Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Hypertext fiction'

This thesis examines key examples of materially experimental writing (B.S. Johnson’s The Unfortunates, Marc Saporta’s Composition No. 1, and Julio Cortázar’s Hopscotch), hypertext fiction (Geoff Ryman’s 253, in both the online and print versions), and video games (Catherine, L.A. Noire, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, and Phantasmagoria), and asks what new critical understanding of these ‘interactive’ texts, and their broader significance, can be developed by considering the examples as part of a textual continuum. Chapter one focuses on materially experimental writing as part of the textual continuum that is discussed throughout this thesis. It examines the form, function, and reception of key texts, and unpicks emerging issues surrounding truth and realism, the idea of the ostensibly ‘infinite’ text in relation to multicursality and potentiality, and the significance of the presence of authorial instructions that explain to readers how to interact with the texts. The discussions of chapter two centre on hypertext fiction, and examine the significance of new technologies to the acts of reading and writing. This chapter addresses hypertext fiction as part of the continuum on which materially experimental writing and video games are placed, and explores reciprocal concerns of reader agency, multicursality, and the idea of the ‘naturalness’ of hypertext as a method of reading and writing. Chapter three examines video games as part of the continuum, exploring the relationship between print textuality and digital textuality. This chapter draws together the discussions of reciprocity that are ongoing throughout the thesis, examines the significance of open world gaming environments to player agency, and unpicks the idea of empowerment in players and readers. This chapter concludes with a discussion of possible cultural reasons behind what I argue is the reader’s/player’s desire for a high level of perceived agency. The significance of this thesis, then, lies in how it establishes the existence of several reciprocal concerns in these texts including multicursality/potentiality, realism and the accurate representation of truth and, in particular, player and reader agency, which allow the texts to be placed on a textual continuum. This enables cross-media discussions of the reciprocal concerns raised in the texts, which ultimately reveals the ways in which our experiences with these interactive texts are deeply connected to our anxieties about agency in a cultural context in which individualism is encouraged, but our actual individual agency is highly limited.

Theorists as diverse as Roland Barthes, Wolfgang Iser, and Stanley Fish have identified interpretation (the meaning derived from a fictional work by a reader) as distinct from the intentions of the author. This dissertation explores a common claim made in the first wave of hypertext fiction criticism: that the existence of authored choices created greater levels of interpretative freedom for the reader than in cinematic, theatrical, or traditional print works. Drawing primarily on literary theory, but selectively supported by computer and information science scholarship, this poststructuralist, antiauthorist position suggested that stand-alone, read-only hypertext systems could further the so-called “death of the author” when used for literary purposes. Does the introduction of an additional authored layer (in the form of hypertext markup) really shift the balance of power between author and reader, and if so in what direction? Using concepts first articulated by Isaiah Berlin, this dissertation argues that the theoretical discussion has hitherto been based on a distancing, “negative” conception of liberty, while practice within early networked computer systems favoured the more coercive form, which Berlin termed “positive”. This disjunction highlights that an effective strategy for liberating knowledge in information science can have the inverse effect when applied to literary theory, despite sharing broadly compatible philosophical goals. The following study will foreground the contradictions between these two concepts of liberty. Technology, not formal discourse represents the genesis of a new medium, but hasty theoretical consensus led to an essentialism, even a formalism within hypertext fiction scholarship which confined intellectual horizons, a distortion which resonates today in scholarship around literary hypertext fiction and other interactive media. The second wave of criticism questioned empowerment on an empirical basis, but did not fully undermine the first wave’s initial assumptions. Having outlined the argument in the introductory chapters, the twin genealogies of hypertext fiction will be explored in greater detail: literary theories of authorship in Chapter 3, hypertext in Chapter 4. The fifth chapter draws these strands together, demonstrating that the project of literary hypertext fiction is in fact at odds with the versions of liberty found in its progenitor theories, before the sixth chapter looks at how this contradiction continues to haunt contemporary experiments with interactive narrative.

