Week
3: Digital Literature[s]
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Required
and Recommended Readings
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This week we’ll have an overview of digital literature touching on the
early days of hypertext and pointing to born digital fictions.
Key Questions & Ideas:
★What is literature?
★Are blogs narratives?
★How is multimodal online narrative different from print narrative?
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n “Electronic Literature
Seen from a Distance
The Beginnings of a Field,” Jill Walker Rettberg (http://www.dichtung-digital.org/2012/41/walker-rettberg/walker-rettberg.htm)
n Judy Malloy,
“Hypernarrative in the Age of the Web,” http://www.well.com/user/jmalloy/neapaper.html
Recommended:
Milana Knezevic, “Challenging mainstream narratives with social media,” (May
2013), (http://www.indexoncensorship.org/2013/05/kenya-social-media-muslimrage-twitter/)
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Sunday 19 January 2014
Week 3: Digital Literature[s]
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I've blogged my response to this week's questions here: http://nicolebasaraba.com/blog-book-narratives/
ReplyDeleteI touch on the questions "Are blogs narratives? and, How is online narrative different from print?"
In response to your blog post Nicole regarding the topic of, are blogs considered narratives? This can be very subjective to the individual user, for myself I would say that they usually are. As always, there are some exceptions to all rules. I agree with your statement about “a series of unconnected posts” should not be considered a narrative, even if they follow a common theme. As per Mediajunk’s Weblog, “A site may utilize blog-style UI conventions (calendar, archives, etc.) but if it has no underlying narrative – no story moving through a past, present and future – it is not a blog” (“THE BLOG AS A NARRATIVE FORM,” n.d.).
ReplyDeleteHowever, blogs usually reciprocate the author’s views and opinions. Typically, the more that is written by the blogger the clearer the overall picture becomes, even if there are few interrelations between the various posts. Some form of a larger picture may become visible, thus leading to a narrative. The Mediajunk’s Weblog goes on to state that, “Blog narratives are open-ended; herein they differ from most other narratives forms. Nevertheless, blogs are designed and structured to engage readers in an ever-unfolding, interactive dialogue” (“THE BLOG AS A NARRATIVE FORM,” n.d.). Therefore, based on this example I would say that for a blog to be truly considered an evolving narrative some form of engagement should occur between the reader and the blogger.
Literature can be defined as “the art of written work”, and therefore what constitutes “literature” is open to interpretation. Additionally, a narrative can be defined as a story or “series of connected events” and I believe this definition also leaves what constitutes a narrative up for discussion. Literature and narratives can exist both in a traditional printed context, as well as in digital mediums.
ReplyDeleteFurthermore, based on the above definitions, I don’t believe that the quality of the content has much to do with what is considered literature and/or a narrative. It has much more to do with the intent of the content - content that tells a story.
In relation to what constitutes a narrative in the context of online blogging, I do not agree with “The Blog as a Narrative Form” author’s definition of a blog. The author states that for a group of written pieces to be considered a blog it must have a story that moves through the past, present a future. I think that a blog can be a narrative, but there doesn’t necessarily need to be a narrative to consider online written literature a blog. I do not believe that they are not mutually exclusive. For example, I write a weekly blog in the first aid and CPR training industry, which provides a light-hearted take on important information surrounding a variety of topics relevant to my readers. The author also argues that blogs are “structured to engage readers in an ever-unfolding, interactive dialogue”. I believe that although there is no underlying narrative in my blog, I successfully engage readers in this dialogue. Although there is no underlying narrative or story to the blog, it houses a number of articles presented in a similar written style that appeals to a certain group of readers. For this reason, I believe that this information (in the way it is currently assembled and presented) should still be considered a blog.
Above all else, I find it very interesting to understand the different definitions and understandings for a medium I thought I understood so well (blogging).
Finally, please check out my blog post this week (http://nmn2014.blogspot.ca/2014/01/choose-your-own-adventure-bridging-gap.html) for insights into multimodal online narratives versus print narratives (and a blast from the past!).
This week’s readings show that what we have known historically as literature has changed over the last few decades. From print-only literature, to hypertext fiction, to multimodal fiction like ‘Inanimate Alice’ the way we view literature is changing. The article written by Jill Walker Rettberg “Electronic Literature Seen from a Distance The Beginning of a Field” was interesting to me because I really don’t have any knowledge of electronic literature – or hypertext fiction – or software like Storyspace used to create this literature. It’s interesting how this form of literature started out very disparate in the 80’s, to now becoming more of a community or field of literature.
ReplyDeleteRettberg states that “For literary works written for computers this was a time of transition from a time when very few and largely disconnected works were created, to a time when many works were created every year, and the people who create those works see themselves as contributing to a field. This transition is experienced by every new genre or artistic form goes through as it develops.”
I guess what I don’t really understand after reading this article is that though electronic literature was once purposefully meant to be written and published electronically, and today we do have more online only publishing companies or self-publishing on the web – most works of literature (any book) are available on the web. You can buy almost any new physical book as an online book – one that wasn’t purposefully written to be an electronic piece of literature. I guess I don’t understand how there is a difference with electronic literature today and what we historically consider literature?