Eric Havelock has argued that the epic texts of Homer are principally didactic and that "the tale is made subservient to the task of accommodating the weight of educational materials that lie within it" (Preface to Plato 61). The oral poem exists in some sense as an encyclopedic repository of cultural knowledge. Committing these works to script results in the first western example of transitionary literature: an oral poem in written form. I would like to suggest that Joyce's Afternoon is also transitional literature: a recognizably contemporary, American novel in electronic hypertext form.
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