Untitled - witz cultural

205RECONFIGURINGWRITINGanalogy, for following this link brings one to the world of the Finnish epic,the Kalelava:The old Vainamoinen sang:the lakes rippled, the earth shookthe copper mountains trembledthe sturdy boulders rumbledthe cliffs flew in twothe rocks cracked uoon the shores.He sang young Joukahainensaplingson his collar-bowa willow shrub on his hamesgoat willows on his trace-tipsang his gold-trimmed sleighsang it to treetrunks in poolssang his whip knotted with beadsto reeds on a shoreFollowing Rappaport's link has several effects. First, readers find themselvesin a different, more heroic age of gods and myth, and then, as they realize thatthe gods are engaged in a musical contest that parallels the rock group's, theyalso see that the contemporary action resonates with the ancient one, therebyacquiring greater significance since it now appears epic and archetypal. Thissingle link in Hero's Face, in other words, functions as a new form of bothallusion and recontextualization.In hyperfiction, Michael foyce invented this form of reified comparisonor allusion when he had links transport readers from his story to passagesfrom Plato's Phaed.o,Vico's Naw Science, Basho's TheNqrrou) RoadthrouglttheProvinces, and poems by Robert Creeley and others. Perhaps the ultimatesource here is Julio Cort6zals Hopscotch (to which Joyce alludes in the lexiaentitled "Hop Scotch"). Frequently used, such juxtapositions-byJinkingproduce the kind ofcollage writing that appears to be very typical ofhyperfictionand poetry.Such combinations of literary homage to a predecessor text and claims torival it have been a part of literature in the West at least since the ancientGreeks. But the physical separation between terts characteristic of earlier,nonelectronic information technologies required that their forms of linking-allusionand contextualization*employ indicators within the text, suchas verbal echoing or the elaborate use of parallel structural pattems (such as