Old French Narrative Lays and the Video Games We Play

Abstract

In this dissertation, I situate “play” both as a methodology by which to re-interpret 12th- and 13th-century French narrative lays and modern video games and as a mode of engagement with which to hold these two seemingly disparate media together in meaningful tension. Inspired by Katie Salen-Tekinbas, I define play as free movement within more rigid structures. Therefore, I play with the resemblances and connections between the categories of game and text across an 800-year divide. A self-conscious implementation play as method and medium provides a new way of understanding how these works, their characters, and creators invite play-ful reading as game-texts. Lays (lais) are short, often episodic, medieval stories of adventure written in verse and likely performed with musical accompaniment. The lay exists at the intersection of courtly French, Arthurian, and Old Irish literature and weaves together stylistic, thematic, cultural, linguistic, and narrative elements of each. Since the performative and social potential of lay readership in the European Middle Ages aligns with many aspects of modern video gameplay, this project moves beyond formal characteristics of the lay genre and asks how audiences can play the lay. I engage with scholars of games studies, literary studies, psychology, and anthropology to highlight new ways of reading narrative lays and video games. Chapter 1 explores the feminist potential of game design for the Lady of Edinburgh in the 13th-century lay Doon, and enters into conversation with the theoretical work of Kishonna L. Gray, Jack Halberstam, Johan Huizinga, and Emma Vossen. Following #GamerGate, feminist game design resists gender-based harassment in gaming culture and fosters social agency within restrictive, patriarchal systems. Chapter 2 examines instances where players identify with video game avatars through the metaphor of mirroring. I consider the implications of virtual and non-virtual identities, of representation, and of avatar customization by reimagining the eponymous main characters of the 12th-century lay Narcisus et Dané as both video game avatars and players. This chapter finds playmates in psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s notion of the flow state, Adrienne Shaw’s work on identity, and Valerie Traub and others’ transversion within Ovidian narratives. Chapter 3 postulates a connection between the medieval historiographical tradition of translatio and experiences of spacetime during video gameplay. I propose the notion of “translatio ludi” as a way of tracing the movement of language, knowledge, and play across time and space in Benedeit’s 12th-century Voyage de Saint Brendan and in Ubisoft Studio’s popular Assassin’s Creed franchise. I conclude by considering how gaming technologies allow for the continued reconstruction, preservation, and transmediation of the European Middle Ages into new digital and material afterlives especially in the wake of the fire at Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris. By reading moments of play in and across medieval and modern game-texts, “Old French Narrative Lays and the Video Games We Play” ultimately opens up conversations between medieval literary studies and games studies.