Just a Little Taste: My Paper-in-a-Post

What is the Primary Text?

The digital age opened up the interpretation of literature that has made obsolete our original definition of what makes up a primary text.

            Hugo made the claim that “The one will kill the other.”  That is to say, one medium, in this case the printing press and literature, will kill its predecessor, architecture.  Relate the cathedral of Notre Dame, if you will, to our impression of a primary text.  The cathedral was a symbol for Hugo of adapting mediums from architecture to literature.  That idea is paralleled today by the emergence of the digital age.  Hugo said one would “kill” the other, but that is not the case today.  It is merely the pedestal upon which one medium is universally more preferable than another that has been killed. 

            I have looked at eBooks, graphic novels, audiobooks, children’s, translations, apps, amateur video adaptations, remixes, parodies, derivative stage/musical works, derivative photography/visual arts, kitsch/material culture, commentary, etc., and am convinced that not only do these different mediums give us a different perspective on the original work, they often influence and color our impression either before, during, or after we read the original textual work.  We have several different layers of influence and interpretation available to us now because of the digital age.

            A couple examples of social proof:  Gideon Burton was vastly helpful in taking my original idea, a critique of the influence of different mediums of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and transforming them into an argument that we have come to an age of multiple primary texts.  He said, “In the digital age, we have phenomenon of genres or categories that literature and its various forms [that] get put into (curated lists, discussion forums, etc.) interpretive communities not available before.”

            Christophe Vacher said the animators hadn’t even read the book.  He said they just knew the story from having lived in Paris.  Their interpretation to create an adaptation of the book, never even originated from the book.

            Jess, the founder of The Hunchblog, found the book through the musical.  That medium colored her perception of the book when she read it.

            The digital age has created a world where the idea of the textual work as the primary medium for interpretation is obsolete.  We live in an age of multiple primary texts.  You cannot read in isolation.            The interpretive community has opened up to include a much more varied and vast audience.

            We must examine our perception of the primary text.  The literary canon has opened itself to other medium sources, or there is a medium/format canon being created, a hierarchy is already underway.  So, in the classroom, I think we should start incorporating multimodal adaptations of the works of literature studied, not in a way that would overwhelm, but in a way to get a taste of how that work of literature is being perceived by those not studying it in class.