LINGUIST List 17.1956
Wed Jul 05 2006
Diss: Ling&Literature: Ensslin: 'Canonising Hypertext: Explorations...'
Editor for this issue: Meredith Valant
<meredithlinguistlist.org>
Directory
1. Astrid
Ensslin,
Canonising Hypertext: Explorations and constructions
Message 1: Canonising Hypertext: Explorations and constructions
Date: 02-Jul-2006
From: Astrid Ensslin <astrid.ensslinmanchester.ac.uk>
Subject: Canonising Hypertext: Explorations and constructions
Institution: University of Heidelberg
Program: Faculty of Modern Languages
Dissertation Status: Completed
Degree Date: 2006
Author: Astrid Ensslin
Dissertation Title: Canonising Hypertext: Explorations and constructions
Linguistic Field(s):
Ling & Literature
Dissertation Director:
Sally Johnson
Thomas Rommel
Peter Paul Schnierer
Dissertation Abstract:
'Canonising Hypertext: Explorations and constructions' is the firstcomprehensive study to summarise and evaluate - discursively andempirically - the theoretical and pedagogic implications of 'literaryhypertext'. This new 'literary media genre' is a specific form ofcontemporary literature, the reception and production of which are based onthe antilinear, modular macrostructural principles of the computer and theinternet and which therefore combines modern hypermedia with an at once'traditional' and innovative approach to reading and writing. Morespecifically, this type of text consists of so-called 'lexias' (textualunits, or nodes, which occur in the form of separate windows on thereader's interface) and hyperlinks, which, in combination, form antilinearmacrostructural networks resembling rhizomatic structures (cf. Deleuze andGuattari 1987). This results in highly individualised reading processes andresults, which have caused a great number of American theorists in theearly 1990s to see hypertext as the embodiment of poststructuralistliterary theory, a stance which has meanwhile come under fierce criticismand caused a major scholarly debate, which continues to this day.
It is my intention in this book to address, from a literary and educationalpoint of view, the challenges posed by the changing modes of mediaconsumption and media-related behaviour in the developed world. Thesechallenges include the enormous increase in hypermediality, visuality andaurality associated with contemporary Television and New Media consumption,which threatens to subvert the dominance of the written word in a processwhich J. D. Bolter describes as 'reverse ekphrasis' (2001). In thisrespect, particular concern has been expressed by educationalists who,based on statistical figures and personal experience, fear that, as aresult of the heightened amount of visuality found on television and theinternet, literacy levels and imaginative skills, particularly amongstyoung users, may deteriorate and fall prey to an impassive submergence inthe pictorial, the cinematographic, the pre-defined sequencing of imagesand sounds (cf. Manuel 2005).
Against this backdrop, I intend to address the questions of how literature,the art of the written word, can be promoted and taught in such a way as tomake it relevant for an increasingly hypermedia-oriented readership; howthe rapidly evolving New Media can be integrated in a university and schoolcurriculum that still, and legitimately, seeks to transmit classicalliterary competence; and, finally, how the notion of literary competencecan be re(de)fined to meet these new challenges and embrace rather thanignore or even resist those current trends. With a view to providinganswers to these questions, this study, which is aimed at scholars,instructors and students of literature, seeks to 'canonise', or help tocanonise, literary hypertext.
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