Intended for both newcomers who are curious about video games and experienced gamers who want to reflect on their passion, this course will explore what happens to stories, paintings, and films when they become the basis of massively multiplayer online games. The Lord of the Rings trilogy—the novels, films, and video game—are our central example of how “remediation” transforms familiar stories as they move across media. The course is designed as a university-level English literature class—a multi-genre, multimedia tour of how literature, film, and games engage in the basic human activity of storytelling. Our journey will enable us to learn something about narrative theory, introduce us to some key topics in media studies and cover some of the history and theory of video games. It will also take us to some landmarks of romance literature, the neverending story that lies behind most fantasy games: J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring, a bit of Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene, and poems by Keats, Tennyson, Browning, and others. Drawing on centuries of romance narrative conventions, the twenty-first century gaming industry has become a creative and economic powerhouse. It engages the talents of some of our brightest writers, artists, composers, computer engineers, game theorists, video producers, and marketing professionals, and in 2012, it generated an estimated $64 billion in revenue. Anyone interested in today’s culture needs to be conversant with the ways this new medium is altering our understanding of stories. Join me as we set out on an intellectual adventure, the quest to discover the cultural heritage of online games.
The Romance Circle
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From the course by Vanderbilt University
Online Games: Literature, New Media, and Narrative
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From the lesson
Romance and Realism
This week we journey into the Mines of Moria, comparing a scene in Tolkien's novel, Peter Jackson's film, and "The Lord of the Rings Online." Then it's back to romance literature to delve into the intricacies of allegory, plot, theme, and character. The week closes with a look at John Keats' haunting ballad, "La Belle Dame sans Merci." ***For details about this week's Readings, go to the Syllabus page in your Resources tab.
Meet the Instructors
Jay ClaytonProfessor
English
In this session, we will be discussing the typical structure of the quest romance.
The structure can best be visualized as a circle.
[MUSIC]
The hero sets out from home, journeys through adventure after adventure.
And when he has finished his quest and conquered all the obstacles,
he returns to that home, a changed human.
This structure is most familiar to people from Joseph Campbell's book,
The Hero with the Thousand Faces.
But I have relied more on the for my version of the quest romance circle.
The quest romance begins typically in childhood.
In the Lord of the Rings, Trilogy of Chorus,
you have Frodo in the idyllic scenes in the shire.
But other f amous romance works,
other popular romances that many people have seen, like Star Wars,
also follow this same cyclical pattern.
Think of the beginning of Star Wars, when Luke Skywalker
is an orphan being raised by his aunt and uncle on the desert planet of Tatooine.
Little does he know that he is the son and heir to a powerful Jedi knight.
Just like Frodo, Luke is unaware that
the seemingly safe space of his home, his childhood home
is threatened by forces far larger than he can comprehend.
Another example comes from the Arthurian romance stories.
Prince Arthur is illegitimate.
And then many late versions of the story including Walt Disney's The Sword
in the Stone, Arthur is raised and mentored by the wizard, Merlin.
This figure of Merlin is a clear model for
Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings and Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars.
When the hero sets out from home, the first
thing that occurs is that he typically crosses a kind of threshold.
If you think back to Star Wars again, Luke Skywalker's threshold
is the border town the space port of Mos Eisley on Tatooine.
The film of the Fellowship of the Ring,
has one of the most explicit threshold scenes I've ever seen in a movie.
>> If I take one more step, it'll be the farthest away from home I've ever been.
[MUSIC]
>> Come on, Sam.
[MUSIC]
>> After the hero has crossed the final boundary that separates what he
thinks of as the safety of home, he begins a period of initiation.
In the Fellowship of the Ring,
Frodo's initiation occurs on the journey to Rivendell.
There he learns what it means to have adventures.
And he's tutored along the way by Aragorn,
the person he originally knows as Strider.
In a movie like Star Wars,
Luke is initiated into what it means to be a Jedi by Obi-Wan Kenobi,
who trains him in using a light saber on the Millenium Falcon, their spaceship.
The next stage in the hero's quest is typically a moment
of dedication to the quest.
If you remember from the film, when the fellowship is at Rivendell and
they have the council there, everyone is arguing about what to do and
who will take the ring to Mordor.
And there's dramatic moment when Frodo steps forward and
says, I will do it, I will take the ring.
Let me show you clip.
[NOISE]
[MUSIC]
>> [NOISE] I will take it.
[NOISE] I will take it.
