We had to read from the book, Electronic Literature. When I first picked the book up, I didn’t think much of what the title could mean, the two words in general really. However, upon reading and from past class discussions, I have already grown to understand and appreciate a little bit more about what electronic literature actually entails. Simply put, electronic literature, as I have been growing to understand, is an online space in which to put actions from books or even real life. Pages 73-86 from Electronic Literature exemplify my point well.
One of the first online game examples this reading addresses is that of dolls, The Doll Games. This game is a very good representation in my opinion of electronic literature. The way the book describes the game, “The work takes a layered metafictional approach, taking a phenomenon- playing with dolls- that is often dismissed as an ordinary idle pastime of young girls wrapping layers of commentary around it from the imagined voices of the dolls themselves, to the reflections of the sisters on their games at different stages of their lives as writers and researchers, to the fictional voice of the scholar, to the relation of their stories to larger questions of how children use weird forms to play to wrestle with their emerging sense of identity and their place in the world” (Rettberg, 74). I think this quote is particularly useful in explaining what electronic literature means. The act of playing with dolls is something I think a lot of young girls have done at some point in their childhood, I know I have. But the way in which that same action is translated to a digital platform is so interesting and really expresses electronic literature.
The book also talks about hypertext fiction, which is something we have discussed in class as well when talking about other games. I really enjoyed reading about this as I felt I could easily relate it to the in-class games we had previously discussed. It made it easier for me to understand what the book was trying to exactly get at since I had been previously exposed to the concept of hypertext fiction.
The game that was assigned for homework, My Body- A Wunderkammer was in my opinion a game of adventure and exploration. This is something else we have spoken about in class that I saw relevant to our assignment. The game has you click on different body parts to learn more and read more of the story. As you clicked, you got to learn more about which each part of the body meant to the main character. You were essentially part of writing the story you read by choosing which body parts to click on and when.
I think the following link is a good example of how I am trying to explain Hypertext as I have been understanding class discussions.
Work Cited:
Rettberg, Scott. Electronic Literature. Polity Press, 2018.