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        The digital age has created a world where the idea of the textual work as the primary medium for interpretation is obsolete.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.  

Remediation: Isolation and Immediacy

A medium in our culture can never operate in isolation, because it must enter into relationships of respect and rivalry with other media.  There may be or may have been cultures in which a single form of representation (perhaps painting or song [or book]) exists with little or no reference to other media.  Such isolation does not seem possible for us today, when we cannot even recognize the representational power of a medium except with reference to other media (98).

Bolter, Jay David, and Richard Grusin. Remediation. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2000. Print.

Remediation by Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin is a little outdated, but many of the ideas presented are pertinent to my research.  These ideas link back to my previous post "You Can't Read In Isolation".

The power that all of these various mediums of communication have generated has competed with the power of the press.  We are no longer in the "Age of the Press".  We belong to the "Age of Media".  

These different mediums have added layers upon layers to our sense of reality.  Bolter and Grusin address the idea that this has, in turn, increased our sense of need for immediacy.  Each layer adds to our immediate perception of a work of literature, and by default, our perception of any given medium.  A blogger put it this way:  "Immediacy is the idea that the viewer desires the medium to be transparent, or that the mode of representation should disappear entirely when viewing the subject."

She goes on to talk about how these mediums are not replacing print, but are enhancing it:  "This is not to say that the old media will disappear, but it will take on new forms to adapt to the demands of the new technologies available to it...Print is still valuable and needed in new media, but it takes on a different representation and a different vehicle of communication when it is incorporated into other modes." 

This is my main argument here.  The past mediums that society has been functioning with are no longer all that is available.  Nor do they have the ability any longer to work separate from the new technologies that have advanced.  The way we perceive and experience literature has changed and adapted to work with the new mediums.  It is not separate from them.  They all have come to work as primary texts, in a given circumstance.  They all operate on the same solar system plane, if you will, with an adaptable center of gravity (post).

Victor Hugo said "This will kill that."  That hasn't been the case, however.  Sure, literature has been kicked off its omnipotent pedestal as the embodiment of all human thought, expression, and emotion, but it has landed into a web that incorporates of all these other mediums that enhance and expand our virtual experience.

Revolution of the Primary Text

In the digital age, it seems like we are getting multiple primary texts.  Not only do new mediums (including apps, eBooks, graphic novels, translations, video adaptations, parodies, visual arts, commentary) enhance the first text, but in some cases, they become the dominant text.  They are the lenses through which the greatest number of people experience the work.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame is an excellent example of a work that has become one of multiple primary texts.  Few people read the original French version of the text first.  Their perception is colored by first being exposed to the Disney version, or the musical Notre Dame de Paris, or the English edition.  Furthermore, if you really think about it, the cathedral was around long before the novel.  Is the novel a secondary text to the architectural work that has become a primary text?


Another example to illustrate this point:  Gone With the Wind (to see a blog dedicated to all your GWTW fancies, click here).
When most people think of Gone With the Wind, they do not think of the original text.  They think of the 1939 movie with the charismatic Clark Gable and captivating Vivien Leigh as Rhett and Scarlett.

People are having discussions about Gone With the Wind, but not in reference to the book, in reference to the movie.  The movie is their first impression of the book, and it colors their perception of the book.  Sorry Margaret Mitchell, but in this case, the movie has dominated the text.  In a sense, it has become the primary text.  Few people read the book and watch the movie in that order.  It is the movie that persuades people to tackle the massive textual edition.

The digital age has revolutionized how we see and perceive primary texts.  There really is no single primary text.  You can't read in isolation.  Some way or another, you will find the book in a different format that may or may not come to compete with the original text as the "primary" source.