[MUSIC]
I will take the ring to Mordor.
[MUSIC]
>> The next stage of the quest is the visit to the underworld.
This is a common motif in classical mythology.
A number of heroes in the epic poems of the classic period,
descended into the underworld.
Odysseus travels down to the underworld to speak with the Shade of Terresius.
And Nias descends into the land of the dead
to speak with the spirit of his father.
Even Star Wars, the second of the original Star Wars films,
the one called The Empire Strikes Back had symbolic descendant to the underworld.
You remember, Luke Skywalker is trained by the elder Jedi Yoda.
And for Luke's final challenge during his training period,
he must descend into a cavern on Dagobah and face his worst fears.
This symbolic moment makes explicit whats implicit in most descents
into the underworld that they're often metaphors for a descent into yourself.
They're confrontation with your inner demons, what you fear most in the world.
After the hero was gone down into the underworld,
he often has a confrontation with
the spirits of evil and he needs to exorcise them.
In the Christian tradition, this was referred to as the harrowing of Hell.
Christ, after he was crucified,
descended into hell where he divided the souls of the dead.
Taking with him those that were going to be saved up to heaven, and
leaving behind those that were damned.
What's the equivalent of the harrowing of hell in the Fellowship of the Ring?
Well of course it's Gandalf and the Balrog.
It's an amazing scene, one of the most dramatic scenes in the whole movie.
Let me show it to you.
>> You shall not pass.
[SOUND]
[MUSIC]
>> In the typical romance structure, next comes a temptation scene.
Again, in the Christian religion, we have the equivalent of this kind of scene.
Jesus has tempted by Satan three times.
Satan dares Jesus to turn a stone into bread to relive his hunger.
Then Satan takes Jesus up to the top of the mountain and
taunts him saying, if you are the son of God,
throw yourself off this cliff and let you be born up by angels.
And finally the devil promises Christ all the kingdoms
of earth if Jesus would fall down and worship him.
The thumb of the Fellowship of the Ring also has three sins of temptation,
although it occurred at three different heroes.
Gundolf, Galadriel, and Aragorn.
Here are three short clips from different parts of the movie that show
Gundolf, Galadriel and Aragorn being tempted.
>> Take it, Gandalf, take it.
>> No, Frodo.
>> You must take it.
>> You cannot offer me this ring.
>> I'm giving it to you.
>> Don't tempt me, Frodo.
[MUSIC]
>> I do not deny that my heart has greatly desired this.
[MUSIC]
In place of a Dark Lord, you will have a queen, not dark but
beautiful, and terrible as the dawn.
Treacherous as the sea,
stronger than the foundations of the earth.
All shall love me and despair.
[MUSIC]
I pass the test.
I will diminish, and go into the West.
[MUSIC]
>> The final climatic event in the romance cycle is the scene of recognition.
The moment when the hero recognizes that he
must assume this burden and take on the role of
the destined hero who will complete the quest.
Now you have had an earlier moment to symmetrically opposite
on the circle as you see there when the hero dedicated himself to the quest.
But at that early stage, the hero didn't really
understand what it meant to take on the burden.
The hero didn't understand what dedication to the quest would
require the kind of sacrifice that he would be called upon to make.
So that this late moment of recognition In the quest journey
is a moment when the hero, knowing all that he will be required to give up,
all that he will be required to sacrifice,
nonetheless says, for a second time, I assume this burden.
I take on the mantle.
I have here two short clips again from the movie,
The Fellowship of the Ring which will show
you first Aragorn accepting his role as Kings of his people.
And then Frodo accepting that he
will go all the way Mordor and
will make the final sacrifice.
>> I would have followed you, my brother.
[MUSIC]
My captain.
[MUSIC]
My King.
>> All you have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to you.
[MUSIC]
>> Although quest romance is built around frenzied action,
the urgent pursuit of a goal.
Most crest romances also feature interludes of peace and
tranquility, moments of calm in which the hero takes stock of himself and
reflects on the distance he is come and on how far he yet has to go.
In poetry, these moments are often presented as lyric interludes
which punctuate the narrative line with passages of intense beauty.
They are meant to be a time out of time.
A moment of lyric dashes before returning to the fray.
In the Fellowship of the Ring,
the first such interlude is that time spent at Rivendell.
But there's another similar pause again in the land of the elves,
the stay at Lothlorien.
[MUSIC]
It is the Fellowship's last moment of peace before
the descend into the maelstrom for good.
[MUSIC]
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