This website composed by Melinda M. White in fulfillment of Qualifying Exam, Part II for the Media, Art, and Text PhD program at Virginia Commonwealth University written October 13-16, 2009 in answer to Question 3:
In his introduction to Hyper/text/theory, George P. Landow said that both poststructuralist print literature and hypertext grew “out of a dissatisfaction with the related phenomena of the printed book and hierarchical thought” (1). Perhaps the most significant commonality is a resistance to linear narrative. Discuss the nonlinear techniques adapted by postmodern print literature and electronic texts. What conclusions can you draw about the resistance to linearity in these contemporary media? How does narrative change—what does it become—when it becomes nonlinear?