The Interpretation of Literature

From digitalhumanities

Scholars who apply their literary theories to digital text believe that it is fundamentally different from the codex book because it is a medium of potential, a virtualizing technology.

Pierre Levy, a French theorist of computer culture describes hypertext as a dynamic medium and traditional text as static. Hypertext exists in a virtual state, a state of many possible actualizations. Codex exists with defined realities and predetermined possibilities. According to Marie-Laure Ryan, Levy's supporters feel his views are valuable and say that "The significance of the theory resides precisely in making virtualization at the same time a timeless operation responsible for all human culture, and a trademark of the contemporary zeitgeist." (Zeitgeist is originally a German expression that means "the spirit (Geist) of the time (Zeit)". It denotes the intellectual and cultural climate of an era.)

In contrast to reading and thinking about words on a page in a book, and then possibly discussing topics in a physical presence with friends, the process of experiencing hypertext is an interaction in a virtual world. Discussion and commentary is done online in cyberspace, and it is the quality of this virtual world that allows for the virtualization in turn of further alternate worlds. "The tablet becomes a page becomes a screen becomes a world, a virtual world."(attributed to Michael Benedikt)

George P. Landow, Jay Bolter, Richard Lanham and other theorists of electronic textuality believe that the use of hypertext involves the following aspects:

• The open text.
• Meaning as reconfigurable network.
• The slipperiness of the signifier and the deferral of meaning (linking).
• Intertextuality.
• Reading as and endless activity(traveled all links?).
• Non-linearity.
• The death of the author.
• The empowerment of the reader.
  

An open text refers to the quality of hypertext to have no specific beginning, middle or end. Marie Laure-Ryan believes that there is a specific point, the URL, at which a reader must enter the text. George Landow argues that there are exceptions to this however in such hyperfiction as the Patchwork Girl, where the second page (or screen) of the site offers five different places to begin the story. In the same regard then, the choice of beginning will affect the ending that is possible. Also, a reader does not necessarily have to enter a text through an address, but can link to any point in a story from any other text that is linked to it. An entry point to a hypertext story therefore does not have to be at the beginning. Writers of hypertext construct their pages to accommodate the fact that readers entering their texts at any possible point will need tools or clues by which to navigate their reading.

Meaning and the deferral of meanings are processes that are created and responded to by the readers and writers of hypertext. That the nature of hypertext, the life force describing it is linking, essentially requires that it is a process of connections between engaged parties. As Landow quotes Mikhail Bakhtin in Hypertext 3.0, he says that to "separate a text from the links in fact makes it dead. Any detached copy someone keeps is frozen or dead, lacking access to new linkage." This process indicates then that meaning is fluid in hypertext because of the numerously possible links that can vary and contribute to its original meaning. Intertextualiy is the definition of this process of integrating one text to another and thereby changing both of them. Even converting traditional printed text, for example The Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens to hypertext, will then link that work to possible biographies of Dickens or listings of his other works or associated stories of the French Revolution. For the reader then hypertext offers a nonlinear way of thinking about and understanding what is written and the ability to choose a direction of thought.

According to Landow in Hypertext 3.0 "there can be no ending to text, in the form of hypertext. The idea of completion or a finished product as illustrated contained in a book does not translate to the medium of hypertext." In this medium then, the concept of authorship seems to alternate between writers and readers; each performing the function at various times. This is particularly true in such online applications as Wikis and Blogs. The theories of Jacques Derrida also support this attribute of hypertext as he states that the medium is "a differential network, a fabric of traces referring endlessly to something other than itself, to other differential traces." The death of the author and the empowerment of the reader seem to be exaggerated identifying terms, but clearly the abilities and contributions of each play significant roles in hypertext.

--Mccwen31 18:01, 13 March 2007 (PDT)