To complete my final creative project in seeking a Master of Arts degree in Telecommunication: Digital Storytelling through Ball State University, I have created a "pilot" online journal in Macrojnedia Flash 8 for the display of various methods of creative storytelling through the digital medium (currently located at http://rlhartleysmi.iweb.bsu.edu/cella.swf). Here, 1 review the concepts employed as well as my intentions in creating such a journal. I detail the interior workings of the journal and the categories of digital work represented. I outline requirements for future submissions and financial needs for initial creations and upkeep should the journal develop into a public enterprise. In this overview, I explain the rationale in exploring the creative arts through digital mediums and the importance of such concepts as collaboration and visual aesthetics when communicating through digital mediums.In preparation of this project, I performed an intense study of similar online journals in existence, their designs and usability as well as their subject matter. I also made use of social networking sites through which I created groups for the purpose of gathering and sharing additional research in the realms of digital poetry and publishing creative writing online. Also, I read scholarly research regarding computers as creative outlets, online publishing, and the aspects of interactivity as it comes to exist within the creative story in digital mediums. Brief analyses of several articles regarding interactivity within the experience of the story and within education and culture have been included here. I have concluded that we have naturally moved towards using technology as an artistic medium. My direction and passions have also been reaffirmed in that, through my created digital journal CEIIA, I am assured that the digital medium is the ideal union for the artistic narrative, both literal and visual.
Department of Telecommunications

Thesis (M.A.)--Texas State University--San Marcos, 2009.
Vita. Reproduction permission applies to print copy: Blanket permission granted per author to reproduce. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 67-68).

The purpose of this research was to examine the effect of information cues, presented via a hypertext system, on the fiction reading activity of public library readers and the practical implications of the effect. A three-group post-test experimental design was applied for this purpose. The groups were formed from readers in two public libraries near the university by random assignment. The experimental treatments were three versions of a fiction searching and browsing system, differing in the complexity of information cues and the hypertext features. Data for the experiment were gathered by an observation schedule and a self-administered questionnaire and were analyzed with the Kruskal-Wallis one way analysis of variance and the Mann-Whitney test in SPSSA. The three groups showed significant difference in the amount of their book selection mid borrowing, the extent to which they made use of the searching system and the extent to which they relied on their own experience for book selection. They also differed significantly in the types of book they borrowed. They did not differ significantly, however, in their fiction searching pattern, the conformity of their book selection to their general reading tastes, their subjective feelings of well-being and their cognitive experience during reading. It was concluded that within the typology of information cues proposed in this research, the amount of readers' book selection and borrowing, the types of book they borrowed, their reliance on the system or their own experience for the decision making are significantly influenced by the level of information cues they have been exposed to. However, readers' searching patterns, conformity of book selection to their general taste, and emotional and cognitive experience do not relate significantly to the level of information cues they have been exposed to. It was suggested that detailed categorisation or classification of fiction should be a priority in processing fiction. 'The provision of adequate information cues should have more professional attention in promoting fiction reading, and the policy of fiction services should not be too high-brow.

Only recently has our perception of the computer, now a familiar and ubiquitous element of everyday life, changed from seeing it as a mere tool to regarding it as a medium for creative expression. Computer technologies such as multimedia and hypertext applications have sparked an active critical debate not only about the future of the book format, ("the late age of print" {Bolter} is only one term used to describe the shift away from traditional print media to new forms of electronic communication) but also about the future of literature. Hypertext Fiction is the most prominent of proposed electronic literary forms and strong claims have been made about it: it will radically alter concepts of text, author and reader, enable forms of non-linear writing closer to the associative working of the mind, and make possible reader interaction with the text on a level impossible in printed text. So far the debate that has attempted to put hypertext fiction into a historical perspective has linked it to two developments. Firstly the developments in computer technology that made hypertext not only possible but also widely accessible and secondly a tradition of postmodern theory, where characteristics attributed to hypertext echo concepts of fragmentation, multiplicity and instability that theorists like Barthes and Derrida have formulated previously and that have led to the notion of hypertext as an "authentic, yet functional postmodern form" {Roberts} A third element that is not generally subject to critical evaluation is the practice of (post)modern writing in which a number of authors consciously break with the linearity of print conventions in favour for a more fragmented narrative and presentation as well as actively inviting the reader's participation in what Barthes calls "writerly" text. There are two reasons why these "proto-hypertexts" have been widely ignored or dismissed: Hypertext is still widely define as exclusive to the electronic realm and is furthermore generally perceived in oppositional pairs in contrast to print, i.e. non-linear vs. linear and interactive vs. passive, which conceptually does not leave room for a study of an "evolution" out of existing forms of writing practice. By examining hypertext fiction in a context of print experiments (Cortazar, Borges, B.S. Johnson, Andreas Okopenko, Raymond Queneau, Miroslav Pavic, Italo Calvino) and also in a context of other forms of digital literary experimentation (collaborative projects and computer-generated writing), this thesis aims to, on a diachronic level, reincorporate hypertext fiction into an evolutionary (though radical) literary tradition and examines the manner in which concepts which originated in this tradition have been taken over often very literally and without much redefinition. On the a-historical, synchronic level, this study explores some of the possible formats for literature in the new electronic textual media: hypertext fiction, collaborative writing projects, computer-generated writing and the different challenges these present to our understanding ofliterature. After an introduction in Chapter 1, Chapter 2 and 3 discuss two of the keywords of hypertext theory, its "grand narratives' (non-linearity and interactivity) and the appropriation of the terminology to hypertext theory and to hypertext fiction. Chapter 4 and 5 will look at alternative, though related, approaches to electronic fiction: Chapter 4 will examine aspects of collaborative writing in both a print and a digital environment while computer-generated writing stands at the centre of Chapter 5.

