George R. R. Martin is Writing Modern Mythology

[Daendrew]

I'm reminded of a line about seeing God in a grain of sand, or Heaven in a wild flower. All nature might be infused with the divine, transcending apparent duality. If George has a spiritual side it's probably along these lines.

I very much agree. A focus on the experiential, the mystical, the personal... as opposed to the institutional. If you have been following my posts, you know I think he is going to reveal that all the faiths, sans Drowned God are fronts and tools of manipulation for the Great Other.

"There’s a line in book 5 where character says, “The gods are good.” Jaime thinks, “You go on believing that.” You talk about religion a lot in the stories, but what are your views?

I suppose I’m a lapsed Catholic. You would consider me an atheist or agnostic. I find religion and spirituality fascinating. I would like to believe this isn’t the end and there’s something more, but I can’t convince the rational part of me that that makes any sense whatsoever. That’s what Tolkien left out — there’s no priesthood, there’s no temples; nobody is worshiping anything in Rings." -GRRM Interview

[The Marquis de Leech]

Ok so the only world where "consciously, fundamental catholic work" doesn't = pushing Christian themes is one where he didnt plan on people reading the books

Calling a work "fundamentally Catholic" - especially considering that the Catholicism was unconscious the first time around - is not the same as having the goal of pushing Biblical themes at people via fantasy. C.S. Lewis did that in Narnia, and Tolkien hated it.

Tolkien's goal (as in the thing he set out to achieve in his writing) was finding a home and culture for his invented languages. The religious element crept in because, well, that's what happens when authors write books. Bits of the author end up in the text, but that doesn't make it a goal.

[LmL]

I definitely agree that Tolkien was not doing why CS Lewis was doing, although I'm not sure if that is being suggested by anyone or not. It's worth noting that "allegorical" does not have to mean "pedantic." Since Christianity is drawing in the same pool or world myth as every other religion / myth type, to me it is no different. Truth is universal, and as Campbell says, all religions contain truth, or a path to its discovery. Tolkein's background was decidedly Catholic, but many of these ideas are universal anyway.

[Daendrew]

We have not even to risk the adventure alone, for the heroes of all time have gone before us - the labyrinth is thoroughly known. We have only to follow the thread of the hero path, and where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god; where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence. And where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world.

-Joseph Campbell

This is ASOIAF right there. On many, many levels.

[LmL]

Good one Daen, and I agree that one applies to ASOIAF particularly well.

The quote I used in the essay concerning religion kind of sums up what I have been trying to express over the last few comments concerning a false choice between theism and atheism:

Every religion is true one way or another. It is true when understood metaphorically. But when it gets stuck in its own metaphors, interpreting them as facts, then you are in trouble.

[Daendrew]

Good one Daen, and I agree that one applies to ASOIAF particularly well.

The quote I used in the essay concerning religion kind of sums up what I have been trying to express over the last few comments concerning a false choice between theism and atheism:

Every religion is true one way or another. It is true when understood metaphorically. But when it gets stuck in its own metaphors, interpreting them as facts, then you are in trouble.

GRRM speaks in triple entrendre metaphors. That is where the clues as to where he is taking the story are leading. Not in prose.

I have never seen a writer like this before. This entire series. the whole fictional encyclopedia is "fictional" but the truth is between the lines in metaphors and symbols,,, as well as the game of opposites the quote implies.

"The Shameful Narcissist" a hilariously named commenter on my blog put it brilliantly: GRRM has written “an epic of meta-proportions.”

[I swear by Ice and Fire]

I am not well spoken in English but I agree with you 100%. While most work of fiction do what GRRM does and incorporates myth, which is the basis for almost all kind of fiction. What he also does so well is creating just like tolkien a world with a mythology that makes sense. Both because we can recognize it from our own world and because as your essayes have talked about, the world in which Martins stories take place. This is a feat many fantasy authors tries and very many fails to do.

