Abstract

This research-creation thesis presents a game experience of close reading the Old English poem Beowulf that prioritizes a multivocal structure of the text. It builds upon existing scholarship, like Kevin Kiernan’s, addressing the interpretative potential of the Vitellius manuscript’s evidence of variance. The poem’s fifty-year temporal shift at its mid-point is used as a contextual offramp to highlight its fragmentary construction. A literary analysis of the various hegemonic structures Beowulf participates in and perpetuates problematizes his status as an immutable heroic figure. John D. Niles, Frederick Klaeber, Gale Owen-Crocker, and T.S Miller are amongst those cited as shaping the existing discourse on Beowulf’s identity outside of the confines of the poem’s hierarchical structure. By re-contextualizing his death and legacy in an interactive fiction game-world titled YOU WILL NOT WIN AND YOU MUST DIE, YOU CHURL, this thesis adapts sections of Beowulf as inter-connected pieces of a hypertextual system. The principal aims of the game’s designing processes are two-fold: prioritizing the voices and perspectives of Beowulf’s supporting cast of characters while stretching the limitations of narrative cohesion in the hypertext genre. To connect the thesis’ academic argument with this creative component, Nick Montfort’s Twisty Little Passages and Espen Aarseth’s Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature influence the approach towards IF that complements the act of close reading. By gamifying the interpretative textuality of Beowulf, the final build of the game encourages players to view ludic choice-making and literary analysis as similar repeatable acts leading to multiple points of (re-)entry to a text.