Blog Six

Reflection on Amanda Starling Gould's article on Electronic Literature

According to Gould, electronic literature has rapidly taken off, and so she fittingly provides the reader with works that best represent this form of literature, especially beneficial to all its newcomers.  I would include myself in the category of novice.  Up until this class I was not aware of this form of literature.  Now that I have gained a very small amount of knowledge and experience in this field I can understand Gould when she says, "E-lit provides students new objects to think with and new ways to think the objects (the text) we think we know."  Electronic literature is being represented in such a distinct manner that most of what we already know about literature that we wish to apply to this new form will only leave us frustrated.  Hence, it is recommended to approach E. lit with a fresh mind.

Gould also states, "If we are too tightly or too tidily contained within a particular theoretical discourse, we chance ignoring significant or critical elements of what should be a hybrid episteme for the study and teaching of e-lit. Alternately, if we are too open―too hybrid―we risk a-historicizing or de-historicizing our works and practice."   When this idea is applied to our approach on E. lit a few questions arise, what would be the happy medium?  who determines it?  if this form of literature has to follow a specific set of rules does is put a hindrance on the creativity of the author? 

N. K. Hayles best captures the idea of E.lit and the method to keep it alive and growing with the following, "in the classroom we pair the teaching of e-lit reading skills with the concurrent instruction of e-lit creation. By creating their own works in an environment that closely re-produces the conditions of its typical authoring―one that is collaborative, transliterary, active, layered, programmed and coded―our students can gain deeper understandings of the field and its objects. Students produce concepts from the works and from the working―the hands-on making―of e-lit pieces."