On the subject of man and myth, I will object to the notion that man was closer to understanding their relationship before than now. Our society has undoubtedly advanced very much very fast. I would rather argue that our relationship to nature has changed. While man has myth of gods lording over nature and playing with men like children. Most myths also tell us how man came to be often as the offspring of the gods. So in a sense I would say we have always had a mindset of "resource" and lordship when thinking about nature. The difference now being that while a storm, tsunamis, thunder, earthquakes before could in a whim destroy what man made in centuaries. So i think we rather always have seen it as "us" and "nature", before "nature" was the thing dictating our lives, and so the myths reflect that. Now "nature" is more or less dominated by "us" making mindset we always had with "nature" more apperant. Now if that relathionship is healthy one is something that can be argued about.

[oursisthefury69]

'Lapsed catholic' means possibly nothing in this context. You could lapse from the church and become a buddhist. "You would consider me an atheist or agnostic " isn't necessarily an assumption that readers are ignorant. To me it says that George has days when the idea of God seems ridiculous and days when it seems ridiculous but he feels optimistic and dares to hope.

If George believes in a galactic overmind or the oneness of all life he's keeping quiet about it. He certainly has a problem actually believing in a living God and yes atheists can hope they are wrong. Atheists can also believe in the possibility of the supernatural. What the atheist does not believe in is a living God as described by religion.

I really don't follow any of this, your just tossing out things like the bold as if to dispute something that was never suggested to begin with. And the bold the 2nd time around is a bunch of nothing statements, which doesnt deserve to have the actual response and consequent discussion of Atheism and belief; And on top of all else the whole nature of your entire post is like trying to make my small comment about people generally not properly discerning between Agnosticism and Atheism seem far more extreme and plainly different than it was, and simultaneously the entire post goes to prove my point of how little most people, yourself evidently included, actually disseminate between the 2 different schools of thought

Calling a work "fundamentally Catholic" - especially considering that the Catholicism was unconscious the first time around - is not the same as having the goal of pushing Biblical themes at people via fantasy. C.S. Lewis did that in Narnia, and Tolkien hated it.

Tolkien's goal (as in the thing he set out to achieve in his writing) was finding a home and culture for his invented languages. The religious element crept in because, well, that's what happens when authors write books. Bits of the author end up in the text, but that doesn't make it a goal.

Ok well at the point where were saying the same thing and getting 2 different things out of it... And the fact that he did it both unconsciously at first as well as consciously later on only further goes to the point of blatancy. And I'm not sure how you think the concept of it being a "goal" matters at all or is a relevant response to the whole point that one is drawing on different mythos/ideas/orginal concepts and thoughts and the other is a "fundamentally catholic work." One of them is a modern mythology, one of them is a reflection of the ultimate values and ideologies of a previously established religion

[DraculaAD1972]

Good one Daen, and I agree that one applies to ASOIAF particularly well.

The quote I used in the essay concerning religion kind of sums up what I have been trying to express over the last few comments concerning a false choice between theism and atheism:

Every religion is true one way or another. It is true when understood metaphorically. But when it gets stuck in its own metaphors, interpreting them as facts, then you are in trouble.

The false choice is a metaphor for the conflict between the heart and head. George's heart wants to believe in a benevolent God, his head refuses. One of the arguments George uses is the Pain Argument. Would a good God create pain? This is simliar to the Buddhist way of thinking, profoundly pessimistic perhaps, but it is a strong argument philosophically speaking.

Tolkien possibly provides a riposte - his song of creation gets corrupted with evil that God did not consciously intend.

If Ice and Fire represent duality, then the Song is the reconciliation of opposites, the yin/yang, which is where the false choice comes into play-the duality was an illusion and all is one. There is no God and all is God at the same time.

[Daendrew]

The false choice is a metaphor for the conflict between the heart and head. George's heart wants to believe in a benevolent God, his head refuses. One of the arguments George uses is the Pain Argument. Would a good God create pain? This is simliar to the Buddhist way of thinking, profoundly pessimistic perhaps, but it is a strong argument philosophically speaking.

