The first method, epitomeor abridgment, entails summarizing or paraphrasing the original text or texts. These notes, generally presented in the order of the text from which they were produced, are often called adversaria. The second method is to select passages of interest for their content or their style, which are copied and sorted under a thematic or topical heading to facilitate retrieval.

I'd never even dreamed that there were names for what I had always considered semi-idle scribbling. Must we label everything?

Note Taking as an Art of TransmissionAnn BlairNote taking constitutes a central but often hidden phase in the trans-mission of knowledge. Notes recorded from reading or experience typicallycontribute to one’s conversation and compositions, from which others candraw in turn in their own thinking and writing, thus perpetuating a cycleof transmission and transformation of knowledge, ideas, and experiences

I found this interesting as an opening statement, as I have often treated notation as a private, personal thing; throughout high school I annotated in code and abbreviation for my own reference, not expecting anyone to use them or even find them of any interest.

The knot here given to Delano is suggested to be symbolic of a Gordian Knot (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordian_Knot), an impossible, mythical puzzle so intricate, complex and incomprehensible that it nearly thwarts Alexander the Great. The metaphor proposed by this allusion not only harkens to the complexity of the plot and the narrative, but additionally cutting off archaic or historic ties, beginning new eras and ending the old.

Much like its counterpart Bartleby, The Scrivener, the protagonist is not the "focal character" (in this case, Delano), but instead the titular Benito Cereno. There are many comparisons to be drawn between the two stories on social commentary, passivity, ignorance and business, however one striking difference is in the opening tone and mystery of Benito Cereno. There is no inclination of the outcome of the story, of setting up characters or long drawn out backgrounds and the tone is entirely unclear. This perpetuates the air of conflict and the enigma surrounding Melville's opinion and outlook on slavery and racism, suggesting the idea of its corruption 100 years before the civil rights movement.

Whilst I cannot find the direct quote due to short-notice and poverty, Warner Berthoff has likened the multiplicity of layers and understanding in Benito Cereno to a Riddle - one must hear/read it twice, having learned or determined the answer, to spot the clues and suggestions that lead them there.

This finalises in the eyes of Cereno, Delano and indeed the reader the power and prowess of Babo over his white counterparts. His brain and abilities clearly supersede his physical 'limitations' (for lack of a better word) and his ethnicity. His final choice, his refusal to speak, finally shows his possession over his own body, contrary to his prior position as a slave. Whether or not this is Melville's attempt to justify and empower somewhat positively the rebellion and identity of the slaves or a technique to emphasise how formidable Babo is as a villain, is unclear, and remains to be seen, even today.

Despite the connotations and easy assumption that this ending means that Cereno followed Aranda into death, with him being his ranking leader, the heavy weighting on the control Babo has over Cereno in addition to the proximity of their deaths suggests a duality in Cereno's existence - he is, by all intensive purposes, a servant to two masters.

This is fascinating. The ability to annotate not only on text but also on images feels a lot like being handed a sharpie and permitted to go wild. There will be arrows, notes, circles, and exclamation points all over a webpage. Barring actually drawing on your computer screen and the ability to actually draw and underline things in a text or image, there is a similar notion of taking something and making it yours, of playing with it and seeing what you'll find.

This is one area in which the ebook does trump the paperback for me. Especially in a time crunch for an essay, there's nothing quite like being able to see an entire compiled list of all the highlights and notes you've made throughout the novel. Command+F is truly a beautiful thing.

Reminds me of think tanks or open platforms online where people use open sourced material in order to collaborate on a variety of artistic projects; specifically, HitRecord, an online production company.

https://www.hitrecord.org/

Shall we re-evaluate the scorn that so many people have for dog-eared pages as well? There's nothing like an old, beat up, and dog-eared paperback.

Perhaps even literally, for those who are uncomfortable speaking up in classroom settings.

