One of the most thorny issues that literature has always conveyed with itself has been its history: how can we talk about a movement, an author, a work without mentioning at least a few temporal references that give us an idea of what we are reading. The who/where/when/how/why-pattern on which our way of studying is based has always required this kind of knowledge.
Electronic Literature enters the literary history of our contemporary age with a huge lack of past due to many factors: first of all, because the medium through which we experience it, that is the new media technologies of computer and Internet mainly, is new as well. Or better, it is the mass use of it that has become possible only in the last decade, when always more sophisticated tecnhologies have started to combine with always more affordable prices. Secondly, although it is pretty easy to identify pioneers and famous theoreticians that have dealt with the topic, a traditional history of literature needs masterpieces. So what are they? Give me an example of a famous video-poet…tell me the name of the web-artist who has become famous for her…Tough, huh?
It is, and I will tell you why: either because one does not know anything about it, and still identifies electronic literature with e-books (which is understandable but it is high time this did not happen anymore), or because, being the Internet the principal medium through which electronic literature spreads and reaches us, we are faced with an overwhelming quantity of material among which finding something that worths reading is a daunting challenge.
Another problem strictly connected with the need of a literary history is the one of “metalanguage” about electronic literature, as I have mentioned in a post some hours ago. Thinking about literature, one obviously expects of dealing with concepts like hero, character, author, writer, reader, genre…but what happens in this explosion and discovery of electronic literature is that these terms seems inappropriate most of the times, as they were born and raised in print contexts, which of course have changed since the medieval illuminated manuscripts but that basically have preserved the same dynamics of production-printing-distribution since Gutenberg’s advent.
Ok, so this is a marvelous list of problems. Solution needed.
—Update—
That was Sept.13, 2010.
Today, November 24, 2010, something is going on, speaking of time lines. After a roundup in the Internet looking for a useful tool to build a timeline, I have found TimeRime. It is a free tool that allows you to build your own timeline, adding images, media and give short description about the facts you are talking about. You can also group the different events under the same period and dividing your timeline according different macro-sections. I am currently working on my timeline for electronic literature there.
Unfortunately, with TimeRime you cannot embed your own time line, so basically the only thing I can do is to post the link. So: this is it!
I am still working on that, there are so many facts I’d like to underline that it’ll take some time to figure them out. But still, I had to start somewhere.