Tolkien possibly provides a riposte - his song of creation gets corrupted with evil that God did not consciously intend.

If Ice and Fire represent duality, then the Song is the reconciliation of opposites, the yin/yang, which is where the false choice comes into play-the duality was an illusion and all is one. There is no God and all is God at the same time.

What the great teachers teach is transcending duality and the sense of opposites. Water quenches fire and melts ice. There will be far more water in this story than most expect.

[QueenOfVibe]

LML-well done.You're onto alot of heavy&intense stuff here.Please consider refraining from stating that you currently do not have a bunch of letters,Latin or Greek words after your name.You've learned the poem...Carry on.....

[oursisthefury69]

The false choice is a metaphor for the conflict between the heart and head. George's heart wants to believe in a benevolent God, his head refuses. One of the arguments George uses is the Pain Argument. Would a good God create pain? This is simliar to the Buddhist way of thinking, profoundly pessimistic perhaps, but it is a strong argument philosophically speaking.

Tolkien possibly provides a riposte - his song of creation gets corrupted with evil that God did not consciously intend.

If Ice and Fire represent duality, then the Song is the reconciliation of opposites, the yin/yang, which is where the false choice comes into play-the duality was an illusion and all is one. There is no God and all is God at the same time.

1. False choice? Maybe cognitive dissonance, no idea what that means.

2. Pain Argument? Try theory of evil, and when has he "used" that as an "argument" ever?

3. Tolkien providing a riposte? lol, yea the same one Christianity provides basically, actually closer to what you said then what actually happens in LoTR, as God had the ability to stop/change ect. the discords being sewn into the creation song, but basically doesn't for the sake of there being no potential for greatness or heroes without evil/opposition so he ends up allowing it more or less for entertainment value.

4. The bold at the end is in all frankness one of the vaguest/nothing statements ever imho

[DraculaAD1972]

1. False choice? Maybe cognitive dissonance, no idea what that means.

2. Pain Argument? Try theory of evil, and when has he "used" that as an "argument" ever?

3. Tolkien providing a riposte? lol, yea the same one Christianity provides basically, actually closer to what you said then what actually happens in LoTR, as God had the ability to stop/change ect. the discords being sewn into the creation song, but basically doesn't for the sake of there being no potential for greatness or heroes without evil/opposition so he ends up allowing it more or less for entertainment value.

4. The bold at the end is in all frankness one of the vaguest/nothing statements ever imho

1. False choice is that of atheism versus theism, as stated by LmL a few posts ago.

2. In an interview he mentioned that argument very specifically. He said "why create pain? why not have a blue light that acts as a signal instead of excruciating agony." Of course he must have momentarily forgotten about the survival value of pain in evolutionary terms. Instead of pain we could substitute death or evil quite easily to get the same sentiment.

3. The Silmarillion is where you will find the riposte rather than LotR. It's a riposte because it explains the origins of evil.

4.You got me there, I was being playful.

[LmL]

If I could butt in here, King of the Slums and Ours is the Fury, you've both been making points that I agree with. OITF, you had me agreeing with you earlier, but I have to agree with KotS here.

The false choice is a metaphor for the conflict between the heart and head. George's heart wants to believe in a benevolent God, his head refuses. One of the arguments George uses is the Pain Argument. Would a good God create pain? This is simliar to the Buddhist way of thinking, profoundly pessimistic perhaps, but it is a strong argument philosophically speaking.

Tolkien possibly provides a riposte - his song of creation gets corrupted with evil that God did not consciously intend.

If Ice and Fire represent duality, then the Song is the reconciliation of opposites, the yin/yang, which is where the false choice comes into play-the duality was an illusion and all is one. There is no God and all is God at the same time.

