Things invisible to see - True Love and the Fantastic in Diana Wynne Jones’s Howl’s Moving Castle and Neil Gaiman’s Stardust - Ildikó Limpár

Aug 27, 2026

The paper examines how Diana Wynne Jones’s Howl’s Moving Castle and Neil Gaiman’s Stardust draw on John Donne’s “Song” (1633) yet invert its claim about the impossibility of lasting true love. By placing true love within the realm of the fantastic, both narratives challenge the poem’s lament and contest any reading that treats fantasy as merely confirming love’s detachment from reality. Through intertextual inclusion of the poem’s text and integration of its motifs, the authors destabilize fixed meanings of reality and argue that the incredible can be embraced by the real.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryLiterature

FormatPDF

Pages19

Reading Time29 min

AccessFree to download

Donne Undone: Jones’s and Gaiman’s Quests to Challenge “Song”

Publication context and shared inspiration

How the poems structure impossible tasks and their reversals

Donne’s skepticism, parody, and the need for nuance

Jones and Gaiman’s destabilization of fixed meanings of reality

ATLANTIS Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies 48.1 (June 2026): 81-99 e-issn 1989-6840 DOI: [http://doi.org/10.28914/Atlantis-2026-48.1.6](http://doi.org/10.28914/Atlantis-2026-48.1.6)[ ](http://doi.org/10.28914/Atlantis-2026-48.1.6)© The Author(s) Content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike 4.0 International Licence “Things invisible to see:” True Love and the Fantastic in Diana Wynne Jones’s Howl’s Moving Castle and Neil Gaiman’s Stardust Ildikó Limpár Pázmány Péter Catholic University [limparildiko@gmail.com](limparildiko@gmail.com) While both Diana Wynne Jones’s Howl’s Moving Castle and Neil Gaiman’s Stardust use Donne’s “Song”(1633) as their starting point, they refute the poem’s lamentation on the impossibility of finding lasting love (that is, finding a woman who is both beautiful and faithful) by building their stories on the axiom that the impossible may become possible. However, since both authors place true love in the land of the fantastic, a convenient interpretation of these fantasy narratives would be that such a strategy supports Donne’s ironical-satirical stance and confirms true love’s detachment from the real. Instead, the present paper argues that relying on fantasy’s subversive nature yet employing partially diverse strategies, Jones and Gaiman destabilize the seemingly fixed meanings of reality to argue that the incredible may be embraced by the real. For this very purpose, not only do they include the poem’s text in their novels, but to differing extents and in diverse ways, they also integrate its motifs into the narratives in order to subvert Donne’s lamentation in“Song.” Keywords: fantasy; intertextuality; love; John Donne; Diana Wynne Jones; Neil Gaiman . . . “Vete a mirar lo invisible:” El amor verdadero y el fantástico en Stardust de Neil Gaiman y Howl’s Moving Castle de Diana Wynne Jones Aunque tanto Howl’s Moving Castle de Diana Wynne Jones como Stardust de Neil Gaiman usan “Song”(“Canción”) de John Donne (1633) como su punto de inicio, ambas rechazansu idea central de que es imposible encontrar una mujer hermosa y fiel (y, por consiguiente, amor duradero) construyendo sus relatos sobre el axioma de que lo imposible puede llegar a ser posible. Sin embargo, debido a que ambos autores sitúan el amor verdadero en el terrenode fantástico, una interpretación conveniente de estas narrativas de la fantasía sería que dichaestrategia apoya la postura irónica-satírica de Donne y confirma el desapego de la verdaderaemoción romántica de lo real. Al contrario, el presente artículo aduce que, basándose en el carácter subversivo de la fantasía y a través de estrategias parcialmente diferentes, Jones y Gaiman desestabilizan los significados aparentemente fijos de la realidad para sostener que lo increíble puede ser abrazado por lo real. Con tal fin, no solo incluyen el texto del poema en sus novelas sino que, en distinta medida y de diversas maneras, también integran sus temase ideas centrales en la propia narrativa para subvertir la lamentación de Donne en “Song.” Palabras clave: fantasía; intertextualidad; amor; John Donne; Diana Wynne Jones; Neil Gaiman 1. Donne Undone: Jones’s and Gaiman’s Quests to Challenge “Song”Diana Wynne Jones’s Howl’s Moving Castle (1986) and Neil Gaiman’s Stardust (1998) are separated by a decade in terms of their publication dates; however, they are linked in various ways. Both writers chose John Donne’s poem “Song”(1633) as the inspiration to write a fantasy romance that would directly challenge the content of their source work. This interconnection is not accidental: “Diana and I had compared notes on how much we liked (and disagreed with) John Donne’s A Song [sic] before she wrote HMC [Howl’s Moving Castle] . HMC was her reply to that poem, Stardust was mine,” wrote Gaiman to an enquiry on Tumblr (neil-gaiman 2020) . Rejecting Donne’s central idea that it is impossible to find a beautifu

FAQs

How do Howl’s Moving Castle and Stardust use Donne’s “Song” as a starting point?

Both novels take Donne’s poem “Song” (1633) as inspiration for a fantasy romance that directly challenges the poem’s central claim about the impossibility of enduring true love.

What argument does the paper make about fantasy and reality in these novels?

The paper argues that relying on fantasy’s subversive nature—and employing partially different strategies—Jones and Gaiman destabilize the meanings of reality so that the incredible can be embraced by the real.

What textual and thematic techniques connect the novels to “Song”?

They include the poem’s text in the novels and, to varying extents, integrate the poem’s motifs into the narrative to subvert Donne’s lamentation.

Aug 27, 2026

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