It is the hypothesis of intratextuality that a text’s meaning grows not only out of the readings of its parts and its whole, but also out of readings of the relationships between the parts, and the reading of those parts as parts, and parts as relationship (interactive or reverberative): all this both formally (e.g. episodes, digression, frame, narrative, line, etc.) and substantively (e.g. in voice, theme, allusion, topos, etc.) – and teleologically.
Reading Experiments / The Reading Experience
by Tim Kenny
by Tim Kenny · Published October 10, 2017 · Last modified July 1, 2023
‘Suspense thus essentially relates to the dynamics of ongoing action; curiosity to the dynamics of temporal deformation.’ Some thoughts on the ordering of exposition in the Argonautica’s Lemnian episode and how reordering might affect a reader’s experience and interpretation of the narrative.
Reading Experiments / Reading in Translation
by Tim Kenny
by Tim Kenny · Published April 29, 2017 · Last modified October 11, 2018
Inspired by Burroughsian ‘cut-up’, but more of a ‘mash-up’: two translated texts, one Latin and one Greek, two mythological narratives, and some intrusive narrators. Answers not included.
Twine’s a user-friendly story-building tool that I’ve (mis-)used to make a short interactive reading experiment. The sample text (unsurprisingly) is taken from the Argonautica: A.R. 1.922-984, the Argonauts’ arrival at Cyzicus. Brave the island alone or call upon allies for advice – the choice, reader, is yours!