The objective of this licentiate thesis is to investigatearchitectural experience and creation in virtual space and itsrepresentational problems. The thesis comprises three articlespublished during the years 2001-2003, and a website,www.arch.kth.se/~zimm.

The articles investigate architecture as a transgressivestate between the virtual worlds of imagination and thedomestic interior, introducing obsessive dreambuilding as amethod of negotiating material fictions in real space. The mainrepresentative of this kind of architectural activity is thefictional character Baron des Esseintes in Joris-KarlHuysmans´ novel À Rebours (1884). Together with thearchitectural transformations created by the architect Sir JohnSoane and the artists Kurt Schwitters and Gregor Schneider, theprojects share and develop the theme of extreme individualityand explore the architectural imagination at work in the mindof the obsessive dreambuilder. These architects of parallelrealities create operative fields of artificiality andimagination, where architectural space splits into differentontological states, providing fields for observation ofperceptional and representational problems.

Keywords:Architecture, Against Nature/À Rebours,Artifice, Artificiality, Domestic interior, Dream, Experience,Fiction, Hypertext, Huysmans, Imagination, Individuality,Interactivity, Interface, Obsession, Obsessive dreambuilding,Perception, Representation, Schwitters, Schneider, Soane,Symbolism, Virtual Reality

This monograph on the œuvre of contemporary American author and multimedia artist Shelley Jackson addresses the question of how literary works employ language to evoke sense impressions. Gilles Deleuze’s notion of aesthetic percepts is drawn on to develop a theory of literary phantom sensations which is then tested on the work of Jackson and related authors.  Although imperceptible as such, it is argued that percepts are made perceptible in art in sense-specific forms as phantom sensations. “Phantom” is not meant to indicate a pale shadow of real sensations but the intensely perceived realness of phantom limb phenomena, in accordance with Deleuze’s understanding of the virtual as real but not actual. For the sake of clarity, literary phantom sensations are divided into phantom smells, tastes, touches, sights and sounds, with a chapter devoted to each in turn. It is found that different phantom sensations serve different functions in Jackson’s work, correlated to the cultural history of the senses as outlined by recent sensory scholarship.  Phantom smells are associated with Deleuze’s concept of becoming due to their liminality. Phantom tastes contribute to an aesthetics of distaste in which shades of disgust are cultivated and drawn upon for literary effect. Phantom touch creates conceptual intimacy and invites the reader to handle words like toys in a game. Phantom sight is turned back upon itself in an anatomy of the eye. Phantom hearing is associated with forms of ventriloquism in which it is unclear who is speaking through whom and in which language itself throws its voice. However, it is also found that all phantom sensations similarly serve to create a material and affective connection between the body of the reader and the body of the text. Throughout the dissertation, Jackson’s work is read against and alongside that of other writers such as Djuna Barnes, Neil Bartlett, Brigid Brophy and Leonora Carrington. Together these form a trajectory termed minor writing for queers to come, which is meant to indicate that aesthetic and sexual-political  radicalism go hand in hand.  Furthermore, Jackson’s work is described as a form of body writing informed by feminist body art and écriture féminine. Specifically, Jackson takes her cue from early modern anatomical blazons and describes living bodies in pieces.  Her work is also described as object writing: a literary equivalent to surrealist object art.  A central method for making words more like things is to arrange her texts spatially rather than temporally, as exemplified by her electronic hypertexts.

