Toying with the Parser: Aesthetic Materiality in Electronic Writing

Abstract

Surprisingly little attention has been given to electronic poetry and narrative extend and rework the place of electronic texts within aesthetic this particularly complex materiality in literary theory. There is widespread agreement that texts. electronic writing has produced various artistic genre[s] that each entail unique aesthetic field of aesthetic possibilities,1 such as electronic I. NEW CRITICISM'S THEORY OF TEXTUAL poetry, hypertext fiction, and computer games. CONCRETENESS But most of this work has either celebrated, rather abstractly, electronic texts as emphasizing W. K. Wimsatt's essay, Domain of Critireader participation2 or has taken the aesthetic cism, included in the hugely influential The qualities of this writing franted before moving Verbal Icon (1954), provides an exemplary on to discuss other issues. articulation of the New Critical understanding In this essay, I would like to consider how of textual materiality. The occasion Wimsatt' s one of the most traditional and fundamental discussion is the question of the relationship aesthetic distinctions-that between the work between literary aesthetics and general aesthetics. and its material elements-applies to electronic According to Wimsatt, one of the central probwriting. Probably the most common way to lems of developing such a general aesthetics is speak about this relationship is to say that the one that confronts us especially strongly in elecaesthetic elements of a work depend less on its tronic writing-the relative abstractness of the physical qualities than on our perception of basic aesthetic components of the literary work. those qualities; as Monroe Beardsley says, Summarizing debate on the subject, Wimsatt a physical object must be transformed into praises an earlier study for its nice discrimina perceptual object before we can respond to it ation of the several arts in regard to their 'physaesthetically.4 This distinction between a physical continuants': the painted canvas or wrought ical object and the phenomenal entity that it stone to which we return in a gallery, the sheet becomes when perceived has always been more of musical notes rendered by one pianist tonight, problematic when applied to the literary arts,5 by another next year, the page of words read but in electronic writing it is especially cormand reread by many readers. Although definplex, since even the physical page and print of ing such a material basis seems to be a necestraditional writing are largely absent in this new sary starting point cross-media aesthetics, medium. In this essay, I will begin by explainWimsatt is suspicious of the vague metaphoric ing the material complexity of traditional print heresies in this type of comparative work texts by exploring the physical/perceptual (p. 226). distinction in American New Criticism, which Specifically, Wimsatt questions what should makes clear the limits of the phenomenal account constitute the material basis a literary text. of the literary work. I will then consider how Wimsatt notes that traditional aesthetic theories