Arthur/Artoria/Arthas. Some Theoretical Remarks on Arthur(ian) Characters in Contemporary Media Culture

Abstract Taking as its point of departure the observation that Arthur(ian) characters remain ubiquitous in contemporary media culture, with a range of literary texts, plays, comics, films, television series, animated works, board games, tabletop roleplaying games, videogames, and other (potentially) narrative media forms contributing representations of ›The Once and Future King‹, this article offers a comprehensive theoretical account of characters that are represented across conventionally distinct media forms as well as of the interrelations between them. Using a necessarily small selection of contemporary medial representations of Arthur(ian) characters as examples, the article conceptualizes ›characters‹ as represented entities with an intentional inner life that are (or at least can be) located in storyworlds (and thus are presented as ›logically consistent‹ by default), distinguishing them from ›transmedia figures‹ as the complex cultural constructs that arise from contemporary media culture’s tendency to adapt, expand, and modify previously represented characters across the borders of both individual media texts and their respective media forms (and thus are not presented as ›logically consistent‹ by default). The article further distinguishes between ›work-specific‹, ›transtextual‹, and ›transmedia characters‹ that are interrelated in sometimes rather complex ›transmedia character networks‹, emphasizing that ›transmedia character templates‹ and ›transmedia character types‹ often lead to recipients having prior knowledge about transmedia figures (or even about particular work-specific characters), which may fulfill important functions in the intersubjective construction of work-specific (as well as transtextual and transmedia) characters. In regarding the ubiquity of contemporary Arthur(ian) characters not just as an occasion for theoretical reflection but also as an opportunity to connect the proposed theoretical frame to ongoing discussions about premodern characters (which do, of course, prominently include various Arthur[ian] characters), the article moreover argues for the continued usefulness of a transmedial, transcultural, and transhistorical conceptualization of characters that allows for a comparison of (representations of) characters across a diverse set of medial, cultural, and historical contexts.