La révolution numérique a changé le visage de la société contemporaine. En littérature autant qu'ailleurs. La rencontre entre la technologie numérique et la littérature eut pour conséquence l'émergence d'une nouvelle forme littéraie : la cyberlittérature. Face au développement sans précédent de l'Internet, celle-ci n'a jamais été aussi florissante et innovante qu'aujourd'hui. Nous nous sommes fixés comme objectif de cette thèse d'introduire et d'analyser cette cyberlittérature naissance, de lui fournir les bases théoriques nécessaires à son développement, et de faire la part entre ce qu'elle a d'innovant et ce qui la lie au monde littéraire qui l'a précédé. Pour ce faire, nous avons tenté de comparer l'évolution rendue possible par la révolution numérique à celle produite par l'imprimerie, et nous avons cherché à démonttrer que loin de n'être qu'un nouveau territoire pour la littérature, elle pourrait être amenée à devenir une nouvelle forme littéraire, offrant à l'écrivain et au lecteur des moyens qu'ils n'avaient pas auparavant. Ainsi, la cyberlittérature peut être caractérisée par certaines de ses qualités liées à sa nature numérique : non-linéarité, structure hypertextuelle, hybridité multimédia, interactivité, etc. . . Plus important encore, il est une des innovations de la cyberlittérature que nous interrogeons en profondeur : la fiction hypertextuelle. L'hypertexte se distingue du texte imprimé en ceci que le premier peut être lu d'une manière non-linéaire quand le second reste enfermé dans la linéarité imposée par le support papier. Les développements technologiques introduisent donc une nouvelle façon d'aborder le texte, et rénove la relation du lecteur à celui-ci. Si la lecture linéaire reste encore dominant dans la culture de l'écrit, nous pensons que la non-linéarité et l'hypertexte inaugure un changement radical. C'est ce changement et ses répercutions que cette thèse entend entre autre chose décrire et peser.

Depuis les romans oulipiens d’Italo Calvino – Si par une nuit d’hiver un voyageur et Le Château des destins croisés – jusqu’aux hypertextes de fiction se joue une redéfinition de la forme et des enjeux de l’enchâssement narratif. Ce travail vise, à partir d’un corpus contemporain, à explorer les mutations que connaît cet agencement de récits perçu comme traditionnel et théorisé en France dans les années 1960 par Gérard Genette et Tzvetan Todorov. Nous proposons, avec la notion de multiplication des récits, un assouplissement de ses contours afin d’aborder un corpus d’oeuvres romanesques cherchant à tisser ensemble plusieurs récits tout en brouillant les repères hiérarchiques impliqués par les notions d’enchâssement ou d’insertion. Croisant approche narratologique et prise en compte de la réception, ce travail se donne pour objectif d’interroger ce qu’est la multiplication des récits en ne perdant jamais de vue ses effets, en particulier sur la mise en intrigue (P. Ricoeur) : comment comprendre et analyser la réception passionnée (R. Baroni) du lecteur face à des oeuvres parfois monstrueuses, entremêlant les strates narratives et courant le risque du désordre, de la perte et de l’illisible ? Nous proposons de suivre à la trace le lecteur intrigué, protagoniste de cette étude et arpenteur ou géomètre des espaces fictionnels et textuels ouverts par la multiplication des récits, à travers sa progression dans des romans – imprimés ou numériques – qui placent au coeur de leurs enjeux la question du dispositif narratif
From the Oulipian novels of Italo Calvino – If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller and The Castle of Crossed Destinies – to contemporary hyperfiction, a redefinition of the form and the issue of embedding narratives has taken place. Based on a contemporary corpus, this work aims to explore the mutations of such a narrative structure seen as traditional and theorised by French narratologists (G. Genette, T. Todorov) during the 1960s. The notion of narrative multiplication seeks to increase its potential in order to address a broader field of novels which try to intertwine several narratives at the same time as to interfere with the hierarchical frames of reference implied by embedding narratives. At the crossroads of narratology and theories of reception, this work questions what is narrative multiplication while keeping in mind its effects on the reader and on the plot (P. Ricoeur) : how can we understand and analyse the reader’s passionate reception (R. Baroni) of monstrous novels, interweaving narrative levels and playing with disorder, loss and illegibility ? We offer to follow closely the intrigued reader, protagonist of this study and surveyor or geometrician of fictional and textual spaces created by narrative multiplication, through her progress in novels – printed or digital – which put at the centre of their concerns the question of narrative devices

