The Importance of the Term of Narratology in Electronic Literature

This research collection is created for the paper for the research paper that is a final assesment of Digital Humanities in Practise course in University of Bergen. I will analyse the connection between creative works that are mentioned in the critical writings that are emphasizing the term of narratology in electronic literature.  

At the moment, The ELMCIP Knowledge Base of Electronic Literature is the most suitable source for the analysis of this topic. Even if we cannot apply the same conclusion for all of the genre of the Electronic Literature, we can at least make generalizations about data that is uploaded to the database, which probably gathers most of the existent information about the genre of electronic literature. The database consists of cross-referenced entries on creative works of and critical writing about electronic literature as well as entries on authors (Scott Rettberg 2012). All nodes are cross-referenced so that it can be clearly seen which works were linked to the critical articles referencing the works.

The main goal underlying the inquiry of the research paper, is to find out how important the term of narratology is for the critics of electronic literature and which creative writings were mentioned the most. The research will also include analysis tags that were used in both critical writings about narratology in electronic literature and creative works that were referenced. The reasons of the usage of certain tags more then others as well as the reasons why some creative works are being referenced.

The art of narration in literature or simply the structure of a written story has been described, discussed and re-invented multiple times since 20th century. If we think about narratology in very general terms of structuralism, every single object, event, story, article, invention and a variety of surroundings have a certain structure and order. One of the highlighted critics in structuralism, Claude Levi Strauss, explained the terminology with a help of a myth. Ancient Greeks probably saw their myths as the rules for life or a way to explanation for the idea every action has its consequence. Sequence of events is vital to understand any story that is told, written or performed, naturally it raises a simple question if the first action does not happen how can the second one and all of the following ones happen. What if the rules or a well-know sequence of events are disrupted?

While the critics and researchers are debating on the deep level of upgrading the narration terms from literary perspective to the digital world, in my research I will portray the data concerning the topic uploaded to the ELMCIP database.