In my own history as a student of English and a student in general, I always had a lack of motivation when it came to writing about literature. I was highly interested in literature--obviously, since i chose to study it-- but the commonly implemented structure or application used by teachers and professors just didn't really do it for me. "Read this and then compose a thesis to write x pages on." If i was assigned, for example, an essay or article that was fifteen pages long, there might be a multitude of elements in the text that catch my interest, but i wouldn't allow myself to think too deeply on them because i was scanning for the thing that i knew i could write x pages on. I might read a sentence that fascinates me, though i knew i couldn't flesh-out x many pages on it, so i moved on and, most likely, forgot about it. Reading a piece through a tool like hypothesis enables me to enjoy and absorb the text so much more. If more educators used annotating software in their courses, students wouldn't necessarily have to set aside their ideas about the less central aspects of a piece simply out of pragmatism since they had been asked to devise a single point and produce a certain number of pages in a limited amount of time. And I'm not arguing that students should not be asked to write longer essays, but if students were to initially experience the given texts through such annotate-able software--prior to being asked to write an extensive paper-- I believe they would take so much more away from it. Of course, I am not a student of education and I am only speaking from my own experiences in the classroom.

Reading with the highlights on in Hypothes.is is something that I am not a fan of. When doing so, I generally find myself wandering towards passages that have already been highlighted, a natural reaction at the different colored text as my brain instantly blares, "IMPORTANT! Pay attention!" in all caps. Without the highlighted feature on, I find myself more prone to looking at the piece in all of its detail.

By annotating on the work of others, students are not only able to build upon the foundation of knowledge laid out by others, but they are also engaging in a critical conversation, a dialogue, of thought. This back-and-forth between texts and ideas undoubtedly also aid in the formation of one's own perspectives.

The phrasing of this, and the image Jones paints of annotations reminds me of a set of building blocks. By annotating a text, we are not only able to build upon the original foundations of the text (the original knowledge we are able to garner from it) but also add to it ourselves, thus creating something new altogether. Keeping with the analogy, annotations also seem to allow us a method with which to dive beneath the original building blocks of a text, and discover its framework and bones as well.

Medieval marginalia is so well-known that amusing or disconcerting instances of it are fodder for viral aggregators such as Buzzfeed and Brainpickings, and the fascination with other readers’ reading is manifest in sites such as Melville’s Marginalia Online or Harvard’s online exhibit of marginalia from six personal libraries.

A story within a story (within a story?). The notes jotted down in the margins is often a private act, something that is profoundly for the self, however, Jones's mention of the variety of now-famous marginal notes (be it Medieval or otherwise) speaks to the act of annotation as a whole; an act for the self as one communicates with the text, that is made famous through publication, and that ultimately informs others as well.

As a side note, this reminds me of the book J.J. Adams and Doug Dorst published a while back, where one of the stories unfolds mainly through an endless conversation in the margins of a book.

http://www.amazon.com/S-J-Abrams/dp/0316201642

Shout out to Hypothes.is for forcing me to buy a new computer that allows plug-ins and Chrome :I

The best way to understand someone on an intellectual level? Read their annotations. It fascinates me to see what words people look up, what cultural references people associate with certain ideas. Not all learning has to be "high culture"; the intersection of popular culture and academia is not as tricky as many scholars like to make it.

I only buy used copies of books, whether it be from a local bookstore, such as Shakespeare, or online, all hands up for Amazon Prime! There's something special, an intimate experience, that exists in picking up a work and reading someone else's notes in it, especially that of a stranger's. Beginning a dialogue with someone else's ideas is, in my opinion, the best way to open the flood gates of knowledge.

Invisible is right; even after reading literature on the evolution of annotations, I didn't make the connection to facebook tags and youtube comments. Funny how we can take such functions for granted. I guess, for me, i'm still coming to terms with viewing facebook pages and such as a text.

...and has given otherwise-unintelligible rappers a chance to make sure they're being heard correctly.

"Encourage annotating photos"? Sorry, this one seems a little bit of a stretch, but it's cute that a positive spin has been put on this rather than the more expected paranoia about the lack of digital privacy. Can someone say "surveillance state"?

The reiterative nature of how memes work make them interesting barometers of collective thought.

