Introduction

The Legend of Zelda stands as one of the most iconic and recognizable narrative videogames in the world. Because of its earnest worldbuilding, as the introduction to the anthology argues, The Legend of Zelda series provides a powerful place for grounding the effort to shift videogame scholarship out of its generally defensive posture. The 12 pieces in this volume thus endeavor to make the overall argument: The Legend of Zelda series facilitates our assessment of the intellectual and academic merits of the videogame from the inside; and we can adopt this inside posture best through a mythopoeic perspective, even when that stance is subverted, critiqued, or strained to its limits, as some of the essays show.