From Tolkien to Tiktok: mythopoeia, multisemiosis, and pop culture

Abstract

This paper examines the transformation of Fantasy from a literary genre into a multisemiotic and technocultural practice, arguing that mythopoeia operates as a symbolic and epistemological matrix within contemporary digital culture. Drawing on J.R.R. Tolkien’s formulation of worldbuilding and myth-making, it proposes that Fantasy constitutes a creative and cognitive framework through which fictional worlds are constructed as coherent symbolic systems. Building on scholarship in media theory and semiotics (Jenkins, 2006; Bolter & Grusin, 2000; Manovich, 2002; Wolf, 2012; Murray, 2017), the paper investigates how media convergence and participatory platforms have expanded Fantasy into a multisemiotic ecosystem integrating text, image, sound, performance, and interaction. Through a theoretical-analytical methodology grounded in bibliographical review and supported by illustrative examples drawn from contemporary franchises and digital practices, the study argues that Fantasy operates as a distributed mythopoeic praxis. In this environment, audiences become co-authors, and fictional worlds evolve into dynamic transmedia systems sustained by collaborative practices and algorithmic circulation. The paper further contends that this shift reconfigures the cultural function of myth, displacing it from transcendence to digital immanence while preserving its role as a structure of meaning. Ultimately, it demonstrates that Fantasy constitutes a mode of knowledge that organizes the contemporary imaginary, articulating symbolic, technological, and affective dimensions in the production of meaning within global Pop Culture and digital environments.