HYPERTEXT FICTION AND THEORY

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Class: Monday 9:00-11:50 AM - UC 2
Office: UC 383
Office Hours: Monday 2:00-3:00 (UC 181); Wednesday 11:00-12:00 (UC 383); Friday 10:00 11:00 (UC 383)

Phones: 679-2111 ext. 5831 (office), 661-3403 (English Dept.), or 672-8779
email: mgroden@acm.org
course Web page

Texts:
--Print
Jorge Luis Borges. Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings. New Directions, 1964.
Italo Calvino. If On a Winter's Night a Traveller. Lester and Orpen Dennys, 1981.
James Joyce. Ulysses. Ed. Jeri Johnson. Oxford World's Classics. 1993.
Vladimir Nabokov. Pale Fire. Vintage, 1962.
Myron C. Tuman, ed. Literacy Online: The Promise (and Peril) of Reading and Writing with Computers. University of Pittsburgh Press, 1992.
+ a few photocopied articles, available in Pat Dibsdale's office (UC 180) (marked with *)
--Electronic (all available on the UWO network and in UC 6)
Carolyn Guyer. Quibbling. Electronic hypertext. Eastgate Systems, 1992.
Shelley Jackson. Patchwork Girl. Electronic hypertext. Eastgate Systems, 1995.
Michael Joyce. Afternoon: A Story. Electronic hypertext. Eastgate Systems, 1987.
Storyspace. Hypertext authoring software. Eastgate Systems.
+ some other hypertexts and electronic writings from the World Wide Web

Schedule
Jan. 6 Introduction
Jan. 13 Jorge Luis Borges, "The Garden of Forking Paths" and "The Library of Babel" (in Labyrinths) + George Landow, "Hypertext, Metatext, and the Electronic Canon" and Ted Nelson, "Opening Hypertext" (both in Tuman)
Jan. 18 Michael Joyce, Afternoon + Jay David Bolter, "Literature in the Electronic Writing Space" (in Tuman) and Jane Yellowlees Douglas, "'How Do I Stop This Thing?': Closure and Indeterminacy in Interactive Narratives" (*)
Jan. 25 James Joyce, Ulysses, episodes 1 and 4-9 (pp. 3-23 and 53-209) + Jerome McGann, excerpt from The Textual Condition (*)
Feb. 1 James Joyce, Ulysses, episodes 11 and 15 (pp. 245-279 and 408-565)
Feb. 8 James Joyce, Ulysses, episodes 17-18 (pp. 619-732)
Feb. 15 discussion of Storyspace writing exercise

Mar. 1 Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire + Pamela McCorduck, "How We Knew, How We Know, How We Will Know" (in Tuman)
Mar. 8 excerpts from Espen Aarseth, Cybertext; Silvio Gaggi, From Text to Hypertext; and George Landow, ed., Hyper/Text/Theory (all *)
Mar. 15 Carolyn Guyer, Quibbling + Michael Joyce, Afternoon
Mar. 22 Italo Calvino, If On a Winter's Night a Traveller + Walter Ong, extract from Orality and Literacy (*)
Mar. 29 Shelley Jackson, Patchwork Girl + Richard Lanham, "Digital Rhetoric: Theory, Practice, and Property" (in Tuman)
Apr. 5 hypertext Web sites

Assignments
1) essay of about 20 pages due at the end of the course 50%
2) hypertext writing exercise (due Feb. 12, for discussion on Feb. 15) 20%
3) course journal (due April 5) 15%
4) 3 short in-class reports on the hypertext fictions (Jan. 18, March 15, March 29) 15%

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