IV. map as metaphor - The Diigo Meta page

• 08 Jul 08
  

  Bill Wolff
  • navigational 'map'--a visualization of the Text's
    cognitive space
  • The map is not just a visualization
    of the structure of lexias, but is in a highly symbolic way a
    representational map (the use of qualifiers like 'Northern' and
    'Southern' relate to this). For example, it can be seen as "a
    map of a garden with paths and benches" (Coover 1992).
  • 3 more annotations...
  • • The map, which represents the text as totality or metaphor,
      was not something to be reached through the devious paths of discursive
      metonymy, rather it was a primary conceptual framework, providing
      the essential categories of 'right', 'left', 'up' and 'down' by
      which these readers oriented themselves. Metaphor here was not
      identified with finality or revelation, but with the initial incitement
      to hypertextual reading, the sense of being precipitated into
      an unexplored space. (Moulthrop 1993, 128)
    • it shows that the Text is limited,
      there is a limited number of storylines, and the links between
      the lexias are fixed (this, however, does not mean that the lexias
      could not be read in many alternative orders). Because of this,
      the reading of Victory Garden turns easily--at least after some time--into a process of spotting
      'blank areas' on the map, that is, looking for those parts of
      the map which are not yet familiar to the reader. This can be
      seen as a mode of 'reading as plot' instead of the more traditional
      'reading for the plot' (as described by Peter Brooks in Reading
      for the Plot, 1984), but as Moulthrop himself has noted, the ultimate
      goal still is to 'fill in' the underlying story (Moulthrop 1994,
      128).
    • What I find most important here is not the actual 'working out'
      of all the permutations, but the realization that there is a 'finite
      series of linear narratives'. If Afternoon's tool bar already evoked this idea, Victory Garden's map makes it evident. This can be seen as a parallel to Slatin's
      view that "the fixity of printed text as an object in physical
      space makes the text as an object in mental space seem equally
      stable and fixed." (155) The fixedness of the representational
      object (the map of Victory Garden) makes this hyperfiction Text also seem stable and fixed.

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