Stuck in a Loop? Dialogue in Hypertext Fiction

"This paper will focus on the use of dialogue in two early hypertext fictions. Both Michael Joyce's afternoon, a story (first published 1987) and Yellowlees Douglas's I Have Said Nothing (1994) have achieved near-canonical status having been excerpted in print in the Norton anthology Postmodern American Fiction (Geyh). As is often the case with hypertext fictions, the writers, Jane Yellowlees Douglas and Michael Joyce, also happen to be two of the foremost theorists of the form, and the sense of mutual influence is unavoidable. The aims of this paper are twofold: to explore the functions of dialogue in these fictions and the extent to which the representations are innovative; and to examine whether we need to reassess our models for understanding the functions and forms of fictional dialogue as we have begun to apply them to the print novel." (Source: taken from the first paragraph of the paper itself)