Hypertext

a brief introduction

Hyperlinks are used all over the web. Indicated by underlined and sometimes differently colored segments of text, we read these markers as integral road signs for navigation. Once clicked upon these dynamic zones have the capacity to transport us from one distinct window to another.

In the late 1980s, with the development of Storyspace, this approach of linking and web-like structure was applied to literature (Bell and Ensslin 311). In some ways this progression made sense, books already had these structural connections: “Page 87 is permanently linked to page 86” (The Pleasures of (Hyper)text, 43). However, this new medium of the hypertext came with new possibilities for narrative. Narrative was no longer bound to the linear form — there became more room for association and surreal stream of consciousness. Story did not have to work horizontally, but could also work vertically — in fact a story could become any shape it wanted.

Yet in addition to these new structural potentials, what made hypertext fiction so distinct, was its degree of reader collaboration. Finally “texts [worked] the way Roland Barthes and other structuralist critics said that they should work: texts that are “networks of references,” and are ultimately collaborations between writers and readers, rather than autonomous, complete entries” (The Pleasures of (Hyper)text, 43).

This article will explore three different hypertexts to consider the various degrees of agency the reader is given and what that ultimately means for narrative.

NEXT: literature reassembled in “24 Hours with Someone you Know”