From page to screen : placing hypertext fiction in an historical and contemporary context of print and electronic literary experiments

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