Doctoral Consortium Review of Cole by Walker

Please read these comments, and decide which comments you agree with and which you disagree with. Do any of the questions indicate that the commentator has not understood your work correctly and therefore means that you need to modify your presentation? Alternatively, how can you best answer the questions that they raise?

summary

An analysis of Ezra Pound's The Cantos as a hypertext, arguing for a broad definition of hypertext. The analysis will also lead to a discussion of the concept of hypertextual literacy, or how we do/should read hypertext.

clarification

-I'd be interested in what other hypertext theory you'll be using in addition to Landow and Bolter? Also whether you'll be using much post-structuralist theory, since you seem to be interested in those aspects of hypertext theory? Such as indeterminacy, openess, multivalency etc? -Do you mean "how do we read hypertextually" or do you mean "how should we read hypertextually"? Some places you seem to be descriptive and others quite normative - "few have offered guidelines."

debate

-I'm suspicious of the circular methodology of deciding that The Cantos is hypertext (not everyone would recognise it as such) and then using your reading of it to define how we read hypertext in general. -I also think many of the things you define as hypertextual in The Cantos could just as easily be defined as modernist/postmodernist (no "final" interpretation, suggested links, lines rather than one fixed sequence). Perhaps the literacy you'll find is more a postmodern (or something) literacy than a specifically hypertextual literacy? -Are most studies of The Cantos really still "hindered by the print-bound expectations of unity, closure and sequence"? There are other critical traditions than that of hypertext theory that are "unhindered" by those expectations. But I don't know Pound scholarship at all.

information

effectiveness

-The first paragraph had me smiling at its clarity. That's a really good short abstract of your project that let me feel I had a decent idea of what you wanted to do, where you're coming from, the background of your project, its scope, what the dissertation will look for - that's really impressive! -I found the rest of the presentation easy to follow and interesting, and I liked the way you indicate how far your research has come (pointing out that you don't know the final conclusions) while suggesting some of your work so far. I'll be interested to see your results :) (and you got more "critical" comments from me than I gave the others because I understood your presentation much better than the technical ones...)