Cybermap

Notice

The cybermap was one of the first sections in our website (July 2002) and through it we wanted to describe the huge panorama of Internet literature. The cybermap presented, in fact, an initial classification and a critical contribution to the first stage in the Hermeneia research project. Following the founding idea of Vannevar Bush’s Memex, we were trying to define an effective classification starting from the intersection of literature and digital technologies. However, we realized that in order to guarantee a rigorous work in such a vast area, we would have to confront the elaboration of the cybermap from a perspective that integrates the abilities of literature theoreticians, philologists, documentalists, computer managers, etc. For these reasons, we assume that the cybermap is only representative for a concrete moment in the convergence of literature and ICT and in spite of its expiration date we do maintain this section. We consider that the cybermap is the witnees of a concrete moment in the area in which the project is inscribed.

Internet and literature: approaching routes

This section of the website aspires to be a place from where we can observe the metamorphosis of literature in a broad sense in the abstract and crowded space that Internet is. Designing a cybermap is something that seemed necessary to us, but we assume that this cybermap is endemically provisional. Our first intention was to describe the literary patterns on the internet. While we were doing the virtual journey in order to explore the most visited websites and the hidden ones, we have been building a guide and we hope that will grow as we move forward. Our journey is still an initiation route.

The evident popularization of Internet in the last few years has had a very positive repercussion, in our opinion, in the area of literary creation and the study of literature. And this exponential growth of the Net as a new communication medium constitutes, in fact, the first trap that we need to avoid: vastity. Therefore, when we had to build our website, we had tried to achieve a representative description, knowing that we could not aspire to exhaustiveness.

The Internet has given the possibility both to institutions and to individuals, in the public or private sphere, of displaying a big amount of information. In some cases, this information represents a transference of new or unpublished information. The easiness to publish new contents force the users to be very cautious. On the other hand, the dynamism of the net implies a closing date to everything born as a static material.

After these general reflection, we would like to explain, concisely, the repercussion that digital technologies have on literature and on the study of literature. One of the aspects that is being influenced by the possibilities of new technologies is literary creation. The reader of the literature generated in and for the Internet becomes one of the most important agents of the process of literary creation and recreation. The reader-navigator becomes more important, and at the same time the author's power diminishes. It is necessary to observe how this new literature, that begins to be significant, is going to develop.

As we have said, the Internet has put into circulation a literary corpus that is part of our cultural tradition, and this new technological support will open new horizons for these literary works. One of the most popular initiatives have been on-line libraries because they put within everyone's reach a large amount of emblematic and representative literary works. These kind of libraries carry out an interesting and laudable task, but in order to be effective they must be as rigorous as possible. The user should know which kind of editions and reproductions is looking up. We also want to mention the effort of some traditional libraries that have included some online resources.

Hermeneia website is part of a virtual environment in which knowledge transference and the diffusion of the research can be more effective and accessible. That is why from this website we want to echo all the initiatives related to literary research such as literary criticism and creation journals, which have been born to exist exclusively on the internet. Through these sites we can find quite easily specialized information, because they organize this information in a very useful way. It is also important to point out some research group websites, because they offer to the user the results or conclusions of their research. Finally, we would like to emphasize, as well, the researchers individual initivatives that offer from different points of view literary websites in an altruistic way.

The situation of literature on the Internet has just been outlined, but our intention is to enlarge and complete it. We think that this list of links is quite indicative of what we can find on the Internet. For Hermeneia research group, this first exploration of literary websites represents the first step in order to reach one of the objectives of the research group: describe the context in which Hermeneia is inscribed. The cybermap prove not only the quantity but also the quality of some of the emerging initiatives about literary creation or the study of literature. From Hermeneia, we think that it is necessary to maintain a high quality level not only when we offer contents but also when we look for information. Moreover, we think that the introduction of new technologies in the areas of literary study and literary creation represents an essential goal for the evolution of literature.