When reading about Electronic literature, I was intrigued with the way it developed over time. When the term was first created it was in reference to literature that was stored online, and now electronic literature refers more to hypertext fiction. I thought this was an interesting development, one I had never thought or known about before: I know nothing about electronic literature. Referencing back to Professor Pressman’s lecture about electronic lit and patchwork girl, she distinguished the differences between the two as Patchwork girl has hypertext. This new era of electronic literature and hypertext has created more interactive work and pieces of Fiction. To me, a hypertext sounds complicated and annoying to navigate, but I also find it so interesting and creative that people are able to create cohesive fiction with hypertext. It is for sure a certain aesthetic of creative work and writing, one some might have a harder time with, but I do find it very interesting how this works as a concept and how digital literature has developed over the years. “We encounter electronic literature as both a reading experience and an application, an artifact that may also encompass the tool used to produce it.” (Rettburg 3) So basically the creator of a hypertext or digital work is also a viewer and a reader at the same time, the idea of intermedia. This is an interesting context of digital media: the viewer and the reader might be having the same experience because aren’t you doing both at the same time? I found the reading “Electronic Literature” interesting in this context and it has made me think more about how I real electronic literature versus a physical book or text.

This type of literature is experimental literature, but I also think that all literature is experimental. What even separates the two? I guess format and guidelines, formal literary devices and context. But I think its interesting to think about electronic lit in this context. It lacks the normal infastructure of what literature usually is. But E-lit does create more of an experimental state unlike other forms of lit. This text mainly got me thinking about our discussion on Thursday with the modernists. They were experimenting with form and content, much like hypertext in digital lit. You can’t separate form and content with digital literature, much like what this text was saying. The tools of something effects its content, which we see with e-lit and hypertexts. Overall, a lot of thoughts abut this reading and electronic lit in general: but I think it is so interesting and I am excited to learn more!