E-Borges: Stuart Moulthrop’s Victory Garden

This essay analyses Stuart Moulthrop’s Victory Garden (1991), a singular hyperfiction within the context of hypertextual narratives released during the 90s. Taking into consideration the campus novel and anti-war novel themes, I focus my reading on the technological mediation of war and the intertextualization of Jorge Luis Borges’ short story “El Jardín de Senderos que se Bifurcan” (1941). Therefore, I argue that Victory Garden is an appropriation and recreation, via a digital medium, of several Borgesian motifs and his beloved metaliterary theme: the labyrinth.

PO.EX entry:

Po.Ex record

Works referenced:

Title	Author	Year
afternoon, a story	Michael Joyce	1990
Ficciones	Jorge Luis Borges	1962
forking paths	Stuart Moulthrop	1987
Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus	Mary Shelley	1831
Hegirascope	Stuart Moulthrop	1995
Marble Springs 1.0	Deena Larsen	1993
Patchwork Girl	Shelley Jackson	1995
The Garden of Forking Paths	Jorge Luis Borges	1941
Uncle Buddy's Phantom Funhouse	John McDaid	1992
Victory Garden	Stuart Moulthrop	1991

Critical writing referenced:

Title	Author	Year
Avatars of Story	Marie-Laure Ryan	2009
Canonizing Hypertext: Explorations and Constructions	Astrid Ensslin	2007
Digital Literature: From Text to Hypertext and Beyond	Raine Koskimaa	2000
Electronic Literature: New Horizons for the Literary	N. Katherine Hayles	2010
Ex-foliations: Reading Machines and the Upgrade Path	Terry Harpold	2009
From Text to Hypertext: Decentering the Subject in Fiction, Film, the Visual Arts, and Electronic Media	Silvio Gaggi	1997
Hyperfiction: Novels for the Computer	Robert Coover	1993
Hypertext: The Convergence of Contemporary Critical Theory and Technology	George P. Landow	1992
Literary Hypertext: The Passing of the Golden Age	Robert Coover	1999
Of Two Minds: Hypertext Pedagogy and Poetics	Michael Joyce	2002
Palimpsestes: La Littérature au Second Degré	Gérard Genette	1982
Reading Network Fiction	David Ciccoricco	2014
Remediation: Understanding New Media	Jay David Bolter, Richard Grusin	2001
The End of Books	Robert Coover	1992
The End of Books--Or Books Without End: Reading Interactive Narratives	J. Yellowlees Douglas	2003
The Endless Reading of Fiction: Stuart Moulthrop's Hypertext Novel Victory Garden	Robert L. Selig	2000
The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age	Sven Birkerts	2006
The New Media Reader		2003
The Possible Worlds of Hypertext Fiction	Alice Bell	2010
Transdução: Processos de Transferência na Literatura e Arte Digitais	Álvaro Seiça	2011

Publishers referenced:

Title	Location
Eastgate Systems, Inc.	Eastgate Systems, Inc. 134 Main Street 02472 Watertown , MA United States See map: Google Maps Massachusetts US

Organizations referenced:

Title
TINAC

Teaching Resource using this Critical Writing:

Resource	Teaching Resource Type	Author	Year
Digital Genres: Digital Art, Electronic Literature, and Computer Games (DIKULT 103, Spring 2014)	Syllabus	Judd Morrissey, Álvaro Seiça	2014

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Record posted by:

Jill Walker Rettberg