Method chapter

We had to finish the method chapter as part of the master thesis seminar. I didn't have a lot of difficulties in writing it and I have gotten positive feedback from my mentor. That made me feel good about the entire thing. I will post the entire thing here, even though it is quite long.

Quality in electronic literature
Theoretical and practical background for approaching the problem

“...while it may be difficult to define literary quality in principle, it is not so difficult to demonstrate it in practice” (van Peer, 2008 p.25).

This is the main approach that I will be using in my master thesis: try to determine quality by close reading the works of electronic literature which have received praise and which have been critically acclaimed. The readings by famous critics such as Katherine Hayles, Astrid Ensslin, Alice Bell, David Ciccoricco, J. Yellowlees Douglas, George P. Landow, Michael Joyce, Raine Koskimaa, Anja Rau, Jill Walker and others will be used as basis for my analysis and will be complemented with other theories such as Modernist and Postmodernist theories of literature, as well as methods of determining quality in print fiction as presented in Quality of Literature : Linguistic Studies in Literary Evaluation (2008) edited by Willie van Peer. Other theories that are useful for the close reading of the multimodal works is Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen's semiotic approach to multimodality. Despite the fact that their theory is not directly linked to literature, they offer ways of interpreting images and other modalities used in digital texts in general and these can help me in interpreting and in evaluating the formal and semantical value of images, sounds and other modalities in electronic literature.

The works that have received most attention are the works of the first generation, also known as the hypertext generation. Michael Joyce's “afternoon: a story” (1990) and Shelley Jackson's “Patchwork girl” (1995) are the two works that will be used as representatives of this generation. The former is considered to be the first work and the latter the epitome of the hypertext novel. Many critics have written about these two works and in addition there are numerous books about hypertext theory in general and literary hypertext in particular which will be used to try and find out the characteristics of these masterpieces and what makes them such. Taking into consideration the attention that these works have received it is not so difficult to find analysis, appraisals and appreciations written about them.

When it comes to hypertext theory, there are two waves that posit quite different opinions about hypertexts. The first-wave hypertext theory has a very positive and idealistic view when it came to writing about the impact that hypertext was going to have not only for literary texts but also for other texts in general. George P. Landow (1997, 2006), Jay David Bolter (2001) and Robert Coover (1999) are the most renowned representatives of this theory. Landow considered hypertext as the embodiment of poststructuralist theories about multilinear texts, texts with no unity and the power of the reader and the death of the authority of the figure of the writer. These views have been greatly criticised and put into question by the second-wave hypertext theorists such as Espen Aarseth (1997), Ilana Snyder (1996) and Marie-Laure Ryan (2001) among others. They emphasized the limitations that the hypertext with its nonlinearity, discountinuity submit the reader more than they liberate him. These opposite positions are important in reading the above-mentioned works by analysing the level of empowerment that we acquire when reading these text in comparison to print texts. Even though the second-wave theory is obviously more accepted now, we can't ignore the impact that Landow and the others sharing his views have had in the field of hypertext theory.

In comparison to the first generation of electronic literature, the second has a less developed body of theoretical work dedicated specifically to it. While the first generation is mainly comprised of text, the second generation does not put the word into the background but nevertheless it supplements it with other modes such as sound, image, videos. The level of multimodality is of course different in different works and even though some of them might be organized by using hyperlinks, there are others that are more linear and resemble more videos than hypertexts. The two works that have been chosen to be analysed for this generation are Caitlin Fisher's “These waves of girls” (2001) which is a hypermedia fiction, “hypertext multimedia” (Nielsen quoted in Ensslin, 2007, p. 21) and Kate Pullinger and Chris Joseph and participants' “Flight Paths” (started in 2007) called “a networked novel”.

These waves of girls has won the Electronic Literature Organization Award of 2001 for the best fiction and this is the main reason for choosing it. Two articles are going to be the main point in establishing the qualities of this fiction work which actually have two different views on this work. Anja Rau's (2001) article “Web/Fiction/Design: A brief beta-test of this year’s winner of the ELO Awards, Caitlin Fisher’s These Waves of Girls” and Raine Koskimaa's (2004) “These waves of memories. A hyperfiction by Caitlin Fisher”. While Rau maintains that the weak points of this fiction is its limited use of technological affordances, Koskimaa defends the shabby interface by interpreting it as a meaning making strategy. This is an interesting point when it comes to quality in digital fiction and these two articles present some interesting questions about the work that I will try to explore in my work. What do we put more weight into, the literary or the technological in the evaluation of the works of electronic fiction? Since this is literature we are talking about, should we place more importance on the literary than on the technological?

“Flight paths” on the other hand was created as a contribution project from many people about stories of stowaways ending up in British suburbia. The reason for choosing this work is that is very different from the others mentioned so far in that its reading path is linear and simple, the story is simple to understand as well. The work combines, music, text, videos, images in a very haunting way to draw us into the story and to get to know the two characters. One of the dangers of choosing a work like this is that it hasn't been as widely analysed by critics as the other works and this makes it harder to call it a masterpiece on the same level as the ones above. On the other hand it will open up for new horizons of analysis because it is a collaboration project, it involves a different reading strategy than the ones mentioned above and also it has a higher degree of multimodality. As Kate Pullinger says herself: “Flight Paths” is an attempt to open up the research and writing processes involved in writing a novel to collaboration and discussion from the earliest stages. It’s an attempt to write across media and across the network” (Pullinger, 2009).

