Hyperfiction Critique Assignment

Overview | Guidelines | Content and Structure of the Hypercritique | Suggestions

Purpose and Objective:

The purpose of this assignment is to encourage you to think about the nature of fiction, textuality, literacy, and orality, and to enable you to demonstrate analytical and interpretive skills in response to a particular piece of hyperfiction.

Overview:

A critique is a form of literary criticism that examines and evaluates a piece of writing, holding it up against certain standards. These standards need to be close enough to those of the community of interpretation for whom the critique is written so that readers will recognize and respond to it as a meaningful part of the community's "literary conversation." Admittedly, in the artificial reading community of the traditional academic classroom, the teacher usually represents that whole community, but, as developing scholars and future teachers, students can and should join the interpretive community and become its writers as well as readers.

A critique of hypertext fiction can start along the same lines as you might use for traditional literature: there are the basic elements of fiction to use as analytical tools: plot, narrative technique and point-of-view, characterization, theme, tone, symbolism, and so on.

A major difference, however, is that with hypertext no two people (or individuals on separate "readings") experience the order of passages the same--so that "structure" will not mean the same as it does in, say, works by Shakespeare or Bierce or Poe.

Instead of a permanent "reified" structure of narrative on the pages and in the book, links and linking strategies are set by the author to guide readers' experience. Some main features of linking strategies are

• Links themselves; Links between hypertext "lexias" determine how the reader experiences text, in many ways like pages of a printed book set the basic order for reading that book.  Links can operate at any point on a broad range of control, at one extreme set by the author and at the other totally determined by the reader. Usually, a hypertext document comes somewhere in the middle of this spectrum. The author can set structures in the program to allow readers choices in where they link, but there is always a practical limit to the freedom readers have, since the hypertext writing/reading utility used to construct the work is a computer program, and has to abide by the rules of the machine.  So the linking techniques used by the creator(s) are extremely important in reading hypertext and hyperfiction.
• Navigation strategies; "Linking" involves moving from one passage or lexia to another; for the reader, navigation represents a higher level plan for following a series of links. The author working with a particular program usually determines how navigation will work. One way is to offer the reader a graphical map of the lexias and their links; other text-based methods include showing a history of where the reader has been; showing an organized list of all available lexias; or allowing a text search. Navigation is a significant feature of reader control, but it is always an interactive "dance" involving the steps of the author's overall design with the reader's ongoing choices.
• Repetitions; Frequently, readers encounter instances of lexias they have read before. This is not a "mistake," as it would usually be in a printed text, but rather a feature especially associated with hypertext; repetitions add to the reading experience by forcing a "resequencing" of text. In other words, text usually means something in context with other text around it; a lexia may not have much meaning at all the first time we read it in a hypertext, but it may take on more meaning in context as it returns in a different sequence of reading.

With this background, here are some guidelines for an essay that interprets or critiques the hyperfiction/s under study. Try to bring examples in from the hypertext as often as you can to support your ideas/assertions. (Bookmarking in the story comes in handy for this. Instead of using page numbers, refer to lexias by their titles.)

Assignment parameters:

• One option will be to write a "critique" of either Joyce's 12 Blue or  Jackson's Patchwork Girl  (length = approximately 1,200 to 1,500 words)
• Another option will be to critically compare and contrast both 12 Blue and Patchwork Girl
• Rough Version due Tuesday, Nov. 7, for peer review
• FIRST FULL version for tentative grade due Thursday, Nov. 9.
• FINAL version due Thursday Nov. 16

Content and Structure of the Hypercritique:

I. General features: What kinds of features does hyperfiction share with all other literature?

• What are the stories represented in the whole text/s?
• What is/are the setting(s)?
• What are the narrative strategies--how are these stories told? (Who tells the story? in what mode (present, past)?
• Who are the characters involved? How are they developed (point-of-view, details, relationships)?
• What poetic techniques are applied--imagery, diction, metaphor, and so on?

• How do the linking arrangements work? Which linking techniques did you rely on most, and why?
• Do the linking arrangements allow the reader enough freedom to explore? Too much freedom?
• Does linking ever become part of the story--and if so, how?

• What ways exist in the hypertext reading program/s that allow you to move around in the whole work?
• How did you mostly use the navigation strategies available to you?
• Did navigation ever intentionally become part of your reading experience? Describe how navigation and the story came together for you.

• Were you able to fit repetitions into the sequence of lexias or were they merely distracting?
• Did your attitude toward repetitions change as your experience progressed so that you began to see new significance in repeated lexias?

 

• How would you assess the overall experience of the hyperfiction/s as imaginative literature? Articulate the sameness and difference in comparison to other literature you have read (use specific examples).
• Were any aspects of the work/s "beautiful and/or true"? Were any parts memorable?
• Will these works be around in 50 years? why or why not?

The three outline headings 1, II, and III above can act as the formal structure of your essay's body and conclusion. If you choose this method, insert an introductory paragraph laying out your overall reaction and your thesis concept. You are free to vary this approach, but you must critically analyze your subject and answer the questions above in some manner.