A feast for the imagination: An exploration of narrative elements of the text and hypertext of 'Song of Ice and Fire' by George R. R. Martin.

Fantasy novel as a sub-genre of children’s literature has crossed over to the adult world \nresulting in the rapid growth of adult fantasy fiction in the last ten years. George R.R. \nMartins’ A Song of Ice and Fire, consisting of five volumes at present, is one example \nof extremely popular adult fantasy fiction which has sold more than fifteen million copies \nall over the world. But what is more remarkable is that A Song of Ice and Fire has \nspawned a TV series called A Game of Thrones, as well as a comic book adaptation, a \ncard game, a board game, a role playing game and two video games. In other words, A \nSong of Ice and Fire is available for consumption both as text and hypertext. \nMy paper sets out to investigate the text and hypertext of A Song and Ice and Fire with \na view to gaining a greater insight into the narrative elements common to both genres \nof text and hypertext, making use of Conceptual Blending theory which offers a general \nmodel of meaning construction in which a small set of partially compositional processes \noperate in analogy, metaphor, counterfactuals and many other semantic and pragmatic \nphenomena. In this theory, understanding meaning involves the construction of blended \ncognitive models that include some structure from the input models as well as emergent \nstructures that arise through the process of blending