Hypertext Fiction

Frankly, my website will take all of five minutes to present, so I have also compiled some other examples of hypertext fiction (and hypertext creative non-fiction, if that's not too cumbersome a term) to demonstrate what I believe are successful and not-so-successful strategies in the new technology of form.

• "8 Minutes" by Martha Conway
  
• Revelations of Secret Surveillance by Judy Malloy
  
• "Capped" on DreamingMethods.com -- interactive Flash-based hypertext.
  
• Miranda July's promotional website for No One Belongs Here More Than You.

Translator’s Beowulf

I've made a site for my electronic translator's Beowulf project here: http://www.translatorsbeowulf.com.

Hopefully, I'll be adding my description of the project/the final assignment for class soon.

Project Presentation

I can give a presentation tomorrow on what I have so far, though I admittedly don't have much. I actually would like to get everyone's input on my project.

Basically, I have now an XML document for my "Translator's Beowulf" project and a form for entering information into the XML file. I have only transcribed the first three lines of the poem, and I have created only a few of my XML tags. If there is time in class, I'd like to get your input on what tags I should be including, how I should nest the tags, etc.

Electronic Beowulf 2.0 Presentation, May 21, 2007, Douglas Ryan VanBenthuysen

Here's some info relevant to my presentation today on the Electronic Beowulf, which is basically the contents of my handout.

Doug

• Cotton Vitellius A. xv: The name of the manuscript preserving Beowulf (The manuscripts of Sir Robert Cotton are so named because he would kept busts of Roman emperors on his book shelves. So, Cotton Vitellius A. xv was the 15^th book on the top shelf (A) of the bookshelf with the bust of Vitellius.)
  
  • Prefixed Leaves: Cotton added leaves to his compilation of the Southwick and Nowell codices. These leaves have resulted in their being two foliation schemes (BL, or British Library, foliation counts these leaves, whereas MS, or manuscript, foliation does not).
    
  • Southwick Codex: The first codex in Cotton Vitellius A. xv, indicated by a signature of ownership on the second recto. A 12^th century composition.
    
    • Soliloquies of St. Augustine: Transcription attributed to King Alfred
      
    • Gospel of Nicodemus (fragment)
      
    • Debate of Solomon and Saturn
      
    • St. Quintin Homily (fragment)
      
  • Novell Codex: Second codex in Cotton Vitellius A. xv, indicated by the name 'Laurence Nouell' and the date '1563' at the top of the page of 91(93)r. An 11th century composition.
    
    • Life of St. Christopher (fragment)
      
    • Alexander's Letter to Aristotle
      
    • Wonders of the East (illustrated)
      
    • Beowulf
      
    • Judith (beginning and original ending gone)
      

• Important Dates
  
  • 7^th – early 9th Century: Traditional dating of Beowulf's composition.
    
  • 835: Beginnings of full scale Viking invasions.
    
  • 835-1016: Unlikely dating for composition or manuscript given anti-Scandinavian sentiment.
    
  • 975-1025: Traditional dating of Beowulf manuscript
    
  • 978-1016: Rule of Æthelred Unræd.
    
  • 1016-1035: Rule of Cnut the Great.
    
  • 1016-1035: Kiernan's date for manuscript and composition.
    
  • 1536-1540: Dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII.
    
  • 1563: Date appearing in the Novell Codex.
    
  • 1571-1631: Life of Sir Robert Cotton, who combined the Southwick and Novell codices into Cotton Vitellius A. xv.
    
  • 1700: Robert Cotton's grandson John Cotton gives the Cotton Library to the British people/the British Library.
    
  • 1722: Manuscript transferred from Cotton's house to Essex house then to the ominously named Ashburnham House.
    
  • 1731 (23 October): Ashburnham House burns. Of 958 manuscript volumes, 114 were destroyed and 98 damaged "so as to be defective." Cotton Vitellius A. xv was badly singed. (See Andrew Prescott, 'Their Present Miserable State of Cremation': the Restoration of the Cotton Library. 'Their Present Miserable State of Cremation': the Restoration of the Cotton Library. Or http://www.uky.edu/~kiernan/eBeowulf/ajp-pms.htm)
    
  • 1787: Thorkelin A transcript.
    
  • 1789: Thorkelin B transcript.
    
  • 1815: Thorkelin publishes first edition.
    
  • 1817: John C. Conybeare's collation.
    
  • 1824: Sir Frederic Madden's copy of Conybeare and his own collation.
    
  • 1845: Each leaf of Beowulf is mounted in a frame for preservation.
    
