| Tue, 10/8
|
Print Hypertexts
“like the codex it supercedes, hypertext is an incremental development in the technology of writing. But incremental developments (again as in the case of the codex) can sometimes have implications for our understanding of literary forms which are incommensurate with their novelty. Though hypertextual reading seems theoretically very similar to conventional reading, there are in fact substantial practical differences in the way readers of hypertext interpret fictional discourse, and these differences suggest that the fiction of forking paths may represent a significant departure from the fiction of the printed page”
- Stuart Moulthrop, "Reading from the Map: Metonymy and Metaphor in the Fiction of 'Forking Paths,'" Hypermedia and Literary Studies, eds. George P. Landow & Paul Delany (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1994): 125.
“it is not difficult to imagine that over time the effect of hypertext will be to subvert the very sense of a primary text with a defined beginning, a dominant axis of movement, and a clear end”
-Silvio Gaggi, From Text to Hypertext (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997): 102.
Is there such a thing as a "print hypertext," or do we only read and write hypertext on the computer? In this class, we will begin to consider "hypertext" as a way of writing that is not necessarily attached to any one medium. Can we think about hypertext cross-platform and identify a set of rhetorical, narratological, and structural properties common to both codex (print) and screen (the computer)?
Jorge Luis Borges's stories, "The Garden of Forking Paths" and "The Examination of Herbert Quain," are often considered to have prefigured and foreshadowed hypertext. Why are these stories considered to be precursors or at least analogous to hypertext?
What constitutes a "fiction of forking paths"?
Thought experiment: how would we turn the story, "The Garden of Forking Paths," into an electronic hypertext?
|
