Computers, Writing, Rhetoric and Literature
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Ulysses as the Perfect Subject for Hypertextualization
We traditionally think of the novel as, among other things, a vehicle for a central argument,
be it about morality, aesthetics, politics, ethics, epistemology, etc., or some combination of elements.
Action and dialogue in the novel are in the service of this central argument, reinforcing the consistent
worldview, or theme, of an individual author.
Yet this need not be the case. In the Modern era, novelists began questioning the ability
of the novel -- and even language -- to approximate an external reality or set of truths.
Point-of-view became fragmented; reading Modernist texts, it is often difficult to tell
where authors stand in relation to their texts and the subjects and characters within them.
This difficulty should not disturb us. Indeed, it can be liberating. Mikhail Bakhtin sees the novel
as a dialogue between competing elements. "The image of another's language and outlook on the
world...simultaneously represented and representing, is extremely typical of the novel; the greatest
novelistic
images (for example, the figure of Don Quixote) belong precisely to this type."
[1]. Thus, a novel can portray or represent competing ideologies
without giving authority or privilege to any one of them.
Nowhere is such a process better represented than in Ulysses, where the mythic representations
serve as both parody and tribute. Is Bloom a Homeric hero? Is Odysseus just another wandering husband?
Do Joyce's patternings elevate the mundane or do they parody and deflate the epic? Yes and No, or better
yet, as Stephen says, Nes and Yo. Joyce's refusal to make any conclusions, to offer any decisive
resolutions about any of the characters' activities, make Ulysses the perfect subject for
hypertextualization.
- Indeed, Ulysses has been seen as a sort of hypertext itself, as a precursor foreshadowing the problems and challenges of cyberspace. Notes Donald Theal:
As the world awakens to the full potentialities for the construction of artifacts and processes of communication in the new electric cosmos, Joyce foresees the transformation (not the death) of the book--going beyond the book as it had historically evolved. Confronted with this situation, Joyce seeks to develop a poetic language which will resituate the book within this new communicative cosmos, while simultaneously recognizing the drive toward the development of a theoretically all-inclusive, all-encompassing medium, "virtual reality."[2]
This "virtual reality" is achieved in Ulysses in a number of ways: through its continual
interplay between the internal monologues and external actions of its characters; in its obscuring
the boundaries of dreamstates and reality; in its masterful attempts to portray -- or at least suggest --
simultaneity of thought and physical action in a medium that does not allow such things; and in its
self-referential allusions, puns, contradictions and parodies that make it seem more and more a
self-contained world as the novel goes on. In Ulysses (and certainly in Finnegans Wake),
every word, it seems, is linked.
Of course, the presence of links, as every web user knows, does not necessarily mean the presence of information. Links mislead, misdirect, make trivial or irrelevant connections, or are simply dead. If the error message of the eighties was "Abort, Retry, Ignore, Fail," the error message of the nineties must surely be "404. File not Found." Ulysses speaks to us here, too. Brian Stonehill sees the novel as a "cybernetic allegory," in which the images of people "sending, carrying, and receiving -- or distorting, or losing -- signals of varying import and value," mirrors our journeys through cyberspace.
This plot -- the plot of signals that are launched on perilous Odyssean journeys, and that
reach home, if they do, only through devious paths -- parallels and augments the novel's more central journeys, its dangers encountered, and its successful returns...not only in its represented action, but also in its history as a text. The book itself, that is, has reached us only by a devious path around Cyclopean censors and the Scylla and Charybdis of pirates and obtuse editors and publishers. ULYSSES both retells and re-enacts, that is, the Odyssean journey of information that, once sent, is threatened and nearly thwarted before it is finally received.[3]
It would certainly be nice to have Joyce to guide us through our exploration of the electronic world. But if we cannot achieve this, we can attempt the alternative of using the electronic world to guide us through Joyce's. "Imagine reading [Joyce]," says Darren Tofts, "and not feeling that you are up bit creek without a toggle." Tofts is envisioning the day when we "no longer think or communicate outside electronic logic," when cyberspace is everywhere.[4] Such a day may not come, or we may not want it to, but a hypertextualized Ulysses might ease the transition a bit.
The next section takes up the question of which Ulysses to hypertextualize...
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Notes
[1] Mikhail Bakhtin 1988,128
[2] Donald Theall, "Beyond the Oral/literacy Dichotomy: James Joyce and the Pre-history of Cyberspace." (http://www.microserve.net/~thequail/libyrinth/joyce.html) Originally pub. in Postmodern Culture v.2 n.3 (May, 1992).
[3] Brian Stonehill, "The Cybernetic Plot of Ulysses." (http://www.microserve.net/~thequail/libyrinth/joyce.html)
[4] Darren Tofts, "In the Wake of Cyberspace." (http://www.ozemail.com.au/~caveman/Joyce/dtofts.htm)