Digital Textuality
- 2. FROM PRINT TO ELECTRONIC TEXTS Changes fundamental ideas about texts and looks at both electronic and print texts in a new light Cybertextuality is concerned with aesthetics and textual dynamics of digital literature and its different types Transformation from print to electronic texts similar to language translations
- 3. WHAT IS A TEXT? Theorists describe a work, text and document as different entities. Work is an abstract entity, the ideal construction toward which textual editors move by collating different editions and copies to arrive at their best guess for what the creation should be Text is separate from its physical embodiment as an artifact. Text can be stored in a various number of ways. The document is then the physical artifact which merges with the sign system as an abstract representation.
- 4. TEXT ENCODING THEORIES Text has a hierarchy of content objects. For example: chapters, sections, subsections, paragraphs and sentences The pluralism theory believes in not only one but a variety of hierarchies The third theory, antirealism, holds the belief that a text is only brought into existence through encoding procedures
- 5. MEANING IN TEXT AND ELECTRONIC FORM Texts are provocations to go in search of meaning but media and materiality also matter in regards to finding meaning. Textuality differences across mediums offer different experiences to the reader and can thus change the meaning. The bibliographical elements become a very important part of how a reader grasps meaning from the work. Electronic literature elements such as screen design, graphics, multiple layers, colour and animation, amongst others are crucial to the overall effect of the work
- 6. THE CLASSICS TRANSLATED Shakespeare T.S Eliot
- 7. All‘s Well That Ends Well http://shakespeare.mit.edu/allswell/allswell.1.1.html http://www.literaturepage.com/read/shakespeare-alls-well-that-ends-well-2.html http://www.shakespeare-online.com/plays/aw_1_1.html The Waste Land http://eliotswasteland.tripod.com/
- 8. INK STABILITY VS. SCREEN INSTABILITY Once ink is on a piece of paper, it is stable for a long period of time whereas a computer screen can be refreshed every few seconds and changes each time. No print document can be reprogrammed whereas electronic texts can. With electronic texts there is a conceptual distinction between storage and delivery vehicles whereas with print they are the same Electronic texts exist as a distributed phenomenon which introduces variation in the production which does not exist with print
- 9. THOUGHTS…. If literature and materiality are closely entwined what happens when a text is translated into a different medium of that which it was originally created? Is the original meaning lost after the translation of the print text into cybertext? Just like we hold the original work before translation in higher regard, do we also feel the same way concerning the translation from print to media? Can we even compare the two forms or do they have different functions altogether?
- 10. Bibliography Deegan,M. 2009, Transferred Ilusions: Digital Technology and the Forms of Print , Ashgate Publishing Company, England. Eliot,T.S. 2010, The Waste Land, Tripod, viewed 31 August 2010, < http://eliotswasteland.tripod.com/ >. Finneran,R. (ed.) 1996, The Literary Text in the Digital Age , The University of Michigan Press, USA. Halyes,N.K.2005, ‘ Translating Media‘ in My mother was a computer:digital subjects and literary texts , University of Chicago Press, Chicago,pp.90-116. Liu,Z.2008, Paper to Digital , Libraries Unlimited, USA. Morrison,A. & Popham,M. & Wikander,K. 2000, Creating and Documenting Electronic Texts , The Alden Press, Oxford. Sanz,A. & Romero,D. 2007, Literatures in the Digital Era: Theory and Praxis , Cambridge Scholars Publishing, UK. Shakespeare,W. 2010, All‘s Well That Ends Well , Mabillard, viewed 31 August 2010, < http://www.shakespeare-online.com/plays/aw_1_1.html >. Shakespeare,W. 2010, All‘s Well That Ends Well , The Literature Page, viewed 31 August 2010, < http://www.literaturepage.com/read/shakespeare-alls-well-that-ends-well-2.html >. Shakespeare,W. 2010, All‘s Well That Ends Well , The Tech, viewed 31 August 2010, < http://shakespeare.mit.edu/allswell/allswell.1.1.html >. Young,S.2007, The Book Is Dead , UNSW Press, Australia.