My dissertation, "#: Ezra Pound, The Cantos, and Hypertext," asserts that Ezra Pound's Cantos constitute a hypertext. Consisting of three sections, my study locates itself at the intersection of Pound scholarship, hypertext theory, and media studies. Part one, "What Is Hypertext?" seeks to define hypertext and its relation to previous communication paradigms. Part two, "Ezra Pound in the Late Age of Print," establishes the connection between Pound and hypertext in both theoretical and sociohistorical dimensions. Part three, "Surfing the Cantos," presents a practical application of hypertext theory to the problem of reading Pound's later Cantos and attempts to better define the concept of hypertextual literacy.
I differ from some theorists in that I do not see hypertext as a new technology or medium. While I agree with commentators like George Landow and J. David Bolter that the development of digital technologies has begun a "paradigm shift" in the history of communication technology (Landow, Hypertext 2; Bolter 2), I would suggest that the "new" hypertext paradigm has, in fact, always been available and has been exploited sporadically throughout the history of writing. I would distinguish the conceptual paradigm of hypertext (text seen as a network of nodes and links) from specific technologies by which this paradigm can be presented. Similarly, I would distinguish the linear paradigm, in opposition to which hypertext often defines itself, from specific technologies like printing or handwriting. However much a given technology may encourage a particular paradigm of textuality, the diversity of textual production shows that this relationship is not determinate.
In many ways, I follow Ted Nelson's assertion that "hypertext is fundamentally traditional and in the mainstream of literature" (1/17). There have always been alternatives and contrary impulses to the linearity of writing. It is only because "nothing else has been practical" that linear textuality has persisted as long as it has (Nelson 1/16). Even a cursory examination of the print tradition reveals numerous mechanisms, some quite conventional and established, that have developed to facilitate nonsequential approaches within that sequential medium. Tables of contents, indices, cross-references, bibliographies, and sidebars all enable, albeit clumsily, nonsequential access to printed texts and can therefore be thought of as a hypertextual device. Whole genres of texts -- dictionaries, encyclopedias, and reference manuals -- are ill suited to linear reading and, unsurprisingly, have been among the first texts to be translated to electronic, hypertextual format. Finally, as Landow reminds us, scholarly activity, as represented by the footnote, is essentially hypertextual, always branching outward from the "main" text and encouraging alternative reading paths (Hypertext 5).
Indeed, the very notion of "literature" can be seen as hypertextual. Nelson states: "Literature is an ongoing series of interconnecting documents. In any ongoing literature, there is perpetual interpretation and reinterpretation, and links between documents help us follow these connections" (2/10). Literary allusions, quotations, borrowings, and imitations can all be seen as implicit "links" to other documents in the larger body of literature. It is only because these links have been rendered invisible by writing technologies that the idea of hypertext linking seems so novel. One contribution of hypertext theory to literary studies is to re-present literary productions as complex networks situated within even larger webs of association, what Nelson calls "the grand cat's-cradle" of links that surrounds all documents (2/12).
Even within such a broad definition of hypertext, however, the work of Ezra Pound stands out as particularly exemplifying hypertextual features. He had the advantage of being remarkably engaged with the publishing institutions of his day, giving him a particular awareness of the social and technological forces mediating literary production (Kenner 37-59; Naenny). In his critical prose, for example, Pound searches for a new vocabulary to describe a textuality that did not fit the paradigms of his time, displaying the sensibility of what Bolter calls "the late age of print" (2): an increasing awareness of the limitations of print and a groping forward for new possibilities for expression in an obsolescing technology.
I have argued elsewhere for the similarity of Pound's poetic theories to the terminology of hypertext theory and for the applicability of that terminology to the later Cantos. More important, however, than these surface affinities is a deeper one that may show Pound as not just anticipating hypertext theory, but as an ancestor of it. The "ideogrammic method," which comes to dominate both Pound's critical and his poetic style, can be considered a theory of knowledge, one in which the reader is an active participant in the construction of meaning (Dickie 106-47; Perloff 155-99; Yee 242-56). In the Cantos in particular, Pound provides the material and suggests the existence of links, but the actual connection of them is left to the reader. This method assumes a certain model of cognition, one that also underlies hypertext theory. The primacy of the link in hypertext theory was introduced by Bush and Nelson, who drew their own inspiration from a belief in the associative qualities of human thought. Another of the objectives of my dissertation is to explore the genealogy of this belief, tracing it back through Pound to his sources. This exploration should provide much-needed context for a belief that has often been accepted as axiomatic in hypertext theory.
The question remains, however: how do we read hypertextually? Answering this question is the most important objective of my dissertation. While many critics have been quick to proclaim that hypertextual literacy requires us to give up the habits we have learned from print, few have offered concrete guidelines for such reading. In attempting to define the skills of hypertextual literacy, I will proceed empirically, using Pound's later Cantos as my laboratory. Foiling traditional expectations of unity, sequence, and closure in much the same manner ascribed to hypertext, these Cantos have baffled and frustrated readers, resulting in persistent charges of formlessness and incoherence. Even sympathetic readers have had difficulties, resorting to metaphors from the visual or musical arts, which provide only approximations of the paradigm governing Pound's poetry. What has been lacking is the necessary literacy, and I would argue that the literacy needed to read the Cantos is hypertextual literacy.
At this stage in my research, I do not know what my conclusions about hypertextual literacy will be. Certainly such literacy cannot take as its goal the production of a definitive or "final" interpretation of the text. Landow reminds us that hypertextual reading will always be incomplete: "Quantity removes mastery and authority, for one can only sample, not master a text" ("What's a Critic to Do?" 35). Instead of pursuing the chimera of mastery, hypertextual reading must be exploratory. As Bolter discusses at length, the hypertext paradigm lends itself to spatial or "topographical" representations of the text, with reading being a form of travel among the connected nodes (10-11, 16-19).
In the case of Pound's Cantos, I find that "surfing" may be the more apt metaphor. Popularized in the phrase "surfing the web," the term points to a fusion of freedom and constraint that I find inherent in the act of hypertextual reading. The surfer must follow lines of force already present in the waves, but with skill he or she can move with great freedom within and across those lines. So, too, with the hypertext reader. Nodes and links set up certain lines of force; the reader as surfer rides those lines through the work. Each "run" will be different. They can be longer or shorter, yield more or less interesting results. One might even push the metaphor and discuss the possibility of "wiping out" or becoming becalmed in such reading. In surfing the Cantos, I will not attempt to master them into a comprehensive trope or plot. Rather, I hope to find interesting lines of force and ride them to find the exhilaration and the pleasure of the text.
I cannot predict precisely where these explorations will finally lead, but I do expect them to contribute to the fields of both Pound scholarship and hypertext theory. As regards Pound, I hope to finally remove the unnecessary and obstructive print-bound expectations of unity, closure, and sequence that continue to hinder the reading of the Cantos. By replacing these inappropriate expectations with the idea of a reader-determined, creative, exploratory reading, I believe the Cantos will generate the appreciation and the enjoyment that they deserve. In addition, by providing a practical test of hypertextual reading, I hope to remedy a conspicuous absence in hypertext theory. While there is already much commentary on what hypertext is not -- its difference from and subversion of other textual paradigms -- there is far less consensus on what it is, on what hypertextual reading can possibly offer in terms of positive meaning. A hypertextual reading of the Cantos should provide a starting point for serious discussion of the skills of hypertextual literacy. As digital media, computers and the World Wide Web continue their meteoric rise within the communication scene, such a discussion seems all the more urgent.
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