Abstract
This review assesses Mythopoeic Narrative in The Legend of Zelda, edited by Anthony G. Cirilla and Vincent E. Rone, as a compelling contribution to fantasy studies, mythopoeia, and game studies that argues for the academic centrality of interactive narrative media. The volume positions The Legend of Zelda not merely as popular entertainment, but as a sophisticated mythic tradition; part of an evolving legendarium shaped through iterative storytelling, symbolic worldbuilding, and ethically structured heroic narrative. Emphasizing the interpretive significance of player engagement, the collection demonstrates how games uniquely merge narrative meaning with embodied action, transforming mythic structure into lived experience. The review highlights the anthology’s strongest theoretical interventions, including its expansion of Tolkienian mythopoeic frameworks into digital contexts, its treatment of play as a vehicle for moral formation, and its readings of catastrophe, grief, memory, and spectral temporality in some of the franchise’s darkest entries. Ultimately, this review argues that Mythopoeic Narrative in The Legend of Zelda models a rigorous scholarly methodology for approaching video games as mythic texts and suggests that such work offers urgent pedagogical possibilities for revitalizing humanistic inquiry in contemporary classrooms.
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