Revisiting World War I in contemporaneity: The Myth of the War and the game Battlefield 1

Authors

  • Tom Burns Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais
  • Marcela de Oliveira e Silva Lemos Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.17851/2317-2096.29.2.13-28

Keywords:

World War I, the myth of the war, Battlefield 1, first-person shooter

Abstract

What is left of World War I a hundred years after the Armistice? Besides monuments and national holidays, texts are, in their various forms, among the remains of WWI. Together, they write what Samuel Hynes calls “the Myth of the War,” a narrative of signification that gradually became what and how we know about the war. A look at the relationship contemporary recreations of WWI establish with this myth is important to understand our sense of historical consciousness and collective memory. In this article, we propose a study of the single-player campaign mode of the video game Battlefield 1 (2016) to inquire into its treatment of the myth. We claim that this narrative, partially constructed by the player, simultaneously reiterates and denies Hynes’s Myth of Disillusionment. We also argue that this paradox derives from an attempt at retelling the traditional version of the war through the first-person shooter (FPS) game genre.

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Author Biographies

Tom Burns, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais

Professor de literaturas de língua inglesa da Faculdade de Letras da Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais. Vice-coordenador do Núcleo de Estudos de Guerra e Literatura (NEGUE) da mesma instituição.

Marcela de Oliveira e Silva Lemos, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais

Doutoranda e mestre em letras: estudos literários, área de concentração literaturas de língua inglesa, pelo Programa de Pós-Graduação em Estudos Literários, Faculdade de Letras, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais. Integrante do Núcleo de Estudos de Guerra e Literatura (NEGUE) da mesma instituição.

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Published

2019-06-28

How to Cite

Burns, T., & Lemos, M. de O. e S. (2019). Revisiting World War I in contemporaneity: The Myth of the War and the game Battlefield 1. Aletria: Revista De Estudos De Literatura, 29(2), 13–28. https://doi.org/10.17851/2317-2096.29.2.13-28

Issue

Vol. 29 No. 2 (2019): Literatura Norte-Americana Contemporânea: Visões e Revisões

Section

Dossier – Contemporary North-American Literature - Visions and Revisions

License

Copyright (c) 2019 Tom Burns, Marcela de Oliveira e Silva Lemos (Autor)

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