Machphrasis - Video Games as Metaphor in Contemporary Literary Culture - PhD Thesis

Aug 20, 2026

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This PhD thesis examines how writing since 1984 has used the video game as a prose metaphor. It develops a poetic framework termed “Machphrasis,” drawing on video game metaphors to clarify their critical, aesthetic, historical, and affective significance within specific fictional works. The framework is applied across six major texts, offering a systematic method to analyze how gaming can generate literary effects often understudied in scholarship. The research reframes the novelty of the video game in the novel form from cyberpunk origins to contemporary writing.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages242

Reading Time10 h 10 min

AccessFree to download

Contents

Abstract

Acknowledgements

Author’s Declaration

Introduction

Literature Review

No More Apologies: Video Games and Culture Dominance

Gaming Literacy

Media Ecology

Mach phrasis

Chapter 1: William Gibson’s Neuromancer: Cold War Panic/Cold War Prophet

Chapter 2: Neal Stephenson and Haruki Murakami: Machphrasis after Gibson

Chapter 3

Chapters 4 and 5

Butterworth-Parr, Francis (2024) Machphrasis: Video games as metaphor in contemporary literary culture. PhD thesis. [https://theses.gla.ac.uk/84325/](https://theses.gla.ac.uk/84325/) Copyright and moral rights for this work are retained by the author A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge This work cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given Enlighten: Theses [https://theses.gla.ac.uk/](https://theses.gla.ac.uk/) [research-enlighten@glasgow.ac.uk](research-enlighten@glasgow.ac.uk) Machphrasis: Video Games as Metaphor in Contemporary Literary Culture Francis Butterworth-Parr B.A (Hons), M.A (Hons) Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Arts) Department of English Literature School of Critical Studies College of Arts University of Glasgow April 2023 Abstract This thesis explores how writing since 1984 has deployed the video game as a prose metaphor. In order to do so, the thesis establishes a poetic framework capable of drawing from video game metaphors their critical, aesthetic, historical, and affective relevance to the fictions in which they appear. This poetics is called‘Machphrasis’, a term borrowed from writer and cultural theorist Kawika Guillermo (2016), and its deployment as poetic lens across six texts: William Gibson’s Neuromancer (1984), Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash (1992), Haruki Murakami’s Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (1985 in Japanese, 1991 in English), Michael W. Clune’s Gamelife: A Memoir (2015), Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One (2011), and Marie Lu’s Warcross (2017), is the thesis’ primary contribution to knowledge. This thesis redresses current scholarship’suneven balance between investigating the literary in the video game by instead theorising how video games and gaming can offer literary writing a suite of literary effects that have gone without full-blooded analysis to date. Ultimately, this thesis argues that machphrastic analysis disinters a vital new sens of the video game within the novel form, one that grows in quality and quantity from its conception in cyberpunk fiction to writing now. I have constructed the thesis in three interrelated parts. Chapters 1 and 2 focus on constructing an expositionaland modal machphrastic writing style from the three early cyberpunk texts previously mentioned above. Chapter 3 brings the thesis to writing now, where Clune’s Gamelife highlights how machphrastic analysis can complicate prescriptive narratives concerning video gaming’s addictiveness. Chapters 4 and 5 turn to Cline’s Ready Player One and Lu’s Warcross to explore how machphrasis currently serves ideological positions related to gamers. Alongside machphrasis as a systematic poetics, where appropriate, the thesis also explores new concepts in order to condense theoretical positions and textual evidence into a critical vocabulary that describes video gaming phenomena. Namely, these are shamanism, critical immersion (introduced in chapter 3), and the logic of alternateness (introduced in chapter 4) . Holistically, the thesis can be read as a literary contribution to ongoing discursive efforts to create theoretical language that meaningfully describes and interrogates the video game’s especial place in late 20th and early 21st century culture, what I call the act of theorising the ludic century. Contents Abstract............................................................................................................................................... 1 Acknowledgements..............................

FAQs

What is “Machphrasis” in this thesis?

It is a poetic framework for analyzing video game metaphors and connecting their critical, aesthetic, historical, and affective relevance to the fictional writing where they appear.

Which texts does the thesis apply Machphrasis to?

The analysis centers on Neuromancer (1984), Snow Crash (1992), Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (1985/1991), Gamelife (2015), Ready Player One (2011), and Warcross (2017).

What does the thesis argue about the role of video games in the novel form?

It argues that machphrastic analysis reveals a vital new sense of the video game within the novel, growing from its cyberpunk conception to contemporary writing and critique.

Aug 20, 2026

Upload by Gloria