second person

This article presents an experiment in locative literature. Using the textopia system for sharing of literary texts through spatial annotation and locative exploration with mobile devices, a commissioned work was created for a poetry festival. The project aimed to explore how professional, renowned poets could contribute a deepened understanding of the locative medium. The texts produced show two important traits. Firstly, a particular use of deictic relationships, in which words like “you” and “here” take on a particular importance, indicating that these words work like entry points for fiction and markers of make-believe. Secondly, a preoccupation with relations of absence and presence, both temporal and spatial, producing poetic recreations of a location's memory and spatial connections to the rest of the world.

Since the demise of the 'Golden Age' of literary hypertext (Coover 1999) and the theoretical debates surrounding online and offline electronic literature that followed in its wake, the study of digital fiction in particular has undergone a significant paradigm shift. Recent research has moved from a 'first-wave' of pure theoretical debate to a 'second-wave' of close stylistic and semiotic analysis. While the theoretical intricacies of second-wave digital fiction theory have been well debated (e.g. Ciccoricco 2007, Ensslin 2007, Ensslin and Bell 2007, Bell 2010 forthcoming), the discipline and practice of close-reading digital fiction require a more systematic engagement and understanding than offered by previous scholarship. With this in mind, the Digital Fiction International Network ('DFIN', funded by The Leverhulme Trust since January 2009) has been exploring new avenues of defining and implementing approaches to close-reading, with the tripartite trajectory of developing a range of tools and associated terminology for digital fiction analysis; of providing a body of analyses based on the close-reading of texts, which are substantiated by robust theoretical and terminological conclusions; and of fostering a collaborative network of academics working on inter-related projects.

In following this agenda, this paper offers a comparative approach to second person narration in two exemplary digital fictions: geniwate and Deena Larsen’s satirical flash fiction, The Princess Murderer (2003), and Jon Ingold's interactive fiction mystery, All Roads (2006 [2001]). We aim to explore the extent to which print-oriented narratological approaches to the textual 'You' (e.g. Herman 1994) apply to the texts under investigation and suggest theoretical tenets arising from their distinct (inter-)medial and ludic qualities (cf. Ryan 1999). Of particular interest will be the ways in which the reader and his/her role in the cybernetic feedback loop are constructed textually and interactionally.

(Source: Authors' abstract for ELO_AI)

This article offers a close-reading of geniwate's and Deena Larsen’s satirical, ludic Flash fiction The Princess Murderer (2003), with a specific focus on how the text implements second person narration and other forms of the textual you (Herman 1994, 2002) in juxtaposition with other narrational stances.

This article offers an analysis of two Storyspace hypertexts, Stuart Moulthrop's Victory Garden and Richard Holeton's Figurski at Findhorn on Acid. The article has a specific focus on how the text implements second-person narration and other forms of the textual "you" (Herman, Story Logic) in juxtaposition with other narrative perspectives. We aim to explore the extent to which print-based narratological theories of the textual "you" apply to the texts under investigation and suggest theoretical tenets and taxonomic modifications arising from the way in which the reader is involved in textual construction. More specifically we will show first how second-person narration can be used in digital fiction to endow the reader with certain properties so that she is maneuvered into the position of "you." We will then show how second-person narration can be used to presuppose knowledge about the reader so as to predict her relationship to "you." In both cases we will show that some instances of second-person narration in digital fiction require additional theoretical categories for their analysis. Of particular interest is the way in which the reader and her role in the "cybernetic feedback loop" (Aarseth) are constructed textually and interactionally.

This essay examines the use of the second person address in electronic literature and games. It discusses the way in which the direct address to the user has been used as a literary device, and how the "forced performative" that the reader is cast into when reading some such addresses is heightened in digital works, where the role of "you" is more literally enacted and regimented.