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       The digital age has created a world where the idea of the textual work as the primary medium for interpretation is obsolete.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

A Spring of New Ideas: Media and the Literary Canon

Ok, since my discussion with Professor Burton, I have a lot of new ideas swirling around in my head.  Where to begin?  I plan on making these ideas more clear with time.

Have you ever read a book and immediately began thinking of the book in terms of a movie?  Even before the era of movies, some books carry cinematic qualities.  The dialogue, scene changes, and character description lend themselves easily to movie adaptation.  In fact, a movie can represent the book to such a degree that it, rather than the book, is thought of as the primary text.  The digital age has propagated a shift in primary textual perception.  In order to make this idea more clear, let me compare it with an example with which most of you are probably familiar.

The A&E version of Pride and Prejudice--how many times have I been criticized for liking any movie adaptation of Pride and Prejudice rather than the "classic," rather than the "original"?  Now I am not dissing on the A&E version by any means.  I love it.  But wait a minute...isn't the A&E movie secondary to the actual book as is the Keira Knightly version?  We are comparing movie to movie in reference to the text.  It seems to me that some people have so fixed in their minds that the A&E movie is the living embodiment of the book that they begin to disregard the book as the primary source, saying to watch that movie and to read the book are virtually the same thing.

In addition, now when you read the book, do you see Colin Firth as the dark and daunting Mr. Darcy?  Or the charming Jennifer Ehle as Elizabeth Bennett?  How many of you saw the movie before reading the book?  How many of you read the book because you saw the movie?

In my own experience with The Hunchback of Notre Dame, I realized I was reading a secondary text to the original.  I read the English translation.  Only then did it dawn on me that even my perception of the "original text" wasn't actually the original at all.  That secondary text acted as the primary text.  Does that make the English translation any less valid?  Because a book is in movie format, does that make it any less valuable?

The digital age has opened our perception of what is and isn't counted as a primary text, whether it be a translation of the print version, the ebook, the audiobook, or a well-made movie adaption.

I propose that the literary canon is opening up again, but this time not to incorporate female or ethnic minority writers, but to include different formats of the literary work.  Or rather, maybe there is a separate, but closely linked, canon being created of digital media, a hierarchy among adaptions (think of the A&E Pride and Prejudice being compared to the Keira Knightly version, or the Disney adaptation of The Hunchback of Notre Dame in comparison with the musical, book, or e/audiobook for that matter).  Is there a new literary canon forming made of digital media?  What think ye?