Standardising hypermedia format for literary studies
| Published date | 01 June 1994 |
| Date | 01 June 1994 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb045323 |
| Pages | 353-359 |
| Author | Chandra Bhushan Sharma |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Library & information science |
Article
Standardising hypermedia
format for literary studies
Chandra Bhushan Sharma
Commonwealth
Staff
Scholar,
Department of
Education,
University of
Hull,
Hull
HU6
7RX,
UK
E-mail:
c.b.sharma@education.hull.ac.uk.
Abstract: This paper suggests
a
standard format for
creating hypermedia
software.
Teachers
and
students of
literature have taken up the use
of
hypermedia technology
enthusiastically
and
so we are
rapidly
arriving at a situation
where a mushrooming
of software for
language and
literature teaching
will be
faced.
We
will
arrive much
sooner at a
situation where
searching for
an appropriate
software would be as difficult
as
finding an appropriate
article
today.
Technology is
expected
to optimise
information to maximise
knowledge:
the confusion created
by Gutenburg's invention is because duplication
cannot be
avoided.
The
suggested format
is
based
on the
major
pillars of
literary criticism —
author
centred,
text
centred and reader
centred—and develops from
the
word
to the
work
level.
The
findings
have
been demonstrated in
the form
of
Technocriticism,
a
hypermedia
program
created on
HyperCard.
1.
Introduction
In the beginning literary creations were transferred orally
through word of
mouth,
but
since the
invention of
the
writing
process they
have
been recorded in orthographic form. Some
people say
the creative process, or the
'kernel',
of
both
the oral
and the
written
text
is performed
in
the
mind;
once the plot has
been finalised it is written in long hand or printed through
technological gadgets. More and more printing houses now
accept manuscripts only on disks. The switch over from an
oral to a written form of
text was
a
positive
step in the direc-
tion
of standardisation.
The
idea of hypertext must
have come
to its inventors because of the galaxy of information that
Gutenburg's invention
created.
Instead of producing and dis-
tributing thousands of
copies
of
documents,
we store informa-
tion on electronic devices which are easily accessible and
readily available. It is becoming more and more difficult to
find the appropriate information from published material at
the appropriate
time.
The issue in creating
literary hypertext is
not
to
select everything
that one can lay one's hands on
but to
select
the
most useful information from
the
wealth available.
Ted Nelson, who coined the term 'hypertext', named
his
hy-
pertext
Xanadu.
Conklin
(1987) says
'He named his hypertext
system
Xanadu,
after
the
"magic
place
of literary
memory"
in
Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem "Kubla Khan".' Ted Nel-
son's Xanadu project of putting
all
information
on one
format
and distributing through the network has not succeeded to
date,
and I would have serious doubts about its success until
some
standardisation process
is
adopted.
Hypermedia
obliges
us
to
invent
new
tools or instruments
of
analysis.
Hypermedia in language and literary pedagogy
may, for want of a better term, be named 'technocriticism'.
Technocriticism is ready to become a new approach/method
in literary theory. The birth of a technological approach to
literary analysis is unavoidable because of
the
coming of age
of educational technology and literary movements
like
struc-
turalism, hermeneutics
and
deconstruction.
Texts are written on
issues
which touch human sensibility
and human emotions. Texts draw on two dimensions: one is
universally
true across periods
like
beauty,
friendship
and
na-
ture,
and the other
is
guided by contemporary situations like
colonisation, poverty, revolution, technology and so on. A
general survey of
the
methods of literary appreciation makes
it clear that literary criticism revolves around three aspects:
the role or place of the author or creator of
the
text;
the impor-
tance
or authority of the text
itself;
and
the role
of
the
readers
with
their
exposure and training in different
theories
of inter-
pretation of text
Most critical articles published
in journals
handle similar
topics like the
biographical influences of
the
author,
semiotic
and cultural factors of
the
language, and so on.
A
more eco-
nomical approach would be to collect information on com-
mon aspects in one place, as attempted in technocriticism.
Text-specific information can be put
on
smaller text specific
nodes.
2.
Universal symbol system
If
we
look at the discussions in linguistics and anthropology
regarding universal features of human languages and behav-
iour, both disciplines suggest that human beings universally
have common habits and linguistic
characteristics.
These
hab-
its
and
expressions
change
periodically
and
get manifested
in
the
behaviour
or activities
of individuals of the
group,
in
acts
like dancing
or dressing or literary creation.
Incidentally,
painters all
over the
world
use and manipulate
three basic colours
—
red,
green and blue
— and
musicians
globally
use the
eight
basic nodes to create all types
of music.
The Electronic Library, Vol. 12, No. 6, December 1994 353
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