genre

Just as Walter Benjamin declared that all "great works of literature either dissolve a genre or invent one," Brian Kim Stefans argues that all successful works of electronic literature are sui generis and invent their own genre. There can be a vocabulary for this invention, however, and Stefans sets out “The Holy Grails of Electronic Literature,” “Six Varieties of Crisis,” and the “Surrealist Fortune Cookie.” Through these concepts, he describes the formal challenges, reading experiences, and fundamental textual units of electronic literature. (Source: EBR)

Look up the book's content: http://www.gbv.de/dms/bowker/toc/9781577663188.pdf

Understanding the processes of rhetorical criticism--the systematic investigation and explanation of symbolic acts and artifacts--creates opportunities for more effective communication. When we are aware of the various options available in the construction of messages and how they function to produce effects, we have the tools needed to question the messages in artifacts rather than responding uncritically. Sonja Foss, who has an enviable talent for synthesizing complex rhetorical concepts and processes into clear explanations, presents nine methods of rhetorical criticism. She carefully explains and illustrates the theory behind each method with abundant examples of applications. Interesting and lively essays, some written by students, encourage readers to develop their critical skills. Useful bibliographies list additional samples for each type of criticism. Rhetorical criticism is not a process confined to a few assignments in a rhetorical or media criticism course. It is an everyday activity we can use to understand our responses to symbols of all kinds and to create our own symbols to generate the responses we desire.

Also by Sonja K. Foss and available from Waveland Press:

with Karen A. Foss and Robert Trapp, Contemporary Perspectives on Rhetoric, Third Edition (ISBN 9781577662051);

with Karen A. Foss and Cindy L. Griffin, Feminist Rhetorical Theories (ISBN 9781577664963); with Mary E. Domenico and Karen A. Foss, Gender Stories: Negotiating Identity in a Binary World (ISBN 9781577667919);

with Karen A. Foss, Inviting Transformation: Presentational Speaking for a Changing World, Third Edition (ISBN 9781577667216);

with Karen A. Foss and Robert Trapp, Readings in Contemporary Rhetoric (ISBN 9781577662068);

with Karen A. Foss and Cindy L. Griffin, Readings in Feminist Rhetorical Theory (ISBN 9781577664970).

Titles of related interest also available from Waveland Press: Hauser, Introduction to Rhetorical Theory, Second Edition (ISBN 9781577662211) and Sillars-Gronbeck, Communication Criticism: Rhetoric, Social Codes, Cultural Studies (ISBN 9781577661719).

Currently in game and digital culture studies, a controversy rages over the relevance of narratology for game aesthetics. One side argues that computer games are media for telling stories, while the opposing side claims that stories and games are different structures that are in effect doing opposite things. One crucial aspect of this debate is whether games can be said to be "texts," and thereby subject to a textual-hermeneutic approach. Here we find the political question of genre at play: the fight over the games' generic categorization is a fight for academic influence over what is perhaps the dominant contemporary form of cultural expression. After forty years of fairly quiet evolution, the cultural genre of computer games is finally recognized as a large-scale social and aesthetic phenomenon to be taken seriously. In the last few years, games have gone from media non grata to a recognized field of great scholarly potential, a place for academic expansion and recognition.

The great stake-claiming race is on, and academics from neighboring fields, such as literature and film studies, are eagerly grasping "the chance to begin again, in a golden land of opportunity and adventure" (to quote from the ad in Blade Runner). As with any land rush, the respect for local culture and history is minimal, while the belief in one's own tradition, tools, and competence is unfailing. Computer game studies is virgin soil, ready to be plotted and plowed by the machineries of cultural and textual studies. What better way to map the territory than by using the trusty, dominant paradigm of stories and storytelling? The story perspective has many benefits: it is safe, trendy, and flexible. In a (Western) world troubled by addiction, attention deficiency, and random violence, stories are morally and aesthetically acceptable. In stories, meaning can be controlled (despite what those deconstructionists may have claimed). Storytelling is a valuable skill, the main mode of successful communication. And theories of storytelling are (seemingly) universal: they can be applied to and explain any medium, phenomenon, or culture. So why should not games also be a type of story?

