narratology

We have been referring to electronic literature as a corpus of texts with dynamic and
multimodal features. A digital text can change during reading and assume the form of a
collage work, a film or a game. Additionally, the text as a whole (Eskelinen, 2012),
because of its own transient nature, might never be presented to the reader. The text
can be played at such a pace as to be partly or completely ungraspable. Due to the range
of forms assumed by the text, it might also be unable to return to an early state. This
means that the reader might not be allowed to reread or replay the text in order to achieve
a final or coherent version of it. This also means that there might be no original state to
return to.
Shapeshifting is the ability of a being to take the form of an object or of another being.
This has been a common theme in folklore and mythology and it continues to be explored
in games or in fantasy and science fiction films, as well as in literature. Since digital
fiction is created through a computer and this tool can show emergent behavior, texts can
easily undergo unexpected metamorphosis. They are transmorphs that change their shape
- from letters to images or icons, from human language to binary code - by simulating
(or becoming) different art forms or media. Brainstrips (2009), by Alan Bigellow, for
example, incorporates comic strips, photography and audio files. Andromeda (2008), by
Caitlin Fisher, is a pop-up book which comes to life thanks to augmented reality
markers detected by the computer’s webcam. Some of these texts thwart any notion of
textual stability/identity in order to respond to the reader’s intervention or to complete a
programmed action. In Connected Memories (2009) María Mencía tells the story of
several refugees living in London through disappearing keywords. In The Flat (2005),
by Andy Campbell, the reader follows a trail of memories. Following the traces of
narrative and dealing with the text’s constant shapeshifting are the tasks a reader might
have to accept in order to read digital fiction. Subverting the reader’s expectations is
often part of the game.
The reader, trapped in a symbiotic relationship with the machine (Hayles, 2008), must
unmask the story while exploring and manipulating the elements on screen. Volatile
signifiers transmitted by an auto-generative text have an impact on the process of
signification. During the contact with the text, immersion in the narrative and
interaction with the text (Ryan, 2001) become often irreconcilable. With this paper I
propose an analysis of the multimodal, transient, interactive (or reactive) nature of the
digital text. By applying the concept of shapeshifting to the works cited above, I aim to
address the impact of textual hybridity and transience on reading and, simultaneously,
to depict electronic literature as an ever-evolving shapeshifter.

Digital fiction began by defining itself against the printed book. In so doing, transgression of linearity and the attempt to reduce the authorial presence in the text, were soon turned into defining characteristics of this literary form. Works of digital fiction were first described as fragmented objects comprised of “text chunks” interconnected by hyperlinks, which offered the reader freedom of choice and a participatory role in the construction of the text. These texts were read by selecting several links and by assembling lexias. However, the expansion of the World Wide Web and the emergence of new software and new devices, suggested new reading and writing experiences. Technology offered new ways to tell a story, and with it, additional paradigms. Hyperlinks were replaced with new navigation tools and lexias gave way to new types of textual organization. The computer became a multimedia environment where several media could thrive and prosper. As digital fiction became multimodal, words began to share the screen with image, video, music or icons.
In electronic literature, the emergence of new software and new devices is often followed by the creation of new texts. Head-mounted displays and tracking devices are being used to produce new textual responses. Bodily movement is often treated as the catalyser of these textual responses and the reader is often considered as the creator of a narrative written in real-time. This means that the attempt to offer the reader a participatory role continues to be fostered by electronic literature. In this thesis, digital fiction is described as part of an introspection and self-generating process catalysed by literature. Consequently, these new kind of texts will be defined as part of the ever-evolving field of literature.
While interactivity was often described as a set of physical activities that can interfere with attention, immersion was frequently seen as an uncritical and passive response to the text. Interactivity was used to offer freedom of choice to the reader and to give the reader the opportunity of co-authoring the text. Immersion was, by contrast, considered as the result of a reading experience constrained by authorial intention. In so doing, interactivity was mostly regarded as an antidote of reader’s immersion in the text. However, in this thesis, I will focus on a cooperation rather than a conflict between both. By describing interactivity as a set of cognitive and physical actions on the part of the reader and by defining immersion as a result and origin of these actions, I will demonstrate that immersion and interactivity cannot survive separately. This thesis aims at addressing the relation between immersion and interactivity by taking into account the text’s multimodality and transiency, as well as the ergodic and cognitive work done by the reader.

Leonardo Flores tells about his beginnings in the field of electronic literature and his current project on electronic poetry. He then makes an in-depth description of the paradigmatic change from printed literature to electronic literature with special attention on the expectations of readers who are new to new media works and the tradition, so to speak, of experimentalism in literature. With the same accuracy he ponders about the status of science of electronic literature and ends the interview with some considerations about the important issue of preservation.

Writing systems break temporal barriers and enable the sharing of knowledge and its preservation. As if they were living organisms, the narratological structures that conform textual communication are made up of replicative ordering principles and coding forms whose roots can be traced back to a Semitic proto-alphabetic script. However, literary history also includes many examples that, like viruses, have sought to disrupt the body of alphabetic textuality. This paper looks briefly at three fundamental artists, James Joyce, Jorge Luis Borges, William Burroughs, and at some contemporary pieces of electronic literature. Their questioning of ABC ordering patterns anticipates the debate on the importance or not of linear structures in representation systems.