Is "annotation" not itself a kind of literal way of thinking about the positivistic aggregation of Knowledge?

I think the term "exploit" is kind of loaded here-- certainly, we should not shame creative people for utilizing new avenues?

My experience is not true to this. Growing up I was always playing my Game Boy, whether it be at home, after school, the car. However, to this day, I have trouble reading long form texts on a screen. My distaste for reading novels on screens doesn't stem from some misplaced fear of technology, I would love to be able to read that way, but I just can't concentrate.

I think this it's an interesting idea that an audiobook can happen without you. Although I strongly disagree with the colloquial view that listening is inherently a passive trait, there's no denying that an audiobook can leave you behind if you get distracted. It requires a certain discipline in the same way that watching Netflix at night does. Fall asleep during an episode of Arrested Development and you'll have to feverishly thumb through multiple episodes to find your place and what you last saw. The audiobook requires you to be completely present, even if you're multitasking.

My biggest academic fear: that I am not a "real" reader. But if I'm informed in multiple aspects of texts, whether they be high or low culture, I am still a reader, right?

iPhone > Kindle > The Nook

I love books, the physical aspect of carrying something that contains a story. However, I will read anything: bad articles on Bustle, the Sunday NYT, weird subway signs. So which do I prefer?

Annotations online now just aren't a text based platform, but one that examines images and other forms of media as well. Important note. Even one other example of this could be students collectively annotating a piece of music using soundcloud's comment system. The sky is the limit.

Interesting - another case of social reading being the primary way to consume a text.

What's important also to note is that before these online annotations tools existed, there were small pockets of readership that hosted online annotated versions of certain works out of pure dedication. Thankfully in this day and age, the ability to annotate anything transcends these barriers.

With the recent increase of reactions and emoji functions on Facebook statuses, I think it's so crucial to remember the worth of such simple interactions as part of the online authorial process

I remember my sheer amazement when I first used GoogleDocs and showed it to my friends with whom I was doing a group project. I swear by it now, using it over Word.

I certainly have found throughout my life, growth and educational journey that with the increase of social media enabling young people to have more of a voice in the socio-economical fields, academically there are more organic comments made, and less fearfulness when it comes to questioning and critiquing authors.

In as much as to break a spine, fold a page, spill coffee or scuff the cover is.

Great point and in line with the drift of our course: X cultural technology is not radically new but instantiates a thought-provoking contrast/comparsions with past technologies and practices.

Schacht might lean harder on this, since "democratic practice" is (ironically) very far from the norm for traditional assignments, with the closed loop of student==>professor==>student and the regime of grades.

For its beta stages, it definitely has to prepare for a large scale potential of annotators who might all be grappling the same text at once. It might be hard in the future to read the text and scroll through hundreds of different annotations on the same sentence because someone decided a certain idea can be interpreted in that many ways - in this case I'm referencing a very straightforward work rather than a more avant-garde case.

This is kind of scary - not a big fan of the free-range interpretation. There has to be some kind of grounding.

Do you believe that they could've imagined a world where you can even annotate any work with all of these forms of mixed media?

I know so many students that can't afford to buy a full textbook and resort to using sticky notes to annotate so as to not deface rental books. Online resources unsullied by physical annotations eradicate so many issues with physical copies, rented or otherwise. It's a shame that the reluctance to use them is so writhe in education.

This is very interesting in terms of the audiobook produced by Kate, Shadika, Niurkalis, and Ari. So impressed by the innovation there, restricted only by the realms of funding and college. I would love to see a full-scale project based on their ingenuity. Props to you guys again!

I've actually had full arguments about this - even J-STOR is rife with student-written, unfounded and bias articles that ill-inform students when referencing them. Wikipedia provides basic, reliable and easy information, and at the very least should be used for common knowledge facts and profiles. But that's just my lazy student opinion.

I'm always so bemused at people who don't annotate. Even if it's just one word, reminding yourself of a response/interpretation of a passage or even a sentence can be vital to understanding a novel/text.

