En bro mellan världar : Om litteraturhistoria och litterär kanon i berättelsevärlden Dragon Age

Sammanfattning:

The purpose of this essay is to study the role and function of literature and literary texts in Dragon Age, the fictive world experienced through computer games, novels, comics, movies and other media, created by the video game developer company BioWare. My starting point is the question of how history of literature and literary canon are created and depicted in the games and the novels. From there, I examine what the concepts of ‘history of literature’ and ‘canon’ implicate in the real world, and how they can be translated into the fictive world of Dragon Age, and the different media of computer games and novels. The width and depth of the fictive world’s literature is shown through a study of different types of texts and how they appear in the games and novels respectively, but also through an examination of how real world genres are represented in the games. The issue of representation is also brought up in a discussion about how the in-world literary canon excludes socio-economical classes, as well as the issue of religion restricting the availability of literature free from religious or political bias.

Nearing a conclusion, I argue that given the parallels between the literature of the real world and fictive world respectively, the literature and literary texts in the Dragon Age games and novels should be understood as canonical representations of the history of literature of the real world. I also suggest that the literature and literary texts of Dragon Age can be used as prompters of memory: while we explore a fictive world, we also have a chance to reexamine our knowledge of the real world.