Legend of Zelda: Mythopoeia, Tolkien, and the Triforce (Mythic Mind Games, ep. 7)
Mythic Mind GamesEpisode 7
Legend of Zelda: Mythopoeia, Tolkien, and the Triforce (Mythic Mind Games, ep. 7)
In this episode
The Legend of Zelda can feel like playing Tolkien: home, adventure, and a return that leaves you looking at the primary world differently. What if that is mythopoeia, not nostalgia?
In this Mythic Mind Games conversation, Dr. Andrew Snyder and Joshua Traylor talk with Dr. Anthony Cirilla, co-editor of Mythopoeic Narrative in The Legend of Zelda, about Tolkien’s mythmaking, On Fairy-Stories and subcreation, Lewis’s Myth Became Fact, and the Triforce as a concrete image of power, wisdom, and courage working together. They defend Zelda’s “generic” fairy-story heroics, weigh Ocarina’s saturated symbolism against sprawling open worlds, and ask how digital fantasy can train the imagination without replacing real life.
Guest: Dr. Anthony Cirilla (co-editor, Mythopoeic Narrative in The Legend of Zelda). With Joshua Traylor.
Go deeper
The Inkwell
When the Sword Leaves the Stone: An Ocarina of Time Reflection
As we approach the release of the remake for this 1998 Nintendo classic, I aim to examine the game’s symbolic significance and its relevance to our contemporary culture.
Read the essayFellows and Companions study every course in the Academy, current and future.
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