Hypertextual fiction on the Internet: a structural and narratological analysis [Elektronische Ressource] / vorgelegt von Roman Zenner

Informations

• Publié par: rheinisch-westfalischen_technischen_hochschule_-rwth-_aachen
• Publié le: 01 janvier 2005
• Nombre de lectures: 17
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 4 Mo

Extrait

Hypertextual Fiction on the Internet:
A Structural and Narratological Analysis
Von der Philosophischen Fakult¨at der Rheinisch-Westf¨alischen Technischen Hochschule
AachenzurErlangungdesakademischenGradeseinesDoktorsderPhilosophiegenehmigte
Dissertation
vorgelegt von
Roman Zenner, M.A.
aus Wursele¨ n
Berichter:
Univ.-Prof. Dr.phil. Peter Wenzel
PD Dr.phil Geoffrey Davis
Univ.-Prof. Dr.phil. Peter Paul Schnierer
Tag der mu¨ndlichen Prufung:¨ 2. Mai 2005
Diese Dissertation ist auf den Internetseiten der Hochschulbibliothek online verfugba¨ r.Contents
1. Introduction 6
1.1. Aims of this dissertation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.2. The Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.3. Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
1.3.1. Instruments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
1.3.2. Corpus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
2. Definitions and Categories 17
2.1. Electronic Literature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2.2. Definitions of Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
2.3. ‘Konzeptionelle Hypertextualit¨at’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
2.4. Genres . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
2.4.1. Genre Expectations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
2.4.2. Hypertext as a New Genre? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
2.4.3. Related Electronic Texts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
3. Characteristics of Hypertext 49
3.1. Linearity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
3.2. Links . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
3.2.1. Navigation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
3.2.2. Link vs. “Verweis” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
2Contents
3.2.3. Link as Theme/Rheme-Relationship. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
3.2.4. Classification of Links . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
3.3. Interactivity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
3.4. Cross-/Intermediality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
3.4.1. Image-Text Relationships . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
3.4.2. Sound-Text Relationships . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
3.4.3. Film . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
3.5. Intertextuality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
3.6. Open vs. Closed Texts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
3.6.1. Text Boundaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
3.7. Authorship vs. Readership . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
3.7.1. Producing Hypertexts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
3.7.2. Reading Hypertexts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
3.8. Models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
3.8.1. Model I: Suter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
3.8.2. Model II: Aarseth. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
4. Technology 100
4.1. The Interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
4.2. Platforms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
4.3. The Icon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
4.4. The Code . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
5. Hypertext and Narrative 107
5.1. Story . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
5.1.1. Events . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
5.1.2. Existents. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
5.2. Discourse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
5.2.1. Order . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
5.2.2. Duration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
5.2.3. Frequency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
3Contents
5.2.4. Narrative Situation & Focalisation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
5.2.5. Mode. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
5.2.6. Style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
6. Analysis 123
6.1. The Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
6.2. The Unknown . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
6.3. These Waves of Girls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
6.4. My Boyfriend came back from the War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
6.5. kokura . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
6.6. ****[four stars] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
6.7. *water always writes in *plural . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
6.8. IN MEMORY DO WE TRUST? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
6.9. Grammatron . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
6.10.Rice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
7. Summary and Outlook 204
References 208
A. Appendix: Sources and References 219
A.1. Research and General Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
A.2. Primary Texts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220
A.3. Typology according to the ELD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220
A.4. Structural Typology according to Suter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222
A.5. ‘Zweiebenenmodell mit ausgestalteter Diskursebene’ . . . . . . . . . . . . 223
4[...] The cashier left to get a price check and Dirk, continually fascinated with
everything, leaned over the barcode reader and stared deep into its laserous inte-
rior.
There was a beep and the cash register displayed:
POET $0.25
Dirk blinked and stood up. Scott and I watched, kind of mortified at whatever
Dirk was about to do, because we knew from experience there was no stopping
him when he was in this condition. Dirk ran his finger over the glass window.
There was a beep and the cash register displayed:
HYPERTEXT NOVELIST $19.95
“Wow, Dirk,” William sputtered, “in your retina you are still a poet but your
fingerprints have mutated to become those of a hypertext novelist, for which you
1are worth considerably more...” [...]
1http://www.unknownhypertext.com/hard code6.htm, accessed 25.04.051. Introduction
[I]n terms of literary theory, it is fair to say that the hypertexts we can observe
today, from the novels published by Eastgate Systems to those freely available
on the World Wide Web, operate well within the standard paradigm of authors,
readers, and texts [...][18, p.78]
Traditional texts and hypertexts are not fundamentally different - actually they have
more in common than is commonly assumed and thus can be analysed well within the
parametersofestablishedcategoriesofliterarytheory. Therefore,itisstrikingthatquite
a number of theoretical treatises on hypertext refer to the ‘revolutionary character’ of
this kind of writing, the ‘amazing technological development’ that lies behind it, and
the ‘almost miraculous convergence of postmodern literary concepts and hypertext’.
Following their line of argument, the new text-form also had the potential to replace
traditional printed literature almost completely. Bolter, one of the first hypertext
theorists, claims for instance that “[...] the printed book, therefore, seems destined to
move to the margin of our literate culture.” [24, p.2]. Successively, these enthusiastic
and unrealistic assumptions are being questioned. Intemann for instance asks:
Ist Hypertext wirklich ein ergiebiger Forschungsgegenstand? Hypertext ist nichts
Neues, sagen Kritiker, denn Verweisstrukturen gibt es auch in Lexika. Ein In-
haltsverzeichnis kann als Sammlung von Hyperlinks betrachtet werden, demnach
ist jedes Buch zum Durchbl¨attern ein Hypertext. [46, p.11]
61. Introduction
1.1. Aims of this dissertation
Using a body of primary fictional texts reflecting the diversity of electronic writing,
this projects aims at analysing hypertexts from a literary rather than a technologically
oriented perspective. The purpose of this thesis is to use categories and analytical tools
from literary theory, filter out their essence and shape them into what could be called
an analytical toolkit for close reading of hypertexts. In a second step, then, I would like
to apply these analytical tools to a set of primary texts which have been chosen for their
variety and ‘otherness’ in order to cover a wide scope of possible variations.
1.2. The Problem
Die Forschung hat ihren eigentlichen Gegenstand bisher weder ph¨anomenologisch
umrissen noch begrifflich genau gefasst und ist, was konkrete Fallanalysen betrifft,
kaum die ersten Schritte gegangen. [81, p.25]
The academic study of fictional writing based on hypertextual structures and cha-