Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.75 (961 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0801855780 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 216 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2014-01-22 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
I have not seen any work so comprehensive in its synthesis of previous commentary. Instead of insisting on the uniqueness and newness of electronic writing and interactive fiction, however, Aarseth situates these literary forms within the tradition of "ergodic" literature--a term borrowed from physics to describe open, dynamic texts such as the I Ching or Apollinaire's calligrams, with which the reader must perform specific actions to generate a literary sequence.Constructing a theoretical model that describes how new electronic forms build on this tradition, Aarseth bridges the widely assumed divide between paper texts and electronic texts. He then uses the perspective of ergodic aesthetics to reexamine literary theories of narrative, semiotics, and rhetoric and to explore the implications of applying these theories to materials for which they were not intended."In many respects, this is the book I and many others have been waiting for. Can computer games be great literature? Do the rapidly evolving and culturally expanding genres of digital literature mean that the narrative mode of discourse -- novels, films, television series -- is losing its dominant position in our culture? Is it necessary to define a new aesthetics of cyborg textuality? In Cybertext, Espen Aarseth explores the aesthetics an
A Customer said THE book on interactive narrative studies. Aristotle is alive and he is norwegian! Finally here is the lost book of Poetics. If you are one of the rare race of people that like to think about videogames rather than play with them, you will love this book. Maybe many scholars won't pay Aarseth much attention, but time will speak by itself. This is the most intelligent, visionary and interesting book available about interactive fiction/narrative/drama/or-wh. Just get it elinesca what else is necessary to say. This book will spur so many thoughts and ideas that you will be reading it for ever after. It is a must for any serious hypertext/cybertext scholar.
"A book that critics and researchers in the field cannot easily ignore." -- Svenska Dagbladet
Aarseth is associate professor in the Department of Humanistic Informatics, University of Bergen, Norway.. Espen J