textual criticism

The first two chapters of William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury (hereafter SF) (1929) use stream-of-consciousness prose to represent the perspectives of the intellectually-disabled Benjy and suicidal Quentin, respectively. The text moves freely between time periods, using italics to indicate shifts, establishing what Faulkner calls ‘unbroken-surfaced confusion’. As a result, the novel depicts the novel’s titular ‘Sound and Fury’.

To this day, SF poses editorial dilemmas. Polk (1985, XIV) lists four difficulties: (i) none of the extant documents fully preserve Faulkner’s ‘final intentions’; (ii) the documents preserve inconclusive and contradictory testimony; (iii) it is impossible to determine who caused variations between the book and carbon typescript; and (iv) given the nature of the text, it is difficult to determine which variations are corrected ‘errors’ and which are not. Faulkner’s correspondence with his literary agent also reveals his desire to use colourised text, which has led to the development of colour editions: the 2012 Folio Society edition and the 2003 hypertext edition.

In textual criticism, an ‘ideal text’, Gracia (1995, 83-4) argues, can be understood in three different ways: (i) as an ‘inaccurate version of a historical text produced and considered by an interpreter as an accurate copy of the historical text’; (ii) as a ‘text produced by an interpreter who considers that it expresses perfectly the view that the historical text expressed imperfectly’; and (iii) text produced by an interpreter as the ‘text that perfectly expresses the view the historical author should have expressed’ (85). Adopting Gracia’s third approach, the colourised editions of SF could be regarded as the view Faulkner should have expressed, had he access to digital technologies.

The digital novel, Little Emperor Syndrome (2018), follows the decline of the Selkirks, an upper middle-class Australian family, from the years of the Global Financial Crisis to the beginning of the Abbott government. Different family members determine each chapter. Its form is inspired by Faulkner’s SF, and attempts to create Faulkner’s ‘unbroken-surfaced confusion’. Like the 2012 Folio edition, this electronic text allows the text to be colourised and navigated using a key. It also adds functionality that allows lexias to be rearranged in various modes: ‘stream-of-consciousness’, ‘cosmos’ (chronological), and ‘chaos’ (random). Time-frames can also be isolated or removed. I argue that this electronic format better articulates Faulkner’s vision. At the very least, such a form could be regarded as an – if not ‘the’ – ideal text of SF.

This article proposes a theoretical framework intended to facilitate descriptions and discussions of texts of works in different media. The main theoretical traditions which have inspired this endeavor are, on the one hand, textual criticism (with scholars such as Fredson Bowers, D. C. Greetham, Jerome J. McGann, D. F. McKenzie, Peter L. Shillingsburg, and G. Thomas Tanselle), and, on the other hand, hypertext theory (represented by theorists like Espen Aarseth, Jay David Bolter, Jane Yellowlees Douglas, Michael Joyce, George P. Landow, and Janet H. Murray). The study aims to combine and develop the perspectives of such theoretical traditions in order to suggest a more consistent and extensive set of concepts for the analysis of how narratives are stored and disseminated. The study examines the structural aspects of texts and works, and deals with storage, presentation and reproduction of works. Moreover, the structure of works and texts, as well as the navigation related to these structures, are discussed. The study also includes an in-depth discussion on links and linking, and a new terminology is suggested for the subject. The most important concepts discussed are work, text, version, variant, storage medium, storage sign, presentation medium, presentation sign, storage capacity, life expectancy, direct text access, indirect text access, copy, edition, impression, issue, monosequential, multisequential, content space and axial structure. Furthermore, the concepts of network structure and lateral structure as well as hypertext, ergodicity, link and linking are examined.

This study investigates the effects of digitization on literature and literary culture with focus on works of literary fiction and other kinds of works inspired by such works. The concept of "hyperworks" refers to works intended to be navigated multisequentially, i.e. the users create their own paths through the work by making choices. The three articles that make up the dissertation include analyses of individual works as well as discussions of theoretical models and concepts. The study combines perspectives from several theoretical traditions: narratology, hypertext theory, ludology (i.e. game studies), sociology of literature, textual criticism, media theory, and new media studies. This study investigates the effects of digitization on literature and literary culture with focus on works of literary fiction and other kinds of works inspired by such works. The concept of “hyperworks” refers to works intended to be navigated multisequentially, i.e. the users create their own paths through the work by making choices. The three articles that make up the dissertation include analyses of individual works as well as discussions of theoretical models and concepts. The study combines perspectives from several theoretical traditions: narratology, hypertext theory, ludology (i.e., game studies), sociology of literature, textual criticism, media theory, and new media studies. The first article examines narrative technique and aspects of ergodicity in the digital hyperwork afternoon, a story (1997) by Michael Joyce. The main focus is on an analysis of the work’s structural organization and narrative technique. The second article proposes a theoretical framework for the analysis of texts and works in different media, especially focusing on the media structure (i.e. linking, navigation, storage, presentation, etc.) The third article analyzes and describes the ludolization, i.e., transposition into game form, of J. K. Rowling’s novel Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (1997). The study is a comparative analysis of the PC version of the computer game Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (2001) and the original novel, and discusses the media structure and the narrative/ludic structure of the two works. The concepts of ergodicity, cybertext, and content space are especially central to the study. Among the new concepts introduced are omnidiscourse, omnistory, performed discourse, performed story, lateral structure, hyperliterary competence, core ludic sequence, and performed ludic sequence. Also, a method for the analysis and description of links, i.e. a linkology, is presented along with new terms such as linkarium, ancoral text, adlink, and exlink.