This is not a nothing statement, this is a profoundly esoteric statement! That it was said half in jest is totally perfect. That's what is at the heart of trickster gods like Loki, or confusing sensei's like Don Juan of Carlos Castaneda's writings, or even Mr. Miyagi for that matter.

This is exactly what I was saying about the connection between man, nature, and the divine. The divine is the spark of life, the force which animates. That is nature, and that is us. The idea of god as an externalized object kind of misses the point, I think. The idea of god as any kind of fixed, humanized thing seems to miss the point to me. God doesn't have a name! If anything we might call a "god" existed, he wouldn't have a name. The idea of naming god and describing "him" in human terms is the exact mistake Campbell is warning against - that's a myth getting stuck in its metaphors, in literal interpretation. (I'm speaking generally at this point, not to anyone in particular). The concept of god is itself a metaphor, not to be understood rationally:

God is a metaphor for a mystery that absolutely transcends all human categories of thought, even the categories of being and non-being. Those are categories of thought. I mean it's as simple as that. So it depends on how much you want to think about it. Whether it's doing you any good. Whether it is putting you in touch with the mystery that's the ground of your own being. If it isn't, well, it's a lie. So half the people in the world are religious people who think that their metaphors are facts. Those are what we call theists. The other half are people who know that the metaphors are not facts. And so, they're lies. Those are the atheists.

The two mistakes we can make here, according to Campbell, is to to interpret myth (the myth of God in particular) as either a fact or a lie. It's the same thing he was saying about religion. All of them are true, if understood metaphorically. Better said, they can all serve as a vehicle to discover esoteric truth. I think Martin is well familiar with this idea - I think this is what he mean's by "the bard's truth."

[falcotron]

I think analyzing ASoIaF as modern mythology is missing something huge: Modern mythology is old hat. As Michael Moorcock put it, that ended with Star Wars.

Moorcock's point was that nobody can write modern mythology unless they think they're the first one to discover Campbell. Moorcock, and the rest of the new wave of fantasy and science fiction that followed him, were writing postmodern mythology, consciously deconstructing the common language of myth, as applied to Robert E. Howard and Fritz Lieber as much as to Gilgamesh and Völuspá, and doing it with full knowledge of not only Campbell but of his particularist critics.

And what about the current generation, the one after Moorcock? Well, as stupid as the term "postpostmodern" is, I don't know of a better one. They've read modern mythology and postmodern mythology. They also know about deconstructionism and its critiques, and about the post-sociobiology search for human universals that underlie myths. They know that everyone who actually studies this stuff has decided the monomyth idea is bunk, but they want to know why it's so appealing anyway. They are, in Neil Gaiman's terms, looking for the human stories buried inside myths instead of forcing human stories into mythical wrappings.

To take an example: the fact that all of the cultures in ASoIaF have a myth of a great hero who won the War for the Dawn is interesting, but what's really interesting is the reason they all share such a myth: that there really was a worldwide concrete catastrophe so dramatic that it has echoes in cultures scattered around the world even 8000 years later. You don't need Campbell to explain that.

That's not to say that there aren't both traditional and postmodern themes to find. For example, Quentyn's story is a pretty obvious deconstruction of the hero's journey, while Dany largely plays it straight but with a gender twist. And, in the same way, some of the echoes of real-life mythology are probably used for straightforward inspiration and others for contrast. But I think trying to analyze the whole thing in modernism terms is going to miss most of the point.

[LmL]

I think analyzing ASoIaF as modern mythology is missing something huge: Modern mythology is old hat. As Michael Moorcock put it, that ended with Star Wars.

Moorcock's point was that nobody can write modern mythology unless they think they're the first one to discover Campbell. Moorcock, and the rest of the new wave of fantasy and science fiction that followed him, were writing postmodern mythology, consciously deconstructing the common language of myth, as applied to Robert E. Howard and Fritz Lieber as much as to Gilgamesh and Völuspá, and doing it with full knowledge of not only Campbell but of his particularist critics.

