Hypertext

Week’s activities n Assignment n Reading - Sutherland and Condron, Landow (intro), Conner on hypertext structure of a novel, Tosca (speaking on the 11th Feb)

Aim of class n Discuss basic principles of hypertext theory n Look at ‘proto-hypertext’ n Look at hypertext fiction n Discuss site plans

Hypertext n Associative linking of nodes n ‘associative’ n ‘links’ n ‘nodes’ n Links can be one-way, two-way, multi- directional n Links may be conditional

Hypertext is an information technology consisting of individual blocks of text, or lexias, and the electronic links that join them’ Landow Hyper/Text/Theory Lexia - Barthes’ definition of a unit of reading

Why of interest? n The Web via HTML allows for hypertext linking n Interested in: Associations, intertextuality, contextuality, readers as authors are all aspects of literary studies n Landow’s ‘proto-hypertext’

Some literary history n I Ching n Rand’s ‘Night of January 16th’ n Queneau’s ‘Cent Mille Milliards de Poemes’ n Borges’ ‘The Garden of Forking Paths’ n Fowles’ ‘The French Lieutenant’s Woman’ n FRP books > computer ‘adventure’ games

Some hypertext history n Vannevar Busch’s MEMEX n T. Nelson ‘hypertext’ (XANADU) n Brown University , and 1985 ‘Intermedia: Dickens Web’ by Landow n GUIDE (Univ. of Kent) n HyperCard (Apple Macintosh) n HTML - Hypertext Mark-up Language

Hypertext history n e-encyclopaedias sell more; ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ n Concentration on contextualising material n Replicating Landow’s ‘proto-hypertext’ of scholarly editions

Case study: The Dream of the Rood (p. 89) n Where is the text?Familiar design? n Does proto-hypertext disrupt sequential reading? n Coping with ‘analytical’ and ‘global’ readers - are we always analytical? n Analysts prefer sequences, globalists prefer to scan and form overall impressions n Shakespeare’s Life and Times

Case Study: ‘Unreal City’ (p. 114) n Where is the text? n Why? n ‘Unreal City’ in Eastgate’s Storyspace

Hypertext fiction n Aarseth ‘readers effect a semiotic sequence when reading a text’ - ‘paths’ n M. Joyce’s ‘Afternoon’, S. Moulthrop’s ‘Victory Garden’ HANDS-ON n Each reading is ‘unique’ n Many links are conditional

How do you evaluate them? n Unity of the text n Cohesiveness n Engagement

Hypertext in Games n Many similarities to FRP books n New area is to look at hypertext in computer games n Adventure (1980), The Hobbit (1981), MUDs (multi-user dungeons) n Merging of arcade and adventure (‘Resident Evil’) or pure adventure/simulations (Myst, Black and White, The Sims)

‘Books invite systematic reading…hypertexts..invite exploration although they can, with effort, be systematically read’ Pickering Beyond the Book, pp ‘if it [the electronic book] promises immediate access, even enhanced authenticity, the electronic environment also promises endless deferral’ Sutherland, Beyond the Book, p. 13 ‘the electronic text effects, too, an associated shift in authority, from editor to reader…the professional editor withdraws from the editorial process at a much earlier stage’ Walsh, Politics of the Electronic Text, p. 31 ‘Well I get to the bottom of the page and I start at the top of the next page. What do you mean how do I read?’

Some design issues n Screen interface - disabled access n Design of site to cope with ‘analytical’ and ‘global’ readers n If site is meant to convey something (as opposed to gateways) how can we use reading theories to facilitate this?

Text Time Surface/short-term Time Deep/long-term Text

So... n Pauses, reflections, questions n 1. Site map for tutorial 1 and tutorial 2 n 2. What are the common features we would expect in a site: * on an author * on a period * presenting an online edition * teaching a skill