This paper explores what I define as a “masqueraded complexity”, a term that refers to the way
children’s electronic literature disguises its multiple features to a formative reader (the child/young adult) in order to maintain/assert the whole range of semiotic and narratological creative approaches allowed in this new literary scenario. The paper paper also examines the lights and shadows of children's digital literature's inherent properties from an educational perspective. To support this exploration, I combine theoretical approaches to digital literature (Ryan, Murray, Hayles, Landow, etc.), the exploration of the digital literature landscape for youngsters and recent studies on children's literary education (Chambers, Colomer, Tauveron etc.). Some of my own research group ongoing case studies with real young digital readers will also be used to illustrate the outcomes.
Despite its obvious heterogeneity, electronic literature presents a series of common complexities
intrinsically connected to the constructive properties that define it, such as multimodal expression, non-trivial engagement, and narratological disruption. Children's literature could also be understood as a polymorphic set of texts; however, the formative reader (the child) becomes an anchor during the creative act that assembles this set of texts. The awareness of this reader’s existence and her role forces authors to find ways to express their art within certain required limits in the complexity. In combination with the particular contexts where this group of texts are received, the resulting poetics denote a closeness between the electronic literature's properties and those of children's literature (e.g. interactivity and immersion as ways to maximize readers emotional engagement and the seduction of reading). This provocative and stimulating scenario is increasing scholars' interest towards children's e-lit in a very hopeful way but the rawness in the formative and definitional process of this new corpus is still quite obvious, far removed from mainstream electronic literature's solid evolutive paths (e.g. avant-garde expressions of e-poetry, the different hyperfiction generations and so forth).
Nevertheless, children’s e-literature is already managing to find a way to deal with this required
dialogue between these new literary features and the fact that its users are still not fully developed as readers/spectators. This status quo urges to reflect on children and young adult's electronic literature’s future as well as become aware that a new approach to our literary education is necessary. This new approach should account for the electronic literature's formative potential for a contemporary reader. (Source: authors abstract)

With the rise of smartphones and tablet pcs, children’s book apps have emerged as a new type of children’s media. While some of them are based on popular children’s books such as Mo Willems’ Pigeon books or Beatrix Potter’s Peter Rabbit, others were specifically designed as apps. This paper focuses on examining book apps under the aspects of implied user strategies and narrative structure. Using a narratological framework that also takes into account the unique characteristics of the medium, a terminology for the analysis of book apps will be sketched out. Furthermore, an exemplary analysis of iOS book apps for pre- and grade school children comes to the conclusion that, far from offering the child users room for individual creativity, a large number of apps rather train their users in following prescribed paths of reading.

(Contains references to more creative works than currently registered:

Animal Snapp Farm by Axel Scheffler. Version 1.0.1. # 2012. Nosy Crow Ltd.
Don’t Let the Pigeon Run this App by Mo Willems. Version: 1.0 Seller: Disney Publishing Worldwide Applica- tions # 2011. Disney Enterprises Inc.
Flip Flap Farm by Axel Scheffler. Version 1.0.1 # 2013. Nosy Crow Ltd.
Lil’ Red. Concept by Bart Bloemen & Brian Main, tech: Tom Skidmore, audio: Lukas Hasitschka, grafix: Brian Main www.lilredapp.com Version: 1.03 # Brian Main.
Magic Story Factory by Kathy Rypp, illustrations: Gretchen Wheeler. Version: 1.0 Seller: Christian Larsen # 2011.
The Gift: An interactive storybook. Written by Jos Carlyle, illustrated by Dan Mynard. Version: 1.5. Seller: Persian Cat Press Ltd # 2012. Persian Cat Press.
The Land of Me: Story Time. Version: 0.0.4 Developer: Made in Me Ltd. # Made in Me.
The Original Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter. Version: 1.0 Seller: Pearson PLC # 2011 by Penguin Group (USA).
Your Adventure by Rianne van Duin (RumDeeDum). Version: 1.1 # ImproVive.)

The expression interactive literary narrative applies to a variety of works. In its diversity, theinteractive literary narrative raises questions on narratives, interactive architecture, multimedia aswell as on literature. It is because the interactive literary narrative is wrought by tensions that it hasthis questioning and maybe even revealing capacity. This tension is first and foremost that which lies between narrativity and interactivity and which investigates other connections or tensions :- with regards to the narrative, the tension between adherence and distance can be characterized by a play on fictionalization and reflexivity;- with regards to the interactive architecture, the tension between assistance and control roles canmanifest itself by a play on loss of grasp,- with regards to the multimedia, the tension between a text-based narrative and a multimedianarrative can be reached by work on text as a dynamic and polysemiotic object, and also thetheatralization of interactive objects endowed with behaviour,- with regards to its recognition as a literary work, the tension between horizon of expectations and aesthetic distance manifests itself by the aesthetics of the materiality of the text, the interface and the medium. Thus, the interactive literary narrative corresponds more to an experimental field than to a well defined autonomous genre.

Source: author's abstract

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

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.