Article in a print journal

The majority of humanities computing projects within the discipline of literature have been conceived more as digital libraries than monographs which utilise the medium as a site of interpretation. The impetus to conceive electronic research in this way comes from the underlying philosophy of texts and textuality implicit in SGML and its instantiation for the humanities, the TEI, which was conceived as “a markup system intended for representing already existing literary texts”.
This article explores the most common theories used to conceive electronic research in literature, such as hypertext theory, OCHO (Ordered Hierarchy of Content Objects), and Jerome J. McGann’s “noninformational” forms of textuality. It also argues that as our understanding of electronic texts and textuality deepens, and as advances in technology progresses, other theories, such as Reception Theory and Versioning, may well be adapted to serve as a theoretical basis for conceiving research more akin to an electronic monograph than a digital library.

Source: Author's Abstract

If there is such a thing as a new computer-assisted literary criticism, its expression lies in a model that is as broad-based as that presented in John Smith’s seminal article, “Computer Criticism,” and is as encompassing of the discipline of literary studies as it is tied to the evolving nature of the electronic literary text that lies at the heart of its intersection with computing. It is the desire to establish the parameters of such a model for the interaction between literary studies and humanities computing – for a model of the new computer-assisted literary criticism – that gave rise to the papers in this collection and to the several conference panel-presentations and discussions that, in their print form, these papers represent.

Source: Author's Abstract

A number of epistemological assumptions of quantum theory in its approach to the natural world (virtuality/actuality, interaction observer/observed, unpredictability and statistical causality, wave-particle duality, the notion of information, etc.) are surprisingly close to the properties shown by the new digital textualities born with the computer age, and here generically referred to as «cybertext». The purpose of this paper is to explore a connection between the quantum model and the semiotic model, not so much to reveal a simple homology, but rather to suggest a unified vision underlying the approach to the various levels of reality (material, biological, mental, cultural and spiritual). This connection between the quantum view of matter and cybertext is terminally focused on unifying the triadic concepts of matter/energy/information with the key concepts of the semiotic triangle signifier/signified/meaning (or, in the domain of aesthetics, TAC: technology/art/consciousness).

(Source: Author's abstract)

Concrete Poetry: product of a critical evolution of forms. Assuming that the historical cycle of verse (as formal-rhythmical unit) is closed, concrete poetry begins by being aware of graphic space as structural agent. Qualified space: space-time structure instead of mere linear-temporistical development. Hence the importance of ideogram concept, either in its general sense of spatial or visual syntax, or in its special sense (Fenollosa/ Pound) of method of composition based on direct-analogical, not logical-discursive juxtaposition of elements. "ll faut que notre intelligence s’habitue à comprendre synthético-idéographiquement au lieu de analytico -discursivement" (Apollinaire). Elsenstein: ideogram and montage.

(English translation by the authors)