The third generation is the one that has less works than the others and it is characterised as the fiction that uses the latest technological achievements and in which the technology takes control of the reading process. The term “cybertext generation” which Ensslin (2007) uses has been coined by Aarseth (1997) which he defines as: “The concept of cybertext focuses on the mechanical organization of the text, by positing the intricacies of the medium as an integral part of the litrary exchange” (p.1). The two works that I will be focusing are Stuart Moulthrop's “Hegirascope” (1995/1997) and Kate Pullinger's “Breathing wall” (2004). In Moulthrop's work the lexias change according to the speed determined by the programme and not by the clicking of the reader and I will try to explore the consequences of that. On the other hand parts of Pullinger's work are controlled by the rate of the reader's breathing measured by a microphone and that is why Ensslin (2007) calls it a “physio-cybertext” (p. 111). This work is innovative in many aspects and especially in its usage of the technological advances.

The works have been chosen both for their renowned reputations and also because they brought something new to the field of electronic literature but both of these reasons are of course intertwined: they are famous because they are innovative and creative. “Flight paths” is the one who has not been read as widely as the others but this work is easy to read and therefore I can use it to focus upon the other elements that make this work appealing. Kate Pullinger is a famous author of both print and digital fiction, among her famous works is also “Inanimate Alice” (2009) which is an award-wining digital work and according to my opinion the works that I have chosen here are no less fascinating.

While it may sound that I will only analyse the works and their characteristics, their themes and characters, their language and the use of technological affordances, this is the approach that will be used in order to analyse the aspect of quality in the different works of electronic literature. Even though it may seem as a very difficult question we must bear in mind that evaluation is something that we engage in whenever we read a book, hear a song, watch a play or film and electronic literature is not different. The critics when reading works, or writing reviews always engage implicitly or explicitly in evaluation, in expressing whether a work is good or not and why and how. This is what I want to do in this master thesis: put forward and emphasise the traits that make these works good and this will be done by combining theories and criticism from many different fields in order to capture the multiplicity of the works used as examples. The challenges are obvious here but it is my opinion that by focusing on particular works I will have a more tangible approach than a purely theoretical one which would sound more abstract.

There can't be denied that there are other works that would be worth looking into when talking about electronic literature and among these are Stuart Moulthrop's “Victory Garden” (2001), Judd Morrisey's “The jew's daughter” (2000), Jane Yellowlees Douglas “I have said nothing” (1994), M. D. Coverley's “Califia” (2000), Michael Joyce's “Twilight: a symphony” (1996) but due to limitations that had to be imposed on the master thesis not all works that were worthwhile have been included.


“Extended analytical criteria”

...for those of us who have a keen interest in the nature of literary texts themselves, the question in what way formal and semantic elements of the text may contribute to positive or negative evaluation in an intriguing one (van Peer, 2008, p.3).

van Peer writes about print literature but it is not difficult to apply his views for for electronic literature as well. Of course in the latter we face other issues as Coover (1992) has said: “How does one judge, analyse, write about a work that never reads the same way twice?”.

Ensslin (2007) in her remarkable book about canon of literary hypertext disagrees with such critics that maintain that we need a completely new theory and body of criticism in order to deal with the growing body of works in literary hypertext she takes this stand: “... I take the view that hypertext does not require a new form of criticism, but rather an extended set of analytical criteria, which result from its augmented sense of mediality” (p.26). When it comes to creating the canon she supplies the categories by which we can determine whether a work belongs to the canon or not. These categories are not very different from the quality requirements that were put forward by the Electronic Literature Organization, nevertheless they are more extended and more detailed.

The categories are: (1) production (relating to circumstances of authorship); (2) object (relating to the subject matter); (3) form (linguistic and structural devices, including navigational strategies); and (4) reception (relating to the reader in the widest sense, which includes lay readers, critics, editors and pedagogues alike) (p.63)

She continues to explain this categories in detail which I will summarize here. When it comes to production she places importance on “innovation and originality” (p.63) and the usage of the technological affordances:

Evidently, the mere ability to use sophisticated hypermedia software and mark-up language does not necessarily result in a literary or multimodal masterpiece. Instead, a central formal concern will be transmedialization, i.e. the meaningful combination of hypermedia (in the case of second- and third generation hypertext mainly), and more generally, the implementation of intertextuality ub tge sense of textual and semiotic interplay (p.63).

The reason for using Ensslin's quote here is to justify the theoretical approach chosen for this master thesis and that is the multimodal analysis as developed by Gunther Kress will be useful here and also the Postmodern theory when it comes to intertextuality. By combining these theories in reading the works of the second and third generation we will be heading in the right direction when it comes to describing their characteristics.

When it comes to the subject matter, this is not a lot different from print literature work, these works should contribute to increasing reader's world view, understanding of emotions and characters. How this is achieved by the electronic literature works remains to be seen but Ensslin mentiones the self-referentiality as an aspect that must be taken into consideration in the thematic analysis of the works (p.63).

When it comes to form, Ensslin talks a lot about the navigational structures and how they are used by the authors for aesthetic purposes (p.63). This is especially important for the first generation of electronic literature.

Reception is quite important in my work here because as mentioned earlier I will be basing the evaluation criteria upon the readings of the most prolific critics in this field.


Ensslin (2007) and Bell (2010) comfort the reader of this new literature when they maintain that we do not need a completely new set of theories, approaches in order to understand, appreciate the new media literature. We only need to extend our view and take into consideration the new elements and try to fit them in our readings and analysis. The foundation is there, now we only need to continue building.

Slowly "progressing"

Even though there is a lot of time left before I need to finish writing my master thesis I am worried. The time is flying, some days I am working more, some less and then there are days in which I feel that I am just reading without any clear view of what I am looking for or why I am reading that specific book or article. I guess it is all part of the process of writing a thesis. I need to be more patient...