And what about the current generation, the one after Moorcock? Well, as stupid as the term "postpostmodern" is, I don't know of a better one. They've read modern mythology and postmodern mythology. They also know about deconstructionism and its critiques, and about the post-sociobiology search for human universals that underlie myths. They know that everyone who actually studies this stuff has decided the monomyth idea is bunk, but they want to know why it's so appealing anyway. They are, in Neil Gaiman's terms, looking for the human stories buried inside myths instead of forcing human stories into mythical wrappings.

To take an example: the fact that all of the cultures in ASoIaF have a myth of a great hero who won the War for the Dawn is interesting, but what's really interesting is the reason they all share such a myth: that there really was a worldwide concrete catastrophe so dramatic that it has echoes in cultures scattered around the world even 8000 years later. You don't need Campbell to explain that.

That's not to say that there aren't both traditional and postmodern themes to find. For example, Quentyn's story is a pretty obvious deconstruction of the hero's journey, while Dany largely plays it straight but with a gender twist. And, in the same way, some of the echoes of real-life mythology are probably used for straightforward inspiration and others for contrast. But I think trying to analyze the whole thing in modernism terms is going to miss most of the point.

Just to be abundantly clear: I am not claiming that George R. R. Martin was specifically inspired by Campbell, although it is certainly possible and would surprise no one if it turned out to be the case. Rather, I am using Campbell's views of the role of myth to highlight the nature of George's writing, and the importance of that nature. I'm using Campbell to explain Martin - Martin need not have had any of this in mind. Campbell is commenting on universal truths about storytelling and human psychology, which apply to George Martin's writing, whether or not Martin is conscious of Campbell's work. Now, I would really be surprised if Martin wasn't at least somewhat familiar with Campbell, but what I am NOT suggesting is that Martin wrote his novels specifically using the Hero's Journey as a formula, which many people HAVE done, quite successfully. The ideas that constitute the Hero's Journey can be learned many ways other than reading Campbell, again because deep truths are universal and self-evident.

My emphasis is on the power, role, and importance of myth in our lives, and the extent to which ASOIAF serves that role in our lives. On a broader level, I am emphasizing that ASOIAF is merely one in a long line of stories which participate in this "grand tradition" as I have been calling it. Thus, I would suggest is more than just a really good fantasy series - it's classic literature, or modern mythology, however you want to say it.

Another great essay LmL, and a subject (as you know!) close to my heart.

An important question is why GRRM utilises the language of myth so much. It's interesting to note GRRM's underlying mythos is less clearly delineated than that of Tolkein or Lovecraft, for example. I don't think he's as interested in an artifical myth for the sake of creating an artificial myth as he is in using the power of myth to tell his own story.

There is something almost evolutionary in the power of myth. Some stories resonate more deeply with us, and those stories survive. Stories become myths because they are the strongest, "fittest" stories, the memetic dominants if you like. I believe that GRRM sees this and is appropriating the language of mythology for his storytelling technique to make his story more resonant. In this I think his mythopoeic qualities as a writer are closer to Borges or Gaiman than Tolkein or Lovecraft. Which brings me to:

I think this is an extremely important point when considering the mythic analysis of ASOIAF. We shouldn't be looking for one-to-one relationships between events in ASOIAF and the myths of our world. GRRM borrows from all over, and in doing so he's acknowledging a truth of comparitive mythology; that these are not monolithic ideas that exist in a vacuum, but a mess of ideas that diverge and overlap chaotically. I am pretty sure that he is quite intentionally following this pattern for his in-world myth making too. There is no one single AA reborn with a singular story, and we should expect the mythic heroes of the past to have more in common with each other as symbols of ideas than they do with any historical antecedents they may have had. The way the myths of Plantos interrelate follows the way the myths of our world interrelate, as explored by the discipline of comparative mythology. Thus perhaps I'd say it would be more accurate to say that GRRM is writing modern mythologies rather than modern mythology.

