Hypertext Criticism: introduction to a special issue

Susana P. Tosca

View full text: HTML

Hypertext Syntagmas: Cinematic Narration with Links

Adrian Miles

Christian Metz's semiotic analysis of cinema is described in relation to hypertext narrative. Connections between film narrative syntagmas and hypertextual syntagmas are explored, with an emphasis on the contextual and pragmatic nature of these structures.

View full text: ZIP Archive

A Child's Game Confused

Jill Walker

How can we write about hypertext in hypertext? There must be as many ways as there are writers. Many more ways than have yet been attempted. This is a hypertextual essay about and around a cycle of poems by Juliet Ann Martin: oooxxxooo. It's an interpretation of the poems, a reading. It's also about playing with the medium and with writing. The essay speaks its own voice, linking almost only to itself, always beside the poems it speaks of. You may hear voices of theorists behind these words, but they are implicit, a background rather than names to be paraded. The essay is brief and impressionistic and is not meant to be analytically exhaustive. Don't worry about what order to read this in, or about reading all of it. You'll find that the essay loops around itself, much as the poem it describes loops around its hub. When you're tired of the looping, you've probably read enough. (For those of you who crave a measure: there are 28 nodes and about 2500 words here,) Where the essay rubs backs with one of the poems, you'll find a thumbnail of the poem mentioned. These are links between the works. I suggest you start at the beginning and end where you please.

View full text: ZIP Archive

Wreader's Digest - How To Appreciate Hyperfiction

Anja Rau

Compared to its age - or youth - hyperfiction is a rather well-theorized genre. Hyperfiction-criticism either praises its subject as evolved print-text and better realization of contemporary literary theory - or deplore its - allegedly - low literary quality. What is missing, however, are in-depth readings of digital fiction that deemphasize theory and try to appreciate this new genre for what it has to offer. In this "paper", I will read two hyperfictions that are not among the two or three canonized texts that are relatively well-known and often-quoted. Both John McDaid's Uncle Buddy's Phantom Funhouse and Sarah Smith's King of Space deal with central issues of hypertext-theory - in content as well as formally. They are about agency and sense-making, ironically deconstructing mainstream theory's claims that digital, hyperlinked texts activate readers into a de-facto author-position. They are also representations of contemporary life that may be difficult to read at first but also make strangely adequate and enjoyable texts for today's readers.

View full text: HTML

Hypernews and Coherence

Martin Engebretsen

This essay seeks to illuminate certain fundamental aspects of textual and cognitive coherence in the production and reading of hypertexts in general and hypernews in particular. A division into intranodal, internodal and hyperstructural coherence helps to clarify concepts and also seems to reflect certain distinctive features of hypertext as a concept representing a linguistic level above the text level. Likewise, van Dijk's conceptual distinction between macro- and superstructures proves to be useful for demonstrating how axial and networked hyperstructures respectively may maintain, strengthen or weaken various forms of textual coherence.

View full text: HTML