By examining what hypertext means to literThe computer ary criticism on the one hand (i.e., intertextuality), and computing on the other, can come to Leaving the scene and turning to the see how the two concepts may serve each other world of the computer, are struck by the in a mutually productive way. material structure: hardware, circuitry, chips, The notions of hypotext, hypertext, the architecture of nodes and links that resembles intertext, book, encyclopedia, librarysatellite photos of pre-planned communities, or a nodes, links., networks, webs and labymaze. Then enter the labyrinth of software, rinths, all seem to be inflections of a single the networks of branching trails. And when the phenomenon-intonations of a single metaphor, software is designed to manage textual networks as Borges might have said. and intersections leading to nodes and nuclei and modules of lesser (micro) networks of verbal Literature forking paths (linking yet more related nodestuff), the logical consequence is hypertext, Intertextuality: In simplerdays spoke of the network or web of all related written verbal literary milieu, echoes, influences and expression. models, forerunners (Borges: Every writer creates his own precursors). In most cases Criticism saw the relationship as a linking of authors and their writings-lexicons, metaphors, images, The fictions and essays of Borges are a good narrative situations, and common ideas. The place to look for the recent emergence, on the contemporary intonations have shifted focus to side, of the notion of textual networks. the linguistic and prosodic structure, and now His writings have been generative and underlie speak of texts rather than authors' works. The many of the central concepts. The following shift records our turning away from the individurepresentative quotations are all from Borges al creator to the tribe and to the notion of verbal and His Successors: The Borgesian Impact on art as both common patrimony and common Literature and the Arts, ed. Edna Aizenberg, U. effort. It is a turning away from the romantic I of Missouri Press, 1990: toward the generalized we and thence onward toward a self-sustaining, undifferentiated it. (Jaime Alazrakl, Borges's Modernism and the The personal creation has given way to literaNew Critical Idiom) ture as being a kind of generative custodianship