Book contents
- The Stylistics of ‘You’
- The Stylistics of ‘You’
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures and Table
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Theorising the ‘You Effects’
- PART I Singularising and Sharing
- PART II The Role of ‘You’ in the Writing of Traumatic Events
- Part III The Author–Reader Channel across Time, Gender, Sex and Race
- PART IV New Ways of Implicating Through the Digital Medium?
- 9 From Paratext to Hypertext
- 10 Coercing without Edifying
- Conclusion
- References
- Index
9 - From Paratext to Hypertext
Interactivity Revisited
from PART IV - New Ways of Implicating Through the Digital Medium?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 January 2022
- The Stylistics of ‘You’
- The Stylistics of ‘You’
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures and Table
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Theorising the ‘You Effects’
- PART I Singularising and Sharing
- PART II The Role of ‘You’ in the Writing of Traumatic Events
- Part III The Author–Reader Channel across Time, Gender, Sex and Race
- PART IV New Ways of Implicating Through the Digital Medium?
- 9 From Paratext to Hypertext
- 10 Coercing without Edifying
- Conclusion
- References
- Index
Summary
Chapter 9 focuses on paratext from the eighteenth century to Victorian novels, highlighting the revival of omniscience in twenty-first-century storytelling before taking a technological leap to hypertext. Building on theories put forward by specialists of the field, it shows to what extent the notion of ‘interactivity’ and the reader’s higher implication in the creative process in digital fiction as opposed to print fiction need to be narratologically and pragmatically qualified. As the reader is strongly invited to (virtually) perform the action mentioned in the hyperlink by clicking on it if the story is to go on at all, the reference model (of Chapter 1) is tested and adapted to foreground the limits but also the potentialities of digital art. In response to Warhol’s distinction (1986, 1989, 1995) between ‘engaging’ and ‘distancing’ narrators, Chapter 9 also proposes a new model of implication in fiction, taking the perspective of actual readers. Given their degree of engagement and immersion in the narrative addressed to ‘you’, distinctions between ‘engaged’, ‘distanced’ and ‘immersed’ readers are suggested in a flexible model allowing for intermediate positioning.
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- The Stylistics of ‘You'Second-Person Pronoun and its Pragmatic Effects, pp. 197 - 220Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022