Educational Hypertexts

[Note: The system is not online because of copyright issues, this is only the introduction. Links will work only to the entry page of each hypertext, but not within the hypertexts, if you want more information please mail me]

Hypertext and Joyce were probably destined to converge as subjects in the revolution of information technologies and the humanities paradigm shift of the end of the millennium: Joyce is a favourite author of hypertext theorists, (who see him as a forerunner in his attempts at breaking traditional linearity), and the joycean community itself has always been open to new critical approaches to his very rich and open texts.

Hypertext has been successfully used as a structuring tool in Humanities Computing for the creation of contextual webs dedicated to broadening the understanding of a particular literary work, author, or subject. This project wants to take this a step further and exploit the unique linking possibilities of hypertext and the special activeness of its reading process to create non-contextual hypertexts that help students reach a new insight into one of Joyce´s texts: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

Some applications of hypertext to the study of literature so far include:

- Digital editions of print texts, textual archives (automatic notes, related articles…).
- Electronic bibliographies and searchable text corpora.
- "Contextual-webs" that put an author (or group of authors, or period) in their historical/political/economical etc. contexts, so that students gain a better understanding of the literary works.
- On-line course material, (with or without student input).
- Electronic reviews and discussion forums (wide range: traditional reviews with academic papers, artistic-creative reviews, on-line congresses…).

All these applications are very practical and valuable. The electronic material is:

- cheaper to produce (and to store) than paper
- faster to access (and provides a more efficient access)
- able to integrate different media (text/image/sound)
- suited for distance learning, teaching and other academic exchange
- easier to integrate into wider webs of documents

But a digital edition of Joyce´s Ulysses that integrates audio excerpts and scholarly notes is using the hypertextual format as a mere storage vehicle. The same could be said of a classroom material website that lists papers about a particular subject and has links to them, or of a bibliography CD-ROM, or of any of the examples I have given above. Most of the so-called hypertexts could in fact be printed together with an index and be just as useful. Can hypertext be used for something else when applied to the study of literature?

This set of educational aids uses the specific properties of hypertext to throw light on to a particular literary work, in this case the Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. As I see it, some of these properties are:

- Hypertext users have to take action/decisions in order to advance through the text.
- Hypertext lets users perceive processes instead of only finite results.
- A hypertext's multilinear structure can be used to convey meaning.

I don't want to imply that my four proposals are the only possible applications of hypertext to the teaching/learning of literature, but they illustrate my own theoretical approach to hypertext (you can find my paper "A Pragmatics of Links" here); these hypertexts explore and test my approach. In fact, each particular work will call for a specific way of applying the technology, and my proposals are as much based on my ideas about hypertext and user interaction as on the structure and meaning of the Portrait itself.

All four hypertexts are to be used with the text, and never as a substitute. Please use the navigation bar to your left to go to the different hypertexts and read the detailed explanations, or read more about how to use these hypertexts.