To the Graduate Committee:
"Hypertext" is at once an old and a new concept. It is new inasmuch as it designates a technological revolution in textual media. It is old in the sense that this technological change merely foregrounds aspects of texts which have always been present, if not always noticed. In both of these senses, hypertext promises (or threatens) a radical and a lasting reconfiguration and reconceptualization of literature and literary studies. My proposed reading list of "Hypertext: Theory and Practice" attempts to survey this field from both perspectives to the ultimate end of a applying hypertext theory in my dissertation.
The "new" sense of hypertext is the most obvious one. The appearance and proliferation of personal computers and the Internet have created a new medium for textual expression: the electronic or "virtual" text. Practically speaking, hypertext is dependent on computers. The term "hypertext" itself was coined in the 1960s by a computer scientist, Theodor Nelson, who explains it thus: "By 'hypertext' I mean nonsequential writing -- text that branches and allows choices to the reader, best read at an interactive screen. As popularly conceived, this is a series of text chunks connected by links which offer the reader different pathways" (qtd. in Landow 4). Unlike the printed text, in which characters, words and pages are all fixed in appearance and sequence, the electronic text is fluid, rearrangeable, even revisable. This fluidity allows for formal experimentation and structural features which would be impossible or at least impractical in print media. Moreover, the electronic text is not necessarily discrete from other documents. On the World Wide Web, any document can be linked to any other, creating a "docuverse" (another Nelson coinage), wherein "individual" works blur into one another. Electronic media also offer unparalleled possibilities for combining text with sound, graphics, and even video in such a way that all of these become inextricably linked. The result is a completely new field of creative endeavor, which some have termed "hypermedia."
Certainly such a change in medium suggests staggering implications for the future of literature and literary studies. Traditional works of literature are already being re-issued and re-presented in electronic forms. There is also a substantial and growing body of literature composed specifically for the electronic or virtual environment. The World Wide Web may bypass the publishing industry entirely by making every computer user a potential author/publisher. These changes have justly been termed a revolution comparable to the invention of the printing press or even to the discovery of writing itself. As such, the growing field of hypertext is of inherent interest to any student of literature.
In a broader sense, however, hypertext is more than a purely technological phenomenon. The kinds of texts that computers make possible have had their precursors in print media and have been prophesied by critical theory. Parallel to, but apparently independent of, the technological revolution leading to hypertext, critical theorists like Jacques Derrida, Roland Barthes, and Mikhail Bakhtin have proposed "readerly," "de-centered" and "multivocal" texts. It is in this sense that hypertext represents, in George Landow's words, "The Convergence of Contemporary Critical Theory and Technology." The technology and the theories validate each other. Far from being an end-point, however, this convergence poses new challenges for literary theory, as J. David Bolter explains:
Electronic writing forces us to recast the familiar questions of literary criticism and theory by redefining both the critical object (the text) and the act of reading itself. . . . [I]t will in fact confirm much of what the deconstructionists and others have been saying about the instability of the text and the decreasing authority of the author. Yet electronic writing will at the same time take much of the sting out of deconstruction. . . . [E]lectronic writing will require a simpler, more positive literary theory. (147)
Hypertext, considered not as a phenomenon but as a concept, may itself provide such a theory. In this sense, hypertext has been with us for centuries. The literate world has developed numerous conventions and strategies that transcend or undercut the linearity imposed by previous media. The most commonly cited example is the footnote, which performs the same function as the hypertext "link," albeit less efficiently, by directing the reader to other documents. Likewise, mechanical provisions like cross-referencing and indexing, narrative techniques such as foreshadowing, in media res and flashback, and intertextual features like quotation, paraphrase and allusion all reveal the impulse to reach beyond strict unity, sequence, and closure. In this sense, new technology has only facilitated and made more transparent something that has always been a feature of texts. Bolter has defined a "tradition of experiment" reaching back to Laurence Sterne in the 18th century, a tradition in which one can find precursors to the structural possibilities of hypertext. Furthermore, as he points out, "all novels embody a struggle between the linear flow of the narrative and the associational trains of thought touched off by the narrative, and the electronic medium provides a new perspective on that struggle" (132). Hypertext, then, offers a new way of conceptualizing literature in terms of open-endedness, interconnectivity and multisequentiality.
