Jul 23, 2014 10:49 AM EDT By Russell Westerholm, UniversityHerald Reporter

HBO has seen their "Game of Thrones" television series, adapted from George R.R. Martin's epic novels, become a massive success and now both will be the subject of a college course.

According to Vanity Fair, the University of Virginia (UVA) is offering a summer seminar that will cover both Martin's books and HBO's show. The course will only be offered during the summer (for now) and only for UVA students.

"One of the goals behind this class was to teach students how the skills that we use to study literature are very useful skills for reading literature and TV in conjunction," Lisa Woolfork, an associate professor of English and the course's instructor, said in a UVA news release. "'Game of Thrones' is popular, it's interesting, but it's also very serious. There are a lot of things in the series that are very weighty, and very meaningful, and can be illuminated through the skills of literary analysis."

More than just the sudden, gory deaths, or the graphic sex scenes, Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" novels are filled with rich political drama and deep character development. Thanks to his extensive cast of characters, their intertwining stories and the epic nature of the world of Westeros and Essos, Martin has been hailed by some as "the American Tolkien."

Martin has also completely ignored the notion that his story needs a classic hero arc and several of the characters who fans gravitate to are killed off. Woolfork said the many elements to the story translate both on screen and on the page, making it a perfect subject for a college course.

"It's so literary - how in-depth it is, how robust it is, how much there is to discuss about it, but we're also very concerned about the pop culture aspects, how we as viewers receive 'Game of Thrones,'" Madlyn McAuliffe, a UVA student pursuing an English degree, said in the release. "I think it's important to apply the same principles we do with literature to television and film, and that's determined a lot of the English courses I've taken."

Judging from its massive success as HBO's most watched show of all time, (beating out "the Sopranos" this past season) it is probably safe to assume more courses like this will appear at other schools.

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