Edward Wolf’s published work explores heroic narrative, fantasy, and the relationship between literary traditions and interactive media. His current research develops these interests into a book-length study of Western role-playing games.
Current Book Project
Playing the Epic: Chronotope and Narrative in Western RPGs
Edward’s current book project develops his doctoral research into a broader study of the Western role-playing game in dialogue with heroic epic and fantasy literature.
The book examines the ways WRPGs construct narrative worlds through time, space, quest structures, characterization, movement, and player participation. Drawing on Bakhtinian approaches to the chronotope and dialogism, it considers how older literary forms are transformed within interactive media and how players experience narrative worlds through exploration, choice, and presence.
Articles
The Once and Future Hero: Understanding the Hero in Quest Fantasy. Fafnir: The Nordic Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy Research, 4 (1), pp. 7-19.
This article examines the figure of the hero in quest fantasy, considering the persistence and transformation of heroic archetypes across literary traditions.
Epic landscapes: the chronotope of Fantasy. British Fantasy Society Journal, #16, pp. 66-86.
This article explores the relationship between time, space, and world-building in fantasy, with particular attention to the chronotope as a way of understanding imagined narrative environments.
