Hypertext

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

syllabus

questions

papers

reading


I had chosen to conclude our semester with a hypertext novel for several reasons. First, I had themed the course around what seemed to me some of the critical markers of twentieth century artistic creation: fragmentation, collage, the eruption of silenced voices, abstraction, and multivocal narration. Both in form and content, Patchwork Girl seemed a culmination of those themes.

The novel is created from several hundred individual text blocks of varying length. They collage together into multiple interlinked narratives which tell the stories of a 'monster' and its creator(s) through a chorus of 'I's who range from historically minded body parts to someone very like a Shelley Jackson, author, herself.

Second, the traditional text novel, play on the page or even poem peddles the intimidating illusion of completion without effort, of the text spewed whole into the reader's backpack. It seemed to me, from my limited experience in teaching literature, that close textual reading and analysis foundered as the tight continuum of text blocked not only the students' understanding of "What is the meaning?" but also pushed tantalizingly beyond reach a full response to the question, "How is that meaning created?"

The previous semester, I had discovered with an English 101 class that the writing of hypertext had fragmented the seemingly seamless essay, and allowed students to break down its construction into manageable purposes and segments. Drawing on my own experience reading hypertext, I hoped that the medium might similarly disintegrate the process of reading, and create spaces where readers might constructively intervene in the text.

Third, I wanted to suggest to students a model for hypertextual reading and writing which might shift their focus from the technology to the creative opportunities it might offer. I tried to prepare the students for reading a hypertext novel by working throughout the semester from a simple web page, where I posted a syllabus, study questions for our readings, essay assignments, and ancillary hypertext readings, all only available electronically. I also scheduled assignments on developing a personal web page, which led to the final project, a hypertextual critical essay.

This method of organizing classwork gave students much more responsibility for assignments and readings (I was no longer distributing handouts and photocopies in a class with injunctions to read and write) and made reading hypertext, however simple, a daily presence throughout the semester. I hoped this immersion would naturalize the technology (it did) so much that by the end of the semester the class might be ready explore hypertext as a medium (it was not).