Alice Bell

The Possible Worlds of Hypertext Fiction

The Possible Worlds of Hypertext Fiction provides an innovative and comprehensive methodology for the analysis of Storyspace hypertext fiction. The book begins by examining the development of hypertext theory from the enthusiastic claims about the narrative capabilities that accompanied the first-wave to the analytical focus of the second. Drawing on second-wave conclusions about the self-reflexivity of the medium as well as the narrative devices that many Storyspace works contain, Bell convincingly argues that Possible Worlds Theory offers an appropriate framework with which to analyse them. Providing four comprehensive illustrative examples and an ongoing theoretical exposition, the book guides the reader through the approach while simultaneously supplementing and amending Possible Worlds Theory for its application for hypertext fiction. The book therefore provides a systematic and replicable analytical method that can be used by other analysts and offers a comprehensive and timely body of hypertext fiction criticism as well as an elucidation and critique of Possible Worlds Theory. In addition to scholars of electronic literature, including undergraduate and postgraduate students, this book should appeal to researchers working in the areas of narrative theory and stylistics.

Ontological Metalepsis and Unnatural Narratology

In this article, we focus on ontological metalepses that involve represented transgressions of world boundaries as one manifestation of the unnatural. We first discriminate between ascending, descending, and horizontal metaleptic jumps a three types of unnatural metalepses, or, more specifically, metalepses physically or logically impossible (Alber 80) and, in a second step, try to determine their potential functions. We also propose a new cognitive model that modifies Gerard Genettes structuralist model to conceptualize ontological metaleptic jumps as (1) vertical interactions either between the actual world and a storyworld or between nested storyworlds, or as (2) horizontal transmigrations between storyworlds.2 We argue that our postclassical method offers a more effective way of analyzing metalepsis because it allows us to describe the nature of ontological metalepsis more accurately and also because it embraces interpretation. We place this article on the overlap between unnatural narratology and transmedial narratology insofar as we analyze ontological metalepsis, an unnatural phenomenon, in both print and Storyspace hypertext fiction.

I know what it was. You know what it was: Second-Person Narration in Hypertext Fiction

Digital fiction is fiction, written for and read on a computer screen, that pursues its verbal, discursive, and/or conceptual complexity through the digital medium and would lose something of its aesthetic and semiotic function if it were removed from that medium (Bell et al.). Hypertext fiction is a specific form of digital fiction in which fragments of electronic text, known as lexias, are connected by hyperlinks. When reading a hypertext, the reader can click the “Enter” key on her keyboard to follow a default path through the text. Alternatively, she can follow hyperlinks that lead him or her to other parts of the text. Since the emergence of Storyspace hypertext fiction1 in the late 1980s, the study of digital fiction has undergone a significant paradigm shift. Recent research has moved from a “first wave” of pure theoretical debate to a “second wave” of narratological, stylistic, and semiotic analysis. While the theoretical intricacies of second-wave digital fiction theory have been well debated (see Ciccoricco; Ensslin; Ensslin and Bell, “Introduction”; Bell, Possible Worlds), the discipline and practice of analyzing digital fiction require a more systematic engagement and understanding than offered by much previous scholarship. With this critical need in mind, the Digital Fiction International Network (DFIN)2 has been exploring new

Interactional Metalepsis and Unnatural Narratology

This article argues that interactional metalepsis is a device that is inherently built into ergodic digital fiction and thus that ergodic digital fiction is necessarily unnatural. Offering a definition and associated typology of interactional metalepsis as it occurs in digital fiction, it explores the ways in which these media-specific and unnatural forms of metalepsis manifest in that medium. It defines interactional metalepsis as a form of metalepsis which takes place across the actual to storyworld boundary and that exploits the interactive nature of digital technology via the hardware through which the reader accesses the text, such as the mouse, keyboard, or other navigational devices, and/or via media-specific interactive modes of expression such as hyperlinks or avatars. It argues that because interactional metalepses are inherently unnatural both in terms of physically and logical impossibility and also because interactional metalepsis is a device that is intrinsically built into ergodic digital fiction, digital fictions are inherently unnatural. Exploring the ways in which these media-specific and unnatural forms of metalepsis manifest in digital fiction, I offer a typology of interactional metalepsis which incorporates the following: metaleptic navigational devices, metaleptic hyperlinks, metaleptic webcams, and metaleptic breath. The article shows that digital fiction allows unnatural narrative to manifest in ways that must be analyzed media-specifically and therefore according to the affordances of a particular medium. I argue further that different forms of metalepsis are likely to be conventionalized by readers of digital fiction to varying degrees which depend upon the wider digital, cultural context to which they belong and also that, unlike most metalepses in print which are typically defamiliarizing, some forms of interactional metalepsis can have the opposite, immersive effect. This article shows that some of the theoretical underpinnings of unnatural narrative need to be reconsidered in light of the unnatural’s manifestation in digital fiction. It thus contributes to the development of unnatural narratology as a transmedial approach.