ABSTRACT

Drawing upon the critical views of hypertext theory, this paper seeks to investigate the genre of hypertext fiction, analyzing some of its aspects, especially the domination of narrative nonlinearity and the birth of the wreader. The paper argues that computer technologies have revolutionized the form and representation of literary texts as well as the relationship between writer and reader. The study first fathoms the aspects of narrative nonlinearity as represented in Michael Joyce’s novel Twelve Blue (1996), a representative of first-generation hypertext fiction, and the two short stories “From Head to Toe” by Arseniy Klishin and Laura Gray (2019) and “The Road” by Jason Malabed (2014), which belong to second-generation hypertext fiction. Instead of having narrative hierarchies, these hypertexts depend on hyperlinks, multiple reading pathways, and multimodal representation that contribute to optimizing narrative nonlinearity. The paper then analyzes the critical concept of wreader/wreading and applies it to the selected hypertexts, showing how electronic literary production is no longer an absolute creation of the author. The three selected hypertexts indicate that a work of hypertext fiction binds together reader and writer into a collaborative process in which the reader becomes a coauthor of the text.

摘要

借鉴超文本理论的批判性观点，本文试图研究超文本小说的体裁，分析其某些方面，特别是叙事非线性的统治和作家的诞生。该论文认为，计算机技术已经彻底改变了文学文本的形式和表现以及作者与读者之间的关系。该研究首先探究了迈克尔乔伊斯小说《十二蓝》中所代表的叙事非线性的各个方面。（1996），第一代超文本小说的代表，阿森尼·克里欣和劳拉·格雷的两篇短篇小说《从头到脚》（2019）和杰森·马拉贝德的《路》（2014），属于第二代——一代超文本小说。这些超文本没有叙事层次结构，而是依赖于有助于优化叙事非线性的超链接、多种阅读途径和多模态表示。然后，本文分析了阅读者/阅读的批判性概念，并将其应用于选定的超文本，展示了电子文学作品不再是作者的绝对创作。三个选定的超文本表明，超文本小说作品将读者和作者结合在一起，形成一个协作过程，在这个过程中，读者成为文本的共同作者。