Narrative as virtual reality : immersion and interactivity in literature and electronic media / Marie-Laure Ryan.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Ryan, Marie-Laure, 1946-

Series:

Parallax (Baltimore, Md.)

Parallax

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Books and reading.

Interactive multimedia.

Virtual reality.

Physical Description:

xiii, 399 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001.

Summary:

Is there a significant difference in attitude between immersion in a game and immersion in a movie or a novel? What are the new possibilities for representation offered by the emerging technology of virtual reality? As Marie-Laure Ryan demonstrates in this study, the questions raised by new, interactive technologies have their precursors and echoes in pre-electronic literary and artistic traditions. Formerly a culture of immersive ideals - getting lost in a good book, for example -we are becoming, Ryan claims, a culture more concerned with interactivity. Approaching the idea of virtual reality as a metaphor for total art, the text applies the concepts of immersion and interactivity to develop a phenomenology of reading.

Contents:

Part I Virtuality

1 The Two (and Thousand) Faces of the Virtual 25

2 Virtual Reality as Dream and as Technology 48

Interlude: Virtual Realities of the Mind: Baudelaire, Huysmans, Coover 75

Part II The Poetics of Immersion

3 The Text as World: Theories of Immersion 89

Interlude: The Discipline of Immersion: Ignatius of Loyola 115

4 Presence of the Textual World: Spatial Immersion 120

5 Immersive Paradoxes: Temporal and Emotional Immersion 140

Interlude: Virtual Narration as Allegory of Immersion 163

Part III The Poetics of Interactivity

6 From Immersion to Interactivity: The Text as World versus the Text as Game 175

Interlude: The Game-Reader and the World-Reader: Italo Calvino's If on a Winter's Night a Traveler 200

7 Hypertext: The Functions and Effects of Selective Interactivity 204

Interlude: Adventures in Hypertext: Michael Joyce's Twelve Blue 225

8 Can Coherence Be Saved? Selective Interactivity and Narrativity 242

Interlude: I'm Your Man: Anatomy of an Interactive Movie 271

Part IV Reconciling Immersion and Interactivity

9 Participatory Interactivity from Life Situations to Drama 283

10 Participatory Interactivity in Electronic Media 306

Interlude: Dream of the Interactive Immersive Book: Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age 332

Conclusion: Literature in the Media Landscape 347.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [375]-388) and index.

ISBN:

0801864879

0801864887

OCLC:

43864167