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But how do readers engage with the text? How do they cope with this "field of possibilities that Moulthrop describes above? Jane Douglas describes frustration, confusion and a computer room ringing "with a continuous cacophony of Macintosh beeps?" as her readers, admittedly young and new to the medium ofelectronic text, were trying to make sense of the narrative, to extract out of the multiplicity of narrative possibilities the one "true" event, to construct through their accumulated understanding an overall metaphor ofthe text. As readers read, as they begin to construct a virtual text of their oum, it is as if they were emharking onajourney without maps. (Jerome Bruner)" Stuart Moulthrop argues that readers of print narratives read towards a final understanding ofthe narrative as a whole, a metaphor ofcompletenessand refers to Peter Brooks who, drawing onJacobson and Todorov, writes in ReadingforthePlotthat: we read the incidents ofnarration as 'promises and annunciations' offinal coherence, that metaphor may be reached through a chain ofmetonomies: across the bulk ofthe yet unread middle page, the end calls to the beginning, transforms and enhances it." Out of the multitude of confusing and possibly contradictory narrative events, readers move through the text andgradually narrow down the narrative possibilities to extract the final metaphor of the text as a whole. Readers ofprint fiction map out the narrative space gradually. The physical presence ofthe whole text gives readers initial information on the meta-textual level (length and density). In their reading they constantly switch between the microstructure of the text and their evolving understanding of the macrostructure to eventually grasp the overall metaphor (the map) ofthe text. Hypertext fictions begin with the map. It is the framework within which readers read and individual elements are interpreted against. Moulthrop argues: The map, which represents the totality or metaphor,was not something to be reached [...), rather it was the conceptual framework, providing essential categories of 'right', 'left' 'up' and 'down' bywhich the readers orient themselves. 21 Douglas, Print Pathways, P.94. 22 Jerome Bruner, Actual Minds, Possible Worlds (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986), P·36. 23Peter Brooks, Reading for the Plot: Design and Intention in Narrative (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1992) , PP.94-95. Chapter 2 - page 3I
Instead of "reading for the plot" hypertext readers are "reading from the map" - which explains the title-pun ofMoulthrop's essay discussing Forking Paths and Brooks' work. In Douglas' experiment readers did not have at their disposal the overview feature oflater versions of ForkingPaths (that would include, amongst other navigational features, an overview map such as the one above) but had to rely on their mental map of the narrative, which they developed early on in their reading", having achieved some sense of narrative space by manoeuvring through the text with the help of the arrow keys. The map of a hypertext, whether actual or mental, is not the final metaphor of the text that print readers strive for, but a map ofall the narrative possibilities the hypertext can offer. Once the map has been grasped by readers and they have developed a sense oftheir own position in relation to it, it is used as a tool to construct a number of possible readings of the text. It is not superimposed on the text, but an integral part ofit, is reader-centre'! shifting and developing as the reader moves along. It develops through the reading, but at the same time makes it possible, since it is only with the help of the map that readers of Forking Paths could make some sense of the individual fragments in relation to each other and the whole of the text." The hypertext map functions as a representation of all 24 Douglas observes that after a few minutes into the reading, students would give up their attempts to find the words that "yield" and link to another node in the text - which was the way Moulthrop had intended it to be read - but manoeuvred through the text with the arrow keys instead. (Douglas, Print Pathways, P.97). 25 The similarities between this concept of the hypertext map and the Deulezian concepts of mapping and rhizome have been remarked on by Kathleen Burnett in her essay "Towards a Theory of Hypert tual Design", Postmodern Culture, vol.j nO.2 (January 1993) (electronic journal) at: http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/pmc/issue. 193/burnett. 193 (29·1.1996), no pagenumbers. Chapter 2 - page 3 2
Page 1 and 2: University of Warwick institutional
Page 3 and 4: Contents Chapter 1: Introduction 1.
Page 5 and 6: Chapter 5: Computer-Generated Liter
Page 8: Chapter 1: Introduction 1.1: Introd
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Page 21: In the above example of a HyperCard
Page 25: This is the background against whic
Page 30 and 31: chapter 2 and 3 to discuss some oft
Page 33 and 34: and phrase-order) from the "deep st
Page 40: narrative possibilities, whereas th
Page 46: establish new connections - to "fil
Page 51: organisation by personal associatio
Page 59: know how far away the end is. In th
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Page 72: For the textual collage / mosaic, b
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Page 81 and 82: narrative construction, and is not
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Just as her scars define the identi
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This shift, not a "death of the aut
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uniqueness, they all have in common
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and entertainment use but as a site
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This element of improvisation, ofev
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which visual seemingly three-dimens
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After an initial description of the
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exploration (in his own categories
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different opinions when it comes to
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meaning at all (to be "texte sur ri
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Poemes. At first glance this text s
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developing body ofknowledge.' The f
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and the series; factors which under
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have shadows added. These possibili
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Electronic text processing and dist
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405. 1: Linear Collaboration on the
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In the Business District of Downtow
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why the initial reading material ca
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