A Vindication of Postmodern Literary Theory

"Hypertext is a vindication of postmodern literary theory. For the past two decades, postmodern theorists from reader-response critics to deconstructionists have been talking about text in terms that are strikingly appropriate to hypertext in the computer. When Wolfgang Iser and Stanley Fish argue that the reader constitutes the text in the act of reading, they are describing hypertext. When the deconstructionists emphasize that a text is unlimited, that it expands to include own interpretations--they are describing a hypertext, which grows with the addition of new links and elements. When Roland Barthes draws his famous distinction between the work and the text, he is giving a perfect characterization of the differences between writing in a printed book and writing by the computer." (Jay David Bolter "Literature in the Electronic Writing Space" 24).

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