Vitruvius, Critics, and the Architecture of Worlds

Extra-Narratival Material and Critical World-Building

Authors

  • Stefan Ekman Swedish National Data Service

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essay

Abstract

All works of fiction build imaginary worlds in which they set their stories. What makes genres such as science fiction and fantasy different is that their worlds are often created not as twins to our actual world but as cousins or even distant relatives to it. Some of these worlds are built to stage a particular narrative, others to house certain casts of characters, and yet others to offer exciting possibilities for exploration. They can be shaped by, for example, text, film, graphic novels, computer games, or combinations of these media. I find such worlds fascinating objects of study, not only as backdrops to particular stories but as aesthetic and cultural objects in themselves, and I am intrigued by how worlds can be built by elements that are not part of the narrative. Such non-narratival elements are often ignored in world-building analyses, while potentially being of great importance to the world to which they contribute. In this essay, I look exclusively at non-narratival world-building. My first example shows how a collection of “lore” in a computer game or (in my case) a graphic-novel app can offer material for a scholar who analyses the world of the story. Then I turn to a world without any explicit narrative, using the illustrations from a Dungeons & Dragons rulebook to demonstrate what they can say about the implied game world. Before that, however, I introduce the concept of critical world-building and outline my view of world-building as architecture. World-architecture provides the basis for my analysis of the examples.

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Published

2025-12-08

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Section

Essays