Thesis Proposal for MA in Rhetoric & Composition
Name: Jonathan Polk
ID Number: 406345
Tentative Title: Digital Literacy Analysis of Print Novels with Visual Media
Statement of Issue: Scholars such as Walter Ong, Jay David Bolter, and Gunther Kress
have described an emerging new literacy that has arisen with computers and the digital
media. With the focus shifting from not only what the content of a message is to
encompass how that message is encoded and transmitted, much has been said about the
integration of images and writing in the use of constructing meaning. However, little
attention has been paid to how such methods are used within the context of a fictional
narrative produced in print. This project will argue that while advances into media retain
the properties of the older media, the transmission from our digital writing space to a
print writing space retains the properties of the digital, and therefore the theories applying
to narrative in digital media apply to print novels containing visual media as well.
Taking the work of Walter Ong and further examining the history of writing, Jay David
Bolter claims in Writing Space that one should always ask how a particular writing space
refashions its predecessor and how it claims to “improve on print’s ability to make our
thoughts visible and to constitute the lines of communication for our society” (13).
Specifically Bolter is focusing on the new electronic writing space that has emerged with
the proliferation of computer technology in the past thirty years, but it is applicable to any
new form of communication. He goes on to suggest that “remediation” is a shift in “the
sense that a newer media takes the pace of an older one, borrowing and reorganizing the
characteristics of writing in the older medium and reforming its cultural space” (23). An
easy example of this practice in action would be the hypertextual look of the front page of
a newspaper, with many ‘links’ to stories later in the paper being printed above the fold
in order to catch the attention of a wider audience. We might also say that the integration
of images into the texts of contemporary fiction could be seen as remediation, when the
proliferation of blogs in which such writing easily and often takes place influences those
publishing for a more traditional audience.
In Bolter’s estimation, what is currently happening is a “readjustment of the ratio
between text and image in various forms of print,” something that in the context of
contemporary fiction is quite obvious (48). As the use of graphic elements increases,
further attention must be paid to the role this plays in the execution of fiction. Any
student of reader response theory would be forced to admit varying ways such elements
can be interpreted by a reader, and how these interpretations can lead the text to be create
meaning in different ways.
Bolter’s claims that in “uniting the verbal and the pictorial, the screen constitutes a visual
unit that depends on but also attempts to surpass the typography of the printed page” (66).
However, in texts such as Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
and Lauren Groff’s The Monsters of Templeton, the verbal and the pictorial are united in
a way that attempts to surpass the average typography and traditional layout of a printed
page as well, though no attention is paid by Bolter to such works. Instead, he takes his
analysis into the realm of electronic fiction, with such hypertextual narratives as Shelly
Jackson’s Patchwork Girl. In reviewing such hypertexts, Bolter says that “the links have
the same status as verbal episodes,” and therefore it is appropriate “for the reader to look
at the formal arrangement of the text as it is to get lost in the story” (185). This dovetails
nicely with John Trimbur’s assertion that we as scholars should pay attention to delivery,
the overlooked fifth canon of rhetoric, rather than the classical approach of looking at the
text as transparent.
In his book Literacy in the New Media Age, Gunther Kress immediately asserts that the
“broad move from the now centuries-long dominance of writing to the new dominance of
the image and, on the other hand, the move from the dominance of the book to the
dominance of the medium of the screen” should now be the focus of the literacy studies
(1). He is urging scholars to analyze writing in the style it is being used as much as
analyzing it based upon the method of delivery.
Technology is at the heart of his arguments, as he points out that with print-based
technology, “the production of a written text was made easy, whereas the production of
the image was difficult; the difficulty expresses itself still in monetary cost” (5).
However, the difficulty one encounters when trying to integrate images with words in a
printed text has been greatly reduced with the proliferation of new technology, such as
that that allows the author to act simultaneously as typesetter. As printing presses are
developed that use computers rather than actual plates of letters, the ease and therefore
cost of producing more unorthodox texts has been heightened. We no longer regard as
unusual italics or emboldened words in everyday texts.
Kress also points out the fact that layout is also readily manipulated, and does change the
deeper meaning of a text. In his example, bullet points are, as their name suggests,
“bullets of information” (16). They are fired at a reader in a hard and direct manner. But
such changes may seem superficial, but others change “not only the deeper meanings of
textual forms but also the structures of ideas, of conceptual arrangements, and of the
structures of our knowledge” (16). These changes alter the way we think, a theory that
goes back to the transition from oral to written cultures studied by Ong.
He goes on to say that in writing, “meaning is made at the moment when ‘that
which is to be meant’ is fused with ‘that which can mean it’, that is, when a meaning is
matched with a form/signifier by the writer, in the most apt fashion possible” (39). In
essence, Kress is claiming that meaning is created when the author successfully
constructs a signifier whose intended meaning is decoded by a reader is the most
appropriate way possible. Foer has indicated that he does not think about where images
should be placed in his text before composition, but rather looks to communicate his
intended information in what he considers the simplest way possible for a reader
(Segundo). This is not to say that an image is simpler than a word, but that at times a
single image can communicate more quickly and with more scope than a lengthy
description. Kress also claims that as readers, we can “look at the signifiers and make
hypotheses about what they may be signifying,” because we know that the author
selected the “most apt expression of that which was to be signified” (44). Therefore, we
now understand the process by which writers select signifiers in their work, and can thus
successfully extrapolate their intended meanings by following the logic of their inclusion
within the greater context of a specific work.
In Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design, Kress writes with Theo van
Leeuwen that “[c]ommunication requires that participants make their messages
maximally understandable in a specific context”, and therefore opt for forms of
expression that they believe to be the most transparent with regards to other participants
(11). Looking at contemporary fiction including visual elements, we can assume that the
inclusion was chosen so as to be the easiest method by which a particular meaning could
be transmitted to a reader. With the advancement of desktop publishing, visual design
“becomes less of a specialist activity, something that many people” do alongside other
activities (12). Thus, the ability for typesetters to be eliminated from the construction of
a text has and will have a large impact on publications, especially within the realm of
contemporary fiction. When someone like Mark Z. Danielewski can construct a text that
relies as much on the way the elements are arranged as it does on what those elements are
trying to communicate themselves, new ways of thinking about the novel will emerge in
way that was impossible before this became a cost-effective way of publishing.
Research Questions: Can we consider contemporary novels incorporating visual media
to be a subset of fiction written for the digital writing space? If so, do the critical
apparatuses developed for the study of fictional narrative in the fully apply to said works?
What limitations are put upon the author of print fiction with visual media by the
constraints of the physical writing space?
Proposed Procedure: In evaluating works for this project, I will focus primarily on the
critical models developed by Jay David Bolter and Gunther Kress. More specifically,
elements such as layout, use of images, color, variable typographies, and other
unorthodox methods will be examined and analyzed in order to demonstrate ways in
which these decisions affect the meaning of the text. The works analyzed will also be
critiqued according to the constraints on their design by their production, consumption,
and structure, in order to demonstrate the some of the primary hindrances authors have
when varying page design as well as the hindrances that readers may face when trying to
navigate through the narrative.
For the purposes of this study, the term ‘contemporary fiction’ will refer to works
published after the year 2000. The texts selected for analysis will be from this time frame
in every instance, though references to works from an earlier period may also be
included. Each work will also be from a major publisher in order to demonstrate the
mainstream nature of the genre. Selected works will include but are not limited to:
Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Steven Hall’s The Raw
Shark Texts, Mark Z. Danielewski’s Only Revolutions and House of Leaves, and Chip
Kidd’s The Learners. This is an effort to establish that novels with the inclusion of
typographical elements and images are relevant to the future of publishing and not an
inconsequential byproduct of the digital age.
Selected Bibliography
Anderson, M.T. The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Volume I: The Pox Party.
Cambridge, MA: Candlewick Press, 2006.
Bolter, Jay David. Writing Space. 2nd ed. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates,
Publishers, 2001.
Bolter, Jay David and Richard Grusin. Remediation: Understanding New Media.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000.
Brumberger, Eva R. “The Rhetoric of Typography: The Persona of Typeface and Text.”
Technical Communication 50.2 May 2003. 206-223.
Carter, James Bucky. "Imagetext in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time."
ImageTexT 3.3Spring 2007 17 April 2008
<http://www.english.ufl.edu/imagetext/archives/v3_3/carter/>.
“Chip Kidd.” March 4, 2008. Podcast. The Bat Segundo Show. 1 May 2008.
<http://www.edrants.com/segundo/chip-kidd-bss-185/>
Coover, Robert. "Heart Suit." McSweeney's (2005).
Danielewski, Mark Z. Only Revolutions. New York: Pantheon, 2006.
Foer, Jonathan Safran. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. New York: Houghton
Mifflin Company, 2005.
Groff, Lauren. The Monsters of Templeton. New York: Voice, 2008.
Haddon, Mark. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. New York:
Doubleday, 2003.
Hall, Steven. The Raw Shark Texts. Edinburgh: Canongate, 2007.
“Jonathan Safran Foer.” August 25, 2006. Podcast. The Bat Segundo Show. 1 May 2008.
<http://www.edrants.com/segundo/the-bat-segundo-show-57-jonathan-safranfoer/>
Kidd, Chip. The Learners. New York: Scribner, 2008.
Kress, Gunther. Literacy in the New Media Age. London: Routledge, 2003.
Kress, Gunther and Theo van Leeuwen. Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual
Design. London: Routledge, 1996.
Landow, George P. Hypertext 3.0. 3rd ed. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University
Press, 2006.
“Mark Z. Danielewski.” November 12, 2006. Podcast. The Bat Segundo Show. 1 May
2008. <http://www.edrants.com/segundo/bss-79-mark-z-danielewski/>
McCloud, Scott. Understanding Comics. New York: Harper Perennial, 1993.
Ong, Walter J. Orality and Literacy. London: Methuen, 1982.
Solomon, Deborah. "Back from the Future." The New York Times Magazine 19 Aug.
2007. 3 May 2008 <http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/19/magazine/19wwln-q4t.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin>.
Trimbur, John. “Delivering the Message: Typography and the Materiality of Writing.”
Rhetoric and Composition as Intellectual Work. Ed. Gary A. Olson. Carbondale,
IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2002. 188-202.
Wallace, David Foster. “Host.” Consider the Lobster. New York: Little, Brown and
Company, 2005. 275-343.