The goal of this MA thesis is to capture how the term "hypertext" is comprehended especially in Czech linguistics. Close attention is paid to concepts from the area of the electronic hypertext realisation and to the related concepts from the field of literary studies. The relationship of the author and the reader in the case of production and reception of hypertexts is also taken into account. The topic of hypertextuality in contemporary culture is touched upon as well. Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

The goal of the master's thesis is to capture how the term hypertext is comprehended in Czech linguistics with respect to the broader context of foreign treatises. The attention is paid to the concepts from the area of text linguistics which are related to the phenomenon of hypertext: intertextuality, architextuality, pretext, and the possibility of understanding of hypertext as the highest language level is discussed. Attention is paid to the relationship of the author and the reader in the case of production and reception of hypertexts. Selectively is described hypertextuality in contemporary culture, especially fiction. Furthermore, the work focuses on the history of the use of the concept of hypertext and hypertext integration into the network theory.

Although many scholars attempted to define and categorize alternative narratives, a new trend in narrative that has proliferated at the turn of the 21st century, there is no consensus. To understand recent alternative narrative films more comprehensively, another approach using a new perspective may be required. This study used hypertextuality as a new criterion to examine the strategies of alternative narratives, as well as the hypernarrative structure and characteristics in alternative narratives. Using the six types of linkage patterns (linear, hierarchy, hypercube, directed acyclic graph, clumped, and arbitrary links), this study analyzed six recent American fiction films (between 1989 and 2012) that best represent each linkage pattern. Results of the study indicated that alternative narrative films strengthened viewers’ recognition by adopting multiple characters and time, intensified complex plots by combining different plot strategies, and represented the narrative intentions through the linkages of hypernarrative structure. By examining alternative narratives within the framework of hypernarrative, this study contributed to more a comprehensive understanding of alternative narratives.
text

Change is a constant of storytelling, in terms of both form and content. Many scholars and commentators have argued, however, that the effects currently being wrought on fiction texts as a result of the influence of digital technology and interactivity are the most monumental that storytelling has undergone since the invention of moveable type in the mid-1400s. Writers have wrestled with ways to include digital technology in their work since its introduction in the late 1960s. It has been used as subject matter and as a tool to shape, contain and present their work to readers. This experimentation was accelerated in the 1980s following the development of hyperfiction. Web 2.0 and the birth of interactive social media have seen an increased focus among scholars on the ways and means by which digital interactivity has and will impact on storytelling and reading. This leads to an often-polarising debate and one which ranges in tone from apocalyptic to euphoric in response to the question of how long-form narrative in particular will fare as a result. As a storyteller writing a novel set in a contemporary context, I became aware of the possible use-value of social media, in the form of the blog, to deliver content – in this case, inner monologue. Those sections of the novel concerned with self-reflection thereby transformed from what was originally a Socratic/Seinfeldian internal dialectic, framed through the use of second person, into something more akin to the sort of content that might be found on a blog. It was only a short step from there to a consideration of how social media might be used in the form of the work as well as in its content. This then led to an exploration of how this might change the nature of what was written, how it was read and the effects on the relationship between reader, author and character. Through the medium of what became the cross-sited, interactive fiction ‘Once in a Lifetime’ (comprising the novel ‘Once in a Lifetime’ and the blogs Note to Elf and Hot Seat) I attempted to create a scenario whereby the effects that the incorporation of iii digital interactivity into both the narrative and the form of a novel might affect the work and the relationships between writer, reader and characters. I wished to explore whether the introduction of interactivity to the novel might allow for the novel form to move beyond the page. Would the story continue to grow in cyberspace with input from readers, or would the novel form prove more resistant to such intervention?