Notes and Quotes: Ensslin and Pope on page 311

Notes and Quotes

Astrid Ensslin and James Pope (beginning on page 311

The Mobius Case: http://www.media.bournemouth.ac.uk/studentshowcase/work/mobius/

Inanimate Alice: http://www.inanimatealice.com/

Denarrator Blog: http://genarrator.blogspot.com/ (hasn't been updated in almost two years)

The main focus of the authors’ case studies will be on how digital literature is being used to help students build knowledge and skills in the areas of digital literacy, multimodal narrative analysis, stylistics, creative writing, and in the creation of digital fictions (311).

The first case study is an example of how skills in digital literacy, multimodal narrative analysis, and ludic interaction have been and may be taught by using Inanimate Alice (311).

Inanimate Alice and Laccetti’s education pack (311-315).

The second case study project was dedicated to testing and fostering intrinsic motivation, developing advanced communicative competence in a foreign language, medially extended literary competence and spatial macrostructural thinking through creative collaborative writing in the digital medium as well as to teaching critical awareness along the lines of poststructuralist and hypertext theory (315).

Foreign language to discuss hypertext (315-318).

            I’m curious as to how this worked out considering so many of the words used in digital literature are words even some native speakers don’t know.

One motivation has been to “lift” digital literature out of the creative and critical ghetto it would appear to have migrated to (319).

            What.

Critical stalemate and lonely creative corner (320).

            Why do they feel the need to word it like this?

Case study 3 is an attempt to bled theory with practice and break down conceptual/theoretical barriers (320).

            Finally making sense…

They seem to want digital literature to lose its “underground” status… now it makes sense why they keep trying to distance it from creativity. You don’t have to pretend something isn’t borne out of and completely intertwined with creativity to establish it as a legit subject to study (321).

The authors argue that critical literature has largely overlooked the areas of how narrative structure, voice, character development, drama, and closure are affected by the interface in interactive narrative (321).

This whole essay seems to be an attempt to argue that digital literature should become more popular, and (as I comprehended it) that digital literature should work harder to be less obscure so that more people can enjoy it. So is that kind of like “selling out”? I didn't particularly take to the essays by Ensslin and I’m not sure if it was because I didn't agree with most of the ideas or if it was because of the abrasive writing style. Maybe it was just written for people that have already emerged themselves in the field. I just felt like I didn't get enough time to warm up to the ideas before the authors moved on to the next ones. Maybe I'll change my mind when I do a second reading.