(Source: Author's introduction

English translation of title: Textual interplay in hypertext. The experience of cohesion and the regonition of genre in multimodal hyperfictions. The dissertation provides a discussion of electronic literature in general, with two in depth analyses of Megan Heyward's "I am a Singer" and of Anne Bang-Steinsvik's "I mellom tiden".

The objective of this communication is the application of ideas and tools encountered in the field of study of narratology and its consideration as a narrative genre so that the chosen work, Fitting the Pattern, may be analysed and differences seen that may arise when approached from a different frame of the print. It is hoped to show with this approach, how in order to be studied, digital narrative works require new concepts and how more investigation is needed into how the reader receives the work. For example, after analyzing the work of Christine Wilks it was seen to be necessary to deepen the skills required by the reader in order to enter into the work, to establish functional guidelines for the reader, so as to remain within the orientation of the text, etc. It is not just a question concerning only in how the work is received, but also how space and the other approaches to the work need concepts and approaches which are more adequate for the reality presented by the digital narrative. As has been shown in the analysis of Fitting the Pattern, it has not been possible to capture all that is contained in the text using the type of analysis used up to now. The narrative digital work chosen for this analysis is Fitting the Pattern because it is a clear example of a literary digital work which does not only “play” or experiment with the tools used by the digital world, but also presents a rich literary piece, which like all ergodic texts is difficult to penetrate. The images and the sound are not mere esthetic or modern additions but are clearly narrative voices which tell the story. Furthermore, together with the semi-controlled distribution of the plot they add further complexity to the analysis of time and space. The difficulties and the complexity of the work however, far from discouraging the reader motivates and inspires them to reread the work.

Our paper will address issues related to aesthetic gaming and the way in which concepts of the literary are being reconfigured in a new genre of videogames that we have termed eccentric games. Using games such as Achron (forthcoming 2010), Braid (2008), Cursor*10 (2008), Echochrome (2008), levelHead (2008), Game-Space (2008-09), and Portal (2007), we suggest this genre can be characterized by game mechanics which manipulate space and time in such a way that the player must access a logic indigenous to digital environments. Eccentric games can be further described through their reliance on filmic interface as an apparatus for modeling eccentricity, tutorialized presentations of gameplay, and its common classification within the overextended "puzzle" genre.

Our analysis of eccentric space games borrows heavily from Mark Hansen's reading of Gille Deleuze's cinematic any-space-whatever. We map his concept of the "digital ASW" on to digital eccentric space. Using Robert Lazzarini's skulls (2000) as a metonymy for speaking about the ontological status of new media in general, Hansen emphasizes how the spatial regime of skulls is an impossible space for any human subjectivity to inhabit. While a work like skulls emphasizes the failure of the viewer to grasp these forever skewed and uncanny objects, the eccentric games cited in this paper engineer the reverse response by attempting to make safe the digital ASW and to provide the fantasy of mastery through the successful completion of goal-oriented tasks. The "alien topology of the computer" is no longer figured as the cryptic skull viewed out of the corner of the eye, but rather embodied in these technological prosthetics designed to augment our consciousness. We will problematize this fantasy of mastery over eccentric space and the way in which these objects attempt to colonize a new home in what was once uncanny borderland.

In this groundbreaking book, Franco Moretti argues that literature scholars should stop reading books and start counting, graphing, and mapping them instead. In place of the traditionally selective literary canon of a few hundred texts, Moretti offers charts, maps and time lines, developing the idea of “distant reading” into a full-blown experiment in literary historiography, in which the canon disappears into the larger literary system. Charting entire genres—the epistolary, the gothic, and the historical novel—as well as the literary output of countries such as Japan, Italy, Spain, and Nigeria, he shows how literary history looks significantly different from what is commonly supposed and how the concept of aesthetic form can be radically redefined.

(Source: Verso online catalog.)