A. Sapkowski's Witcher as Postmodern Superhuman Media Character

Student: Kegeles Alek

Educational Programme: Journalism (Bachelor)

Year of Graduation: 2021

The academic paper is connected to the problem of depiction of superhuman as a postmodern media character in 20th and 21st centuries’ popular culture, specifically in science fiction, fantasy and superhero fiction. Character named Geralt of Rivia, originally from Andrzej Sapkowski’s fantasy saga “The Witcher”, has been chosen as a subject of the academic paper. This academic paper provides an analysis of history and evolution of superhuman image in popular culture, changing due to shifts of paradigms from modern to postmodern, comparison of superhuman characters and collation of Geralt’s different images in three different types of media: literature, computer games and Netflix series. Moreover, these steps are to reveal the reason of uniqueness and popularity of Geralt as media character and are to demonstrate possible approaches to superhuman’s image usage in transmedia projects. Keywords: superhuman, media character, transmedia, transmedia franchise, fantasy, postmodern, popular culture.

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