True enough, what I am essentially suggesting is that we can compare different stories and scenes in the books to each other, just as a comparative mythologist compares stories from different cultures, looking to identify common ideas, symbols, and themes. Multiple mythologies, indeed.

You're hitting on another point that is kind of subtle: his focus wasn't creating complex in-world legends, like that of the Silmarillion. He is doing what you describe - using the power of myth to tell a story. The mythological nature of his writing is not just the backstory, the literally in-world myth, but rather the main prose of the story. For backstory myth, agreed, he's not even tried to do what Tolkein did. He is using mythological language to tell the main story of the book. The in-world myths act as a key. Compare the myths to their human manifestations in the story and THEN we can start to figure things out.

[LmL]

I am not well spoken in English but I agree with you 100%. While most work of fiction do what GRRM does and incorporates myth, which is the basis for almost all kind of fiction. What he also does so well is creating just like tolkien a world with a mythology that makes sense. Both because we can recognize it from our own world and because as your essayes have talked about, the world in which Martins stories take place. This is a feat many fantasy authors tries and very many fails to do.

On the subject of man and myth, I will object to the notion that man was closer to understanding their relationship before than now. Our society has undoubtedly advanced very much very fast. I would rather argue that our relationship to nature has changed. While man has myth of gods lording over nature and playing with men like children. Most myths also tell us how man came to be often as the offspring of the gods. So in a sense I would say we have always had a mindset of "resource" and lordship when thinking about nature. The difference now being that while a storm, tsunamis, thunder, earthquakes before could in a whim destroy what man made in centuaries. So i think we rather always have seen it as "us" and "nature", before "nature" was the thing dictating our lives, and so the myths reflect that. Now "nature" is more or less dominated by "us" making mindset we always had with "nature" more apperant. Now if that relathionship is healthy one is something that can be argued about.

Interesting thoughts here, ISBI&F. What's interesting is that you're interpreting the man-nature somewhat differently, but in the end, it's really not that different. Ancient man, being at nature's mercy mores than we, had more of a respect for nature. I would argue that it was more in harmony with nature than exploitative, compared to our modern society, but even still, we can set that aside. The end result is that same - when man feared nature, he respected it also. In fax, that's the sense we are suing fear here, the way that you have a healthy respect for strong undercurrents at the beach, for example. And we both agree that modern thinking, however you wish to describe it, tends more towards an exploitative view of nature.

There a few rabbit holes to go down here (let's talk about capitalism! oh wait - let's not...), but let me just say I appreciate your slightly different take here. Thanks for commenting!

[Bustard]

Really great stuff. I mainly skimmed through but will be reading it in its completion tomorrow. Cheers :cheers:

[falcotron]

Your quotes of quotes seem to break the quote-reply feature, so I'll try to manually put a single quote up top; apologies if I screw it up:

Just to be abundantly clear: I am not claiming that George R. R. Martin was specifically inspired by Campbell, although it is certainly possible and would surprise no one if it turned out to be the case. Rather, I am using Campbell's views of the role of myth to highlight the nature of George's writing, and the importance of that nature. I'm using Campbell to explain Martin - Martin need not have had any of this in mind.

But you're assuming that, if Martin isn't inspired by Campbell, then he must be naive about Campbell and can therefore be analyzed in the same way as pre-modern mythology. But I'm willing to give huge odds that Martin does know about Campbell. And that he's read fiction by writers like Moorcock and Zelazny that intentionally deconstructed Campbell, and by writers of the generation after them that reacted to that deconstruction. And that he's read what what Moorcock and Zelazny had to say about Campbell's ideas directly, and possibly also what people who actually study mythology, literature, and psychology have to say about him. And my point, like Moorcock's, is that it's impossible for all that knowledge to not influence your writing: You cannot write Star Wars with that knowledge.

