1. Prehistoric Hypertext
Literature: Problems of
defining a print-based
hypertext corpus
University of Bournemouth
28th November 2012
Simon Rowberry
Simon.Rowberry@winchester.ac.uk

5. Hypertext
• “Hyper” + “Text”
• Non-sequential?
• Multi-linear?
• Link-and-node? Beyond link-and-node
• Electronic only?
• Spatial?
• Association?
• Tactical

6. Defining Hypertext Historically
Ted Nelson (1965):
“Let me introduce the word "hypertext” - to mean a body of
written or pictorial material interconnected in such a complex
way that it could not conveniently be presented or represented
on paper. It may contain summaries, or maps of its contents
and their interrelations; it may contain annotations, additions
and footnotes from scholars who have examined it. Let me
suggest that such an object and system, properly designed
and administered, could have great potential for education,
increasing the student's range of choices, his sense of
freedom, his motivation, and his intellectual grasp”
(“Complex Information Processing”)

7. Defining Hypertext Historically
Ted Nelson (1992):
“Hypertext was an audacious choice: hyper-
has a bad odor in some fields and can
suggest agitation and pathology, as it does
in medicine and psychology. But in other
sciences hyper- connotes extension and
generality, as in the mathematical hyper-
space, and this was the connotation I
wanted to give the idea”
(“Opening Hypertext: A Memoir”)

8. Defining Hypertext Historically
• Robert Coover (1992):
"Hypertext" is not a system but a generic term,
coined a quarter of a century ago by a
computer populist named Ted Nelson to
describe the writing done in the nonlinear or
nonsequential space made possible by the
computer.”
(“The End of Books,” New York Times, June
21)

9. Defining Hypertext Historically
Espen Aarseth (2003 [1994]):
"Hypertext, for all its packaging and
theories, is an amazingly simple
concept. It is merely a direct
connection from one position in a text
to another.”
(“Nonlinearity and Literary Theory”
in New Media Reader, 770)

10. Defining Hypertext Historically
Michael Joyce (2002):
"Hypertext is, before anything else, a
visual form. Hypertext embodies
information and communications,
artistic and affective constructs, and
conceptual abstractions alike into
symbolic structures made visible on a
computer controlled display.”
(Of Two Minds, 19)

11. Defining Hypertext Historically
Andries van Dam (1987):
“Hypertext is basically clay, and
we have to mold it”
(“Hypertext „87 Keynote”)

12. Hypertext History and Prehistory
• Borrowing Chris Funkhouser‟s term via
Ian Bogost
• 1986/7 as starting point:
• Institutionalisation
• ACM Hypertext conference
• Storyspace/NoteCards/Hypercard
• Or could it be with the widespread
adoption of the WWW despite HT
proponents?

13. Implicit and Explicit linking
• Linking through bibliographical codes:
• Table of contents
• Indexes
• The hyperlink
• Linking through linguistic codes:
• Intertextuality/Intratextuality
• Genres
• Neologisms
• “Textual space and textual time are n-dimensional simply
because they locate embodied actions and events”
(McGann, Radiant Textuality, xiv)

14. Technical Innovations
Literary Hypertexts
Print Hypertexts

15. Against Proto-Hypertext
• Several of the texts frequently referred
to as proto-hypertext were written post-
1965
• Hypertext is not fundamentally an
electronic concept
• Often far too broad
• (Pre-)Historic hypertext is a better
term

16. Jorges Luis Borges‟ Ficciones
• Frequently alluded to, particularly:
• “The Book of Sand”
• “The Library of Babel”
• “The Garden of Forking Paths”
• NOT hypertextual
• Often a criticism of hypertext principles

17. Marc Saporta‟s Composition No. 1
• Loose leaf book with no structure
• Card metaphor – c.f. Shuffle literature
& historic hypertext
• Anti-narrative
• To what extent can nodes alone
sustain a hypertext narrative?

18. Choose Your Own Adventure Books
• First anecdotal response when print
hypertext is suggested
• Often very linear
• No looping
• Very little, if any, recursion
• More puzzle than narrative

19. Edward Packard, The Cave of Time (1979)
Diagram from http://www.samizdat.cc/cyoa/

20. Gamebooks
• Simulation
• Dungeons & Dragons
• Closer to Interactive Fiction
• Performative – hypertext as
performative
• Reading to play vs. reading to read

21. Single-player Gamebooks
• Dice on pages
• Guardfields – “If you‟ve been to this paragraph
before…” (The Hypnosis Engima, passim)
• Breadcrumb trails
• “When you think you have the answer [to a riddle],
take each letter of the answer… convert it to it
corresponding number in the alphabet… If the
paragraph you turn to is the wrong one (it won‟t
make sense!), turn to 26”
(Sword of the Samurai, 2)
• Choosing the correct party members
• Recursion – more like computing

22. Complexity in The Hypnosis Engima

23. Italo Calvino‟s Invisible Cities
• Linguistic linking
• No central linking mechanism
• Xanadu-Venice connection
• Does this fit into the same category as
Marc Saporta‟s Composition No. 1

24. Vladimir Nabokov‟s Pale Fire
• link-and-node network model (1st
generation)
• Extensive use of paratextual devices
(2nd generation)
• Both uni- and multi-cursal (ergodic)
- Aarseth
• Both modular and continuous
• 3 ways of reading in preface
• Complexity on multiple levels

25. Vladimir Nabokov‟s Pale Fire

26. What, then, does it mean to be
hypertextual?