Hypertext thus poses a challenge to literary studies on a number of fronts. It represents what may be termed a new genre of literature taking advantage of technological changes in textual presentation. Moreover, it extends (and perhaps a supersedes) post-structuralist challenges to traditional habits of reading and literary study. Finally, it provides a new theoretical perspective for the examination of traditional works of print literature. It is in this final sense that I take a particular interest in hypertext. Conceived as a literary impulse, hypertextuality seems to characterize much of the modernist writing of the early part of this century. In particular, the densely allusive, fragmented works of T. S. Eliot, James Joyce and Ezra Pound resemble hypertext networks of diverse textual "nodes" connected by links. For my dissertation, I intend to examine modernist aesthetics and practice from a "hypertextual" point of view. Such an approach seems justifiable because modernist works have been termed "difficult" and have frustrated readers precisely in their failure to conform to the traditional virtues of print literature: unity, linearity and closure. In a "hypertextual" reading, these "virtues" are not assumed, and what otherwise appears willfully obscure becomes more "natural" than conventional narrative. By de-mystifying the structural idiosyncrasies of modernism, I hope to significantly advance the understanding of this literary period. In addition, by examining the affinities of modernism and hypertext, I may also find models for the future of literature in the age of hypertext. For this project a broad grounding in hypertext as a field is obviously the essential preparation.
Unfortunately, a grounding in hypertext is not yet easily obtained at The University of Georgia. The seminar "Cyborgs Doing Hypertext," offered last fall, was the first graduate course in the Department of English to address any of these issues directly. While that seminar represents a significant start, it was, by its very nature, only a general introduction to hypertext and related issues. Hypertext theory has not yet been incorporated into the department's standard theory curriculum. Practical hypertext is better represented, with the provision of World Wide Web access on campus being a particularly positive step. However, there is virtually no forum for the discussion of actual works of "electronic literature"; currently, they are not even recognized to the extent of being acquired by the library.
My proposed field of "Hypertext: Theory and Practice" is an attempt to remedy these absences in the standard curriculum. In compiling my reading list, I have tried to represent the several facets of hypertext discussed above. Despite its relative novelty, hypertext has already spawned an extensive corpus of theoretical literature. There is a small body of "classic" works, beginning with Vannevar Bush's essay "As We May Think" (1945), which prophesied the arrival of hypertext. These "classics" are included to trace the evolution of hypertext as a concept. Over the last decade, the subject has generated increasing attention, with responses ranging from naive projections of a utopian future to mournful elegies for a lost past. Both enthusiastic proselytizers -- Landow and Bolter among them -- and skeptical critics of the electronic revolution -- such as Sven Birkerts -- are represented on the list in order to understand the potential benefits and the potential losses to literature in the age of hypertext. Related works of critical theory, as well the media studies of Marshall McLuhan and others, are included to place the current revolution within the context of the ongoing evolution of communication history.
Hypertext in practice is a still small but nonetheless important field. A sampling of hypertext computer software includes "hyperfictions," for example the much-discussed afternoon by Michael Joyce, and nonfictive, academic hypertexts by Landow, Bolter and others. These may not represent the ultimate expression of hypertext as a literary medium, but they do illustrate the ways in which the new technology is being grappled with and is already beginning to spawn a body of creative work. For comparison, I have also included a short selection of the print works which are most often cited for their "proto-hypertextual" features: Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy, James Joyce's Ulysses, and Vladimir Nabokov's Pale Fire. It might be added that some of the theoretical literature (most particularly Derrida's Glas) could fall under this heading as well.
I hope the Graduate Committee will acknowledge the significance of this exciting new field of literary study and accept this proposal.
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