Portrayals of gender and identity in the soundtrack of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (CD Projekt Red, 2019) is an award-winning role-playing video game (RPG); the third instalment of The Witcher game series inspired by Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski’s fantasy novels. Centring upon the protagonist Geralt of Rivia, The Witcher 3 has been praised for developing a complex, authentic, and immersive game environment that combines magic and fantasy elements within a broadly medieval setting. A central aspect of the game’s success is its soundtrack – the fusion of music, sound, and voice – which further contributes to building the game’s overall narrative and the complex construction of its central characters. This paper explores how The Witcher 3’s soundtrack constructs identity, focusing in particular on its use of neo-medievalist signifiers and its contrasting representations of masculinity and femininity. Neo-medievalist sounds are a central concept in building the game’s identity; these sounds draw on folkloristic elements surrounding the choice of instrumentation and the recurrence of folk music throughout the game’s narrative, thus increasing the player’s immersion within The Witcher 3’s world. Regarding gender, female vocalisations are used within the soundtrack to add depth and emotion to male characters – particularly Geralt of Rivia, who due to his mutations lacks in conventional emotional capabilities. Despite the inclusion and emphasis of female voices on the soundtrack, the placement of women in influential roles is limited through other musical scoring techniques, which effectively reduces the agency of these characters, thus suggesting an imbalanced treatment towards gender. Through exploring these aspects, I argue that the soundtrack is a crucial part of how gender and identity are constructed throughout The Witcher 3, further exploring how these elements affect the player’s overall in-game immersion.

DANCE AS A MARKER OF NATURAL CYCLES CHANGE IN TERRY PRATCHETT’S FANTASY NOVELS

Against the background of a widespread tendency to diminish the sacred meaning of ritual actions, Terry Pratchett’s strive to shed light on the archetypal principles of mythological consciousness in contemporary folklore makes it possible to restorethe connection of the old rites, which have lost their original sense, with the worldview bases of modern society and to reacralize the profane. The Elements of mythological consciousness, manifested in ritual actions inherent in the modern functioning of English folklore, play a meaningful and compositional role in Terry Pratchett’s novels «The Reaper» (1991), «Lords and Ladies» (1992) and «Wintersmith» (2006). In Pratchett’s novels, Morris dance, which traditionally heralds the summer beginning, is balanced by a dance that marks the beginning of winter, indicating the natural cycles change. This manifests the functions of a sacred act: a dialogue between the world and a human, extracting the last from the flow of everyday life, and finalizing the routine work of a farmer. The study suggests the analysis of artistic means describing the Morris dance ritual as a marker of natural cycle changes and as evidence of a human establishing contact with natural forces, enshrined in the narrative and embodied in the dynamic form of dance. A common harvest festival turns into a Dance of the Death and a Maiden, which moves the process of harvesting and preserving the harvest into the realm of the sacred. The motive of the Death and a Maiden dance is being developed in the same compositional plane with the Morris dance motive, as an element of the narrative about the natural balance of life and death,fertility and harvest, about the cycle of the universe based on the love drive. The article examines the compositional elements of choreographic ekphrasis, highlights the significant elements of such a description, indicates the markers of the sacred and the profane, intrinsic to ritual dance in Pratchett’s novels. The conducted research allows to determine the role of dance in Pratchett’s literature work as a marker of the transition from one state to another, as well as season cycle changes.

Stylistic Portrait of English Fantasy Texts (Based on Jordan’s The Eye of the World, Martin’s A Game of Thrones, Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets)

The paper is focused on stylistic features of English fantasy texts. The research materials include four fantasy novels written by British and American authors of the late 20th century: Jordan’s The Eye of the World, Martin’s A Game of Thrones, Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. The research question of the study lies in need to systematize expressive means and stylistic devices used in the texts and distinguish the common stylistic features of English fantasy texts. To do this, the researchers implement the notion of a stylistic portrait of English fantasy text, and the main aim of the paper is to provide its definition and description. The study employed the complex of linguistic research methods, including analysis and generalization of theoretical sources, contextual analysis and the elements of quantitative analysis of linguistic units used in the texts. Based on three essential aspects of a stylistic portrait, the paper shows that the English fantasy texts are characterized by the dominance of expressive means and stylistic devices at the syntactic level of language. In addition, the researchers identified the most productive stylistically marked linguistic units at each level of language correlated with the semantic field within which they functioned, and studied connotative dominants in these texts.

Stylistic Portrait of English Fantasy Texts (Based on Jordan’s The Eye of the World, Martin’s A Game of Thrones, Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets)

The paper is focused on stylistic features of English fantasy texts. The research materials include four fantasy novels written by British and American authors of the late 20th century: Jordan’s The Eye of the World, Martin’s A Game of Thrones, Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. The research question of the study lies in need to systematize expressive means and stylistic devices used in the texts and distinguish the common stylistic features of English fantasy texts. To do this, the researchers implement the notion of a stylistic portrait of English fantasy text, and the main aim of the paper is to provide its definition and description. The study employed the complex of linguistic research methods, including analysis and generalization of theoretical sources, contextual analysis and the elements of quantitative analysis of linguistic units used in the texts. Based on three essential aspects of a stylistic portrait, the paper shows that the English fantasy texts are characterized by the dominance of expressive means and stylistic devices at the syntactic level of language. In addition, the researchers identified the most productive stylistically marked linguistic units at each level of language correlated with the semantic field within which they functioned, and studied connotative dominants in these texts.

