ENGL 811 - Electric English

Institution:

Trinity College

Subject:

Description:

In Gulliver's Travels, Jonathan Swift satirizes attempts to invent a machine that would enable anyone to write books using an enormous wooden frame filled with wires and random words on movable bits of paper. While our contemporary machines are made of plastic, not wood, and seem so much more sophisticated and powerful than Swift's imaginary device, the rhetorical and literary questions raised by his satire are more relevant than ever in the digital age. This seminar will explore what happens when writers and readers go online. How do the new media arts affect the way we read and understand literature What changes when literary protagonists become avatars of story What do we make of hypertext novels and poetry machines on the Web We will seek to establish whether there is a distinctively new phenomenon that can be called "digital literature." If so, how do we define and evaluate it, and how do we place it in relation to a history of literature and literary aesthetic We will ground our conversations in a small sampling of traditional works of fiction and poetry from print culture, comparing these texts with a range of rhetorical and literary experiments taking place online. NOTE: For the graduate program, this course counts as a core course for the Writing, Rhetoric, and Media Arts track; it counts as an elective for the Literary Studies track. Open to undergraduates with permission of instructor. For undergraduate Writing, Rhetoric, and Media Arts minors, it counts as a core cours 1.00 units, Seminar

Credits:

1.00

Credit Hours:

Prerequisites:

Corequisites:

Exclusions:

Level:

Instructional Type:

Lecture

Notes:

Additional Information:

Historical Version(s):

Institution Website:

www.Trincoll.edu

Phone Number:

(860) 297-2000

Regional Accreditation:

New England Association of Schools and Colleges

Calendar System:

Semester

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