Part I: What I’m adding to Wikipedia
Differences From Traditional Literature
In the vast spectrum that is the digital literature genre, pieces can take on many different forms and challenge the idea that is traditional literature. While e-books fall very close to traditional literature, interactive stories such as Gone Home are as far from traditional literature as possible. Most forms of electronic literature also incorporate some amount of interactivity that is usually difficult to replicate in traditional literature. An example would be Galatea, a text-based adventure in which the progression of the story is determined by the inputs of the reader. In many circumstances, this makes the reader feel as if they are an integral part of the story. This gives the reader a very different experience from what they would normally get from traditional forms of literature.
Part II: What from the Wikipedia article I’m revising
Notable People and Works
There are a number of notable authors, critics, and works associated with electronic literature.
One noteworthy piece of digital literature is Nightingale’s Playground by Andy Campbell and Judi Alston. This interactive fiction is a link between the original concept of text based interactive fiction and contemporary video games.
The hypertext story ‘Patchwork Girl’, by Shelley Jackson, is another noteworthy piece of electronic literature. The story is based off ‘Frankenstein’s Monster’ by Mary Shelley, but one key difference is that both the protagonist and Frankentein’s monster are female, giving the story a feminine twist. Throughout the hypertext, Jackson weaves together fragments of nodes in resemblance to the stitching together of frankenstein’s monster’s limbs.
Another famous hypertext story by Shelley Jackson is ‘My Body – A Wunderkammer’. This piece allows the reader to explore Jackson’s many memoirs by clicking through pages relating to various parts of her body. While blatantly shocking at times, this work by Jackson is also intriguingly sentimental and relatable.
Another notable work would be Pry by by Danny Cannizzaro and Samantha Gorman. Pry is an interesting take on electronic literature, especially considering its format is an application for phones and tablets. By utilizing the touch-based gestures used on tablets, Pry proves to be a very dynamic approach to the emerging e-lit genre. The use of these gestures makes Pry a unique component of the electronic literature genre.
In some cases video games can be considered significant works of electronic literature. Gone Home, created by Steve Gaynor and developed by Fullbright, pushes the boundaries of what can be considered electronic literature. While Gone Home has a heavy amount of video game elements, it also incorporates a style of storytelling that is common in electronic literature.
Part III: Works Cited
- Cannizzaro & Gorman, Pry, a Novella, https://prynovella.com/ (2014)
- Gaynor, Gone Home, https://www.gonehomegame.com/ (2013)
- Jackson, My Body – A Wunderkammer, https://collection.eliterature.org/1/works/jackson__my_body_a_wunderkammer.html (1997)
- Short, Galatea, https://emshort.wordpress.com/my-work/ (2000)
Part IV: Reflection
After spending so much time in our electronic literature class, I was definitely surprised to see how brief the wikipedia page on electronic literature actually was. It seems very ironic that such a dense genre has so little information about it available. That’s where we come in as class though. In my opinion, the page definitely needed a compare and contrast section. The relationship between traditional literature and electronic literature is very important, so it only seems appropriate to discuss it on the wikipedia page. In addition to that, the “Notable People and Works’ section seemed way too short for the amount of electronic literature floating around. With that in mind, I’m taking the time to add to this section extensively. My hopes are that in the future, people who are interested in e-lit will see this section of the page and will be able to seek out interesting and important examples of the Electronic Literature genre.
