January 25: Hypertext Fiction

Read:

Blog: After reading the Rettberg chapter on Hypertext Fiction and Coover’s “The Babysitter” (take your time with this one!), discuss your thoughts about how Coover’s story is a model for later works of Hypertext. How does the story’s structure involve the reader in multiple narrative paths?

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IN-CLASS TOPICS/ACTIVITIES:

  • Discuss the Babysitter / modernism>postmodernism / history and connection to early hypertext
  • TALK: early hypertext, forking paths, spatial writing, eastgate and storyspace

 

  • Intro to ELL / formats: floppy>cd-rom>web
  • DEMO: afternoon, a story, Michael Joyce
  • formats: floppy, cd-rom, flash-drive
  • ELD entries info
  • Twine exercise – lexia around an event

Read:

Blog: With the advent of social media, hypertext is no longer a novel feature of digital writing. However, the growing Twine community is showing a renewed interest in hypertext fiction. Based on Rettberg’s book so far, the articles above and the in-class reading of “afternoon, a story”, share your thoughts about the future of hypertext fiction as a literary form. Can the link-structure, nonlinearity and fragmentation of hypertext express something of our world that print cannot?  

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IN-CLASS TOPICS/ACTIVITIES:

Discuss readings and posts.

A Story As You Like It, by Raymond Queneau

Take notes on in-class readings, considering the following questions:

  • Are you able to follow linear sequences within the overall multilinear and/or variable structure?
  • What propels your reading? Are plot or character questions raised? Are there moments of suspense? Are you making discoveries as you read? Or does the work feel disjointed? Is there a reason in the story for the disjointedness?
  • Is the work immersive or does it resist immersion? Are you engaged with text without being immersed in a world? 
  • Does the work exhibit intertexuality?
  • Does the work exhibit authorial and/or medial reflexivity? Is the reflexivity thematically important?
  • How do graphic elements (images, maps) integrate with the text? Do the images illustrate the text or are they also to be “read” and interpreted in some way?
  • How do you interpret the overall navigational structure of the hypertext? Does the work encourage or help you to interpret this structure? 
  • If you had the time, would you return to this work?

Group-reading pairings

ELL / Mac Classics:

VMMC 111/ Online:

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