multi-linearity vs non-linearity
I think of linearity as meaning like a line so F W
spends a lot of its effot confusing lines; what comes
first what comes next is open to question. The
portmanteau words encourage new etymologies implying
that in the 'now' of the reading we are engaged in,
meaning is being challenged before we have read it.
The analogy is something like time travel, your father
dies so will you be born. This is not I think too
fanciful a reading. You only have to see the forests
of published bumph about just short portions of FW to
see how the multi dimensional the readings of it can
be.
Any portion of FW because of the multidimensional and
multi lingual quality of the thing is such that every
point is in many dimensions therefore before and
afters get all mixed up. Infact hypertext as such
doesn't really describe it, in FW there is no back and
forward button. I reckon this could be a JJ point
about Irish history the idea of the already sold out
and betrayed long since is a very Joycian motif
Ulysees: 'history is nightmare from which I am trying
to awake'
I don't really see what your point about polysemy is?
Are you saying that all texts are open to reader
interpretation, and so all texts are polysemous. this
may be true BUT some texts encourage it and some do
not. Milton's paradise lost has a very particular
message to communicate and is designed to get the
reader to experience a prostestant sense of how
paradises is lost and the need to resist temptation
etc etc, it is not open to just any reading. Even JJ's
FW isn't open to just any reading, there are rules to
the game. Jane Austen has levels of reading clearly
and I wouldn't say that there is not reader
involvement we invest in the characters sympathy
antipathy etc but its different than FW.
I think of Umberto Eco's notion of an open and closed
text, I bit simplisitc but worthwhile here, JA's PnP
is there as a text object from a particular time and
we as readers are open to imagine the characters
exisiting outside the frame of the novel what happens
next etc The example being say The wide sargaso sea
and Jane Eyre. BUT this sort of thing is quite
unimaginable with FW's there is no point to continue
from or to go to before it is a textual whole the
rules of reading are internal and do not partake of
the realistic/moral/economic norms established in Pnp
.
that about says I think
If however we are still staying hypertext is not like
finegans wake then give me an example of literary
hypertext that better makes the point?
neville
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