Narrative Nonlinearity and the Birth of the Wreader: A Hypertext Critical Reading of Selected Digital Literary Texts

Abstract

ABSTRACT Drawing upon the critical views of hypertext theory, this paper seeks to investigate the genre of hypertext fiction, analyzing some of its aspects, especially the domination of narrative nonlinearity and the birth of the wreader. The paper argues that computer technologies have revolutionized the form and representation of literary texts as well as the relationship between writer and reader. The study first fathoms the aspects of narrative nonlinearity as represented in Michael Joyce’s novel Twelve Blue (1996), a representative of first-generation hypertext fiction, and the two short stories “From Head to Toe” by Arseniy Klishin and Laura Gray (2019) and “The Road” by Jason Malabed (2014), which belong to second-generation hypertext fiction. Instead of having narrative hierarchies, these hypertexts depend on hyperlinks, multiple reading pathways, and multimodal representation that contribute to optimizing narrative nonlinearity. The paper then analyzes the critical concept of wreader/wreading and applies it to the selected hypertexts, showing how electronic literary production is no longer an absolute creation of the author. The three selected hypertexts indicate that a work of hypertext fiction binds together reader and writer into a collaborative process in which the reader becomes a coauthor of the text.