And, more importantly, you’re assuming that Campbell’s techniques actually work. But nobody who actually studies mythology, literature, or psychology has believed that in half a century. Most of them think that Campbell's kind of comparative mythology drains everything of interest and meaning out of the actual myths he's comparing. Not just because digging for connections means finding connections that aren't there, but because it means ignoring the more interesting context just because it isn't connected.

Over the past 3-5 decades, some writers and literary critics have come to consider that Campbell's ideas are interesting despite being wrong--or even because of that. Partly just because of the influence he had on 20th century literature as mythology. But also because, if you're careful, you can apply some of his tools. For example, John S. Lawrence talks about how the idea of a monomyth can be applied intraculturally rather than interculturally. The Silver Age Captain America comics and Robocop are both stories about a former paradise threatened by evil, which the stagnant institutions can't cope with, until a superhero arises from out of the worst of those institutions, and, through a combination of pure selflessness and splashy violence, defeats the evil and redeems the paradise. That's not a story that exists in every culture, it's a unique response to American exceptionalism, and to its gradual transformation from the optimistic post-War era to the fortress-mentality 70s/80s. But within that culture, you can compare Captain America to Robocop, and in some ways doing so is similar to the comparisons Campbell made--as long as you're careful to avoid reaching for connections that aren't there as he did and creating a "flavorless soup of myth" (e.g., if you try to understand the Christ metaphors in Robocop in terms of Captain America, you will miss the point of the Christ metaphors).

I think you're right to compare GRRM to Gaiman. Gaiman writes a lot about writing, and about mythology and dream. He tells us that using characters as archetypes is easy; it's making archetypes function as actual characters with human motivations that's the challenge. he almost always starts out with an archetype like The Young Country Lad, or even The Sandman, but immediately begins using him to explore, in GRRM's favorite phrase, the human heart in conflict with itself, not the mythical context of that archetype.

So, when Stannis acts in an AA-like role, you could assume that this is meant to tell us that Stannis is AA-like in other ways (or even that he's therefore destined to beat the Others, as Mel thinks). But the more interesting thing it does is to make us rethink the AA myth, and therefore where we think the story is going. AA must have been a human being, with human foibles and internal struggles, just like Stannis.

More generally, the mythic language is there to draw us into the characters' hearts, not the other way around.

Terry Pratchett even makes these kinds of points in-universe. For example, in The Thief of Time:

'I thought, how does this go, in a myffic kind of way?' Mrs Ogg went on. 'I mean, technic'ly I could see we're in that area where the prince gets brought up as a swineherd until he manifests his destiny, but there's not that many swineherding jobs around these days, and poking hogs with a stick is not all it's cracked up to be, believe you me. So I said, well, I'd heard the Guilds down in the big cities took in foundlings out of charity, and looked after them well enough, and there's many well set-up men and women who started life that way. There's no shame in it, plus, if the destiny doesn't manifest as per schedule, he'd have set his hands to a good trade, which would be a consolation. Whereas swineherding's just swineherding.'

He’re a character recognizing the power of myth (which is a literal power, on Discworld, which runs on "narrativium"), but also recognizing that Jeremy still needs a human life, not just a hero's journey. And then Jeremy is contrasted with a double who’s the exact same archetype but has very different unique human traits, and the differences between them end up being what drives the story.

Of course GRRM doesn't mix up in internal and external layers like a postmodernist; instead, he learns from them and uses their ideas more subtly, like giving us narratives written in-universe that make us rethink the main narrative we're reading. (Not that this is a new technique--Shakespeare did the same thing centuries earlier--but it's used for a different reason. Shakespeare wasn't writing to us from inside his characters' heads, so his play-within-a-play didn't invite us to reconsider how their POVs affected the story he was telling; Martin is, so his do.)

[LordStoneheart]

snip

Um, with your initial reply to me and the recent ones, I'm not sure you're the best judge at Tolkien and his writings. Because of that, I don't have a defense to present you. Pearls before swine.