  • 1882: Julius Zupitza publishes photographic facsimile of Beowulf.
    
  • 1981: Kiernan's Beowulf and the Beowulf Manuscript. Kiernan argues that the composition of Beowulf was contemporaneous to the production of the manuscript, and that it occurred during the reign of Cnut the Great. His argument is based on historical and linguistic evidence, and it charges that scholars have not spend enough time studying the manuscript which itself provides clues to the late dating of the poem.
    
  • 1993: Electronic Beowulf project begins for the sake of allowing access to the manuscript without risking damage.
    
  • 2003: Release of electronic Beowulf 2.0.
    

• About the Electronic Beowulf 2.0
  
  • Owned by the British Library, where it is available for purchase for 111.63 pounds of sterling British silver. (http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/themes/englishlit/beowulf.html)
    
  • Compiled by Professor Kevin S. Kiernan of the University of Kentucky.
    
  • Contents, CD 1:
    
    • Approximately 1000 x 1500 resolution jpg image of each folio at 572 dpi (about 200 KB per file), including all items contained in Cotton Vitellius A.xv.
      
    • Similar resolution images of all page of the following:
      
      • Thorkelin A transcript
        
      • Thorkelin B transcript
        
      • Conybeare's collation
        
      • Madden's collation
        
    • A searchable transcript (with lines broken according to the manuscript) with notation for readings that come from Thorkelin A, B, or other editorial judgments.
      
    • A searchable edition with lines broken poetically. This is perhaps the most controversial part of the project as it differs from previous editions, notably Klaeber, and contains 3184 lines instead of 3182.
      
    • User guide
      
    • Selected articles concerning the Electronic Beowulf
      
  • Contents, CD 2:
    
    • Approximately 2000 x 3000 resolution jpg images of each folio at 572 dpi (about 1.5 MB per file), including all items contain in Cotton Vitellius A.xv.
      
  • Functionality (CD 1)
    
    • Relatively simple Java application governs what appears in browser frames.
      
      • Left narrow frame for notes and glossary
        
      • Right narrow frame for alphabet
        
      • Center frame for content, which can be split into two frames for side-side viewing.
        
        • When viewing Beowulf, each central frame can contain the manuscript, either Thorkelin transcript, either collation, the transcript, or the edition.
          
        • The two frames can contain the same item. In this case, the frames can show folios sequentially or by collation.
          
      • One frame can be designated as "master." Moving through the master results in moving through the other item.
        
      • Top box, which is the Java application, allows switching between views, items, folio, etc.
        
    • Search
      
      • Edition and transcript are searchable.
        
      • Setting the edition or transcript as master effectively allows search within the images.
        
      • Many search filters available.
        
    • Folio 179r Special: Offprint from 178v can be viewed using Photoshop file with overlay.

Techne

I managed to get the Hengwrt Digital Chaucer working. I'm pretty sure the problem was that the CD contains an older version of the Anastasia software, which is essentially a web server that tells Internet Explorer what to display in frames depending on what you choose to look at. My guess is that it works in the library because they already have the newer version of Anastasia installed. Anyway, I now have it running on my home machine, which is Windows XP with Internet Explorer 7.0. I have also confirmed that it works with Firefox version 1.5, which I only downloaded in an act of pure charity for verifying functionality for all of you Mozilla people. I will test it on my Vista laptop as soon as I go back to the classroom and get the power cord that I left plugged in the wall.

Basically, I downloaded the "Running the Hengwrt Research Edition from your hard disc (Windows and Mac)" section of this page: http://www.sd-editions.com/anastasia/fixes/index.html. The fringe benefit is that you don't need the CD to run get to the content (you need to get content off the CD to make it work the first time). I suppose you are on your honor to delete the material after you check the CD back into the library.

In other news, we were talking about the annoyance of underlined text on Perseus today. In Internet Explorer, you can get rid of underlined links by going Tools | Internet Options | Advanced. The option is about a third of the way down. You can also dictate your own style sheet by selecting General | Accessibility. In Firefox, you can override underlining by going to Tools | Content | Colors…, and unchecked the box in the Link Colors section. To make a custom CSS file for Firefox, you need to find your Firefox profile (the location will be different on different operating systems--just search for "userContent") and change the name of the userContent-example.css file to userContent.css, then edit the file (I can't seem to get this to work, however, but it works in theory). If anyone wants me to post a detailed explanation as to how to create a simple CSS file or how to associate it with Internet Explorer or Firefox, let me know and I will.