A note on the concept of "hypertext"

Human IT

Volumn 3, Issue 3, 1999, Pages

  Svedjedal, Johan ^a  

^a UPPSALA UNIVERSITY   (Sweden)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

AUTONOMOUS WORKS; PUNCTUATIONS; TEXT; TEXTUAL EDITIONS;

BIBLIOGRAPHIES; COMMUNICATION; HYPERTEXT SYSTEMS; INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY; LINGUISTICS; PRINTING; RADIO; TELEVISION;

TEXT PROCESSING;

EID: 2942723365     PISSN: 14021501     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Review

References (23)

1. Cf Wendell V. Harris, Dictionary of Concepts in Literary Criticism and Theory, Reference Sources for the Social Sciences and Humanities, 12 (New York: Greenwood Press, 1992), pp. 407-410. (Back to the text)
2. Cf Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, Post-Contemporary Interventions (Durham: Duke University Press, 1991), p. 77. (Back to the text)
3. Roland Barthes, "From Work to Text," Image, Music, Text: Essays, sel. and trans. by Stephen Heath (London: Flamingo, 1984), 155-164, p. 157. (Back to the text)
4. Cf James Thorpe, Principles of Textual Criticism (San Marino: The Huntington Library, 1972), p. 185. (Back to the text)
5. August Strindberg, Inferno, ed. Ann-Charlotte Gavel Adams, Samlade Verk, 37 (Stockholm: Norstedts, 1994), pp. 321-25, 354, 367f. (Back to the text)
6. G. Thomas Tanselle, A Rationale of Textual Criticism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989), p. 17. (Back to the text)
7. Tanselle 1989. p. 18. (Back to the text)
8. D. F. McKenzie, Bibliography and the Sociology of Texts, The Panizzi Lectures 1985 (London: The British Library, 1986), pp. 53-56. (Back to the text)
9. Some scholars define "text" by differentiating between works that are sequential (that is, temporal) and works that are non-sequential (that is, spatial). The Swedish bibliographer Rolf E. Du Rietz has suggested a definition of the concept of text along these lines: "A text is the sequence in a sequential work." (Rolf E. Du Rietz, "The Definition of 'Text'" Text: Swedish Journal of Bibliography 5:2, 1998, 50-69, p. 57; cf p. 67.) In Du Rietz's view, a text is always an abstraction, not a tangible, physical object (what he calls the "material text," i.e., the printed words on a page), but this abstraction is characterised by its temporality, by one part coming before another. Nothing prevents however, at least as I see it, a definition like Du Rietz's from accommodating multisequential literary works. All the individual parts of a multisequential work must appear as texts, but it is of no consequence for these parts' status as texts that they can be assembled in a different order at each reading. On problems in Du Rietz's definition of "text" cf Mats Dahlström, "När är en text?," Tidskrift för dokumentation 54:2, 1999, 55-64, pp. 59-61. (Back to the text)
10. Some scholars define "text" by differentiating between works that are sequential (that is, temporal) and works that are non-sequential (that is, spatial). The Swedish bibliographer Rolf E. Du Rietz has suggested a definition of the concept of text along these lines: "A text is the sequence in a sequential work." (Rolf E. Du Rietz, "The Definition of 'Text'" Text: Swedish Journal of Bibliography 5:2, 1998, 50-69, p. 57; cf p. 67.) In Du Rietz's view, a text is always an abstraction, not a tangible, physical object (what he calls the "material text," i.e., the printed words on a page), but this abstraction is characterised by its temporality, by one part coming before another. Nothing prevents however, at least as I see it, a definition like Du Rietz's from accommodating multisequential literary works. All the individual parts of a multisequential work must appear as texts, but it is of no consequence for these parts' status as texts that they can be assembled in a different order at each reading. On problems in Du Rietz's definition of "text" cf Mats Dahlström, "När är en text?," Tidskrift för dokumentation 54:2, 1999, 55-64, pp. 59-61. (Back to the text)
11. Raymond Queneau, Cent mille millards de poèmes (Paris: Gallimard, 1961). Cf Espen J. Aarseth, Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature (Baltimore & London: Johns Hopkins U.P., 1997), p. 62. (Back to the text)
12. Raymond Queneau, Cent mille millards de poèmes (Paris: Gallimard, 1961). Cf Espen J. Aarseth, Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature (Baltimore & London: Johns Hopkins U.P., 1997), p. 62. (Back to the text)
13. Ilana Snyder, "Beyond the hype: reassessing hypertext" Page to Screen: Taking Literacy into the Electronic Era, ed. Ilana Snyder (London & New York: Routledge, 1998), 125-143, 126. (Back to the text)
14. George P. Landow, Hypertext 2.0: being a revised, amplified edition of Hypertext: The Convergence of Contemporary Critical Theory and Technology (Baltimore & London: Johns Hopkins U. P., 1997), p. 3. (Back to the text)
15. Landow 1997, p. 4. (Back to the text)
16. Cf Sergio Cicconi, "Hypertextuality," Mediapolis: Aspects of Texts, Hypertexts, and Multimedial Communication, ed. Sam Inkinen, Research in Text Theory = Untersuchungen Zur Texttheorie, 25 (Berlin & New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1999), 21-43, p. 23. (Back to the text)
17. Landow 1997. p. 2. (Back to the text)
18. For a discussion of these concepts, see Aarseth 1997, pp. 41-47. (Back to the text)
19. th pr. (New York: Hill and Wang, 1998), pp. 4-6 (French orig. publ. 1970). (Back to the text)
20. Janet H. Murray, Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace (New York: The Free Press, 1997), p. 126. (Back to the text)
21. Aarseth 1997. p. 1. (Back to the text)
22. Michael Joyce, "Siren Shapes: Exploratory and Constructive Hypertexts," (orig. publ. 1988), Of Two Minds (1995), 39-59. (Back to the text)
23. Aarseth 1997, pp. 21 and 56. (Back to the text)