A Convergence of Filipino Worlds: An Onomastic Reading of Edgar Calabia Samar’s Janus Silang Novels

Edgar Calabia Samar’s Janus Silang book series is a significant body of contemporary young adult fantasy novels in the Philippines. Samar’s ambitious series that successfully melds alternate online tech-worlds, everyday Filipino life, and ancient supernatural, god-inhabited worlds, is worthy of study. In creating this fantasy world, the Janus Silang series underscores the richness of Filipino mythology and lore by cohesively layering these lived worlds by way of spatial and temporal play. This paper wishes to study the value of this “world(s)-building”, entering this by way of the study of onomastics, the study of proper names of all kinds and the origins of names. Using both toponomastics and anthroponomastics, or the study of place names and human naming, respectively, this inventive, powerful focus on naming solidifies the Janus Silang series’ development of unique Filipino characters and narratives and its reintroduction of the cultures of its imaginary worlds for young, contemporary Filipino and global readers

The analysis of best-seller fantasy novel covers in 2019 through multimodal lens

The purpose of this research was to analyze ten covers of 2019 best-seller fantasy novels through multimodal. The research method used was qualitative research. The objects in this research were ten book covers of 2019 best-seller fantasy novels. The instruments used were documentation that aimed at obtaining data, including relevant books, study, activity reporting, relevant research data. Content analysis was used to obtain the data. This study used five phased cycles in analyzing the data; compiling, disassembling, reassembling, interpreting, and concluding. The result of analyzing the novels is emphasized in two focuses, including representation and interactive function. Several novels have a narrative aspect, while others contain conceptual interpretation, which is part of a representative function. It was very challenging to interpret some implicit meaning of the symbols in some of the novels as it requires mythical knowledge. Therefore, it is expected that understanding the implicit meaning comprehensively will make readers easier to understand the story outline of the novel.

Setting Tales upon the Truth: Three Go Back, The Lost Trumpet and Gay Hunter

While Mitchell was offhand about his imaginative romances, they are viewed here as more than just potboilers whose brand of utopian idealism was designed to garner widespread popularity. On the contrary, Mitchell employs a lightweight fiction form to promote key themes about society, human nature and historical evolution. Two of his fantasy novels are explored as classic time-travel yarns of Voyage and Return. The first of these, Three Go Back, invokes a natural Golden Age of the prehistoric past untrammelled by civilised values, while his last fantasy Gay Hunter constitutes a darker dystopian narrative informed by the contemporary rise of fascism in Europe. The intermediate romance The Lost Trumpet is appraised as a classic example of the popular genre of the Quest, an early form of magical realism set in Egypt in which pressing socio-political themes are addressed within the framing fantasy of an archaeological search for Joshua’s talismanic trumpet of Old Testament legend. Ultimately the fantasy form is viewed as uncongenial to Mitchell’s literary aspirations, although his formal experimentation in these novels was important to his literary development.

Keep calm and read fantasy novels

Данное учебное пособие основано на трех произведениях британской прозы XX века в жанре фэнтези: «Лев, колдунья и платяной шкаф» К.С. Льюиса, «Гарри Поттер и философский камень» Дж. Роулинг, «Звездная пыль» Н. Геймана. Пособие состоит из трех модулей, каждый из которых содержит комплекс упражнений, который позволит усовершенствовать знание английского языка, поможет разрешить возникающие вопросы и трудности при работе с оригинальным текстом, развить восприятие английской речи на слух и привыкнуть к правилам употребления грамматических конструкций в естественных условиях функционирования языка. Пособие будет интересно и полезно всем, кто знает и изучает английский язык с преподавателем или самостоятельно. Рекомендуется студентам – бакалаврам, специалистам, магистрантам факультетов иностранных языков продолжающих изучать английский язык (уровень В1-В2 – Intermediate-Upper-Intermediate).

Lexico-semantic analysis of anthroponyms in modern english prose

The article studiesthe lexical and semantic features of the anthroponyms in the modern English prose discourse, basing on the material of The Mortal Instruments, series of six young adult fantasy novels, written by Cassandra Claire. The work presents origin analysis of the characters` names and surnames presented in the books, and the ways of their interpretation. Particular attention was paid to the information and stylistic functionality of onyms and their impact on the reader’s knowledge of the inner world of the characters. We proved the connection between the choice of one’s own name and the character’s behavior, his or her actions and a complex socio-psychological portrait; and determined the interdependence between the use of different forms of the name, its short forms or complete replacement, from the metamorphoses that occur with the characters during the development of the plot line of the novel. The work studies the notion of allusion as a kind of intertextuality through the collaboration of biblical and mythological motives, which in turn contributed not only to the specifics of the names` choice of some characters, but also determined their role and order of decisions. It is emphasized the importance of in-depth study of anthroponyms in modern English prose, taking into account the diversity of their role within the work of art, the ability to reflect the culture and social life of society, focusing on the hidden symbolism and literary heritage of a culture and country in general. Keywords: anthroponyms, onyms, onomastics, intertextuality, modern English prose discourse, proper names.