Very meta to think about books about annotating in books. Perhaps a stretch, but take the "Half Blood Prince" of the HP series - goes to show the extensiveness of the universe of annotations.

So funny that this is mentioned here, I was reading a monk's complaints about the quality of parchment in a margin just the other day!

This is why it was(is) beneficial for the English department to consider courses with DH. It makes sense

never thought of it this way, but valid point.

Reminds me of Liu's point about Web 2.0's dissemination of the author-function, or the way it dissolves the distinction between authors and readers (while keeping coders as a remarkably distinct/powerful/scarce function).

"The author and narrator control your pace, and it is impractical to skim ahead or thumb back to another section."

But is this a positive attribute? Part of the beauty of the written novel is the ability to read and reread at one's own pace, going back and forth in order to retain the information the reader feels is most important.

The comparison here between a close reading and a close listening is absolutely crucial. Listening to an audiobook is not any less an act of reading. The notion that it is somehow less "work" than reading, and that it in anyway spoon-feeds the listener/reading is ridiculous. Analysis and understanding is still required regardless of whether information is relayed to someone oratorically or written on paper. In fact, there may even be extra layers of analysis available when something is heard as it gives the listener a chance not only to read the book and its author, but also its reader.

Fascinating that the push for audiobooks came as a way to deliver literature (stories) to specific groups, only for them now to be enjoyed by many.

If true, I feel that Edison is condescending to his audience by not giving them the faith to be fully engaged in a particular text. Blind/visually-impaired/disabled people notwithstanding, listening to someone else's interpretation of a text without actually seeing it, paired with having some other visual stimuli to focus on, dilutes the reading experience itself (if one can still consider it reading).

This serves only to further my interest in this idea of sensory experiences of literature. Obviously braille is now widely used on public transport, food packaging, books and in residential apartment buildings, but this vibrating sheet idea advances even moreso on this idea of touch and literature.

It's so interesting to me to physically imagine an aural event as a dually visual one, that we then can only experience through reading. The multitude of layers that go into documenting fact and fiction in life should mean that the relationship between aural, oral and literary experiences should be closer, however there is constantly this dichotomy between sensory experiences and classicism.

I want to push back here, since I think the difficulty of reading books is still a strong element in culture. Maybe not in such ergonomic terms, but we still think of TV and surfing the web as "easy" or "light" in comparison to "heavy reading" or "serious reading."

Interesting point: no discussion of the "decline of reading" or "death of the novel" at this juncture.

Note that Mom is actually texting under the table while pretending to do needlepoint.

Great point. Not to mention Homer!

Amazing illustration: good find! But who are all those people? Are those the names of important public figures now lost to memory (or my memory, at least)? Funny to think that our podcast queues are basically exactly what this image images.

This is a really clever rhetorical move by the author: the anxious discussion about the book in the l.19thC yields surprising echoes of (and valuable perspective on) the kinds of arguments that we read in the "Dickens Four Ways" piece.

Interesting note to add, Milton and even Joyce (I believe in the case with Samuel Beckett) had dictated to write because of their blindness.

Good note on the rise of the possibilities of close reading only coming through a solitary listening compared to traditional storytelling out loud.

Interesting - helps us reevaluate what we already have and to see if we can apply it to our current inquiries rather than continuously reach.

In hindsight, this is hilarious considering that Kindle itself pops up on many of our iPhones in the form of the Kindle eReader app. We can now start books on one device, and pick it right up on another. The Kindle now seems to join the hardback and paperback on the shelves, yet another one of our many choices on how we might choose to read.

Absolutely agree with this! I find myself doing small tasks when I listen to audiobooks. Be it running errands, cooking, or cleaning, I am able to focus on the words and the story while also being on the go. It is a strange intersection of entirely focused and pleasantly busy.

This question is fascinating. I had never thought about it quite like this before. It is especially interesting when one frames this question along with the resurgence of the audiobook. Is listening to an audiobook still considered reading?

This is an excellent example of how modern technology can enhance the reading experience and turn it into a more interactive one, rather than passive. Cogent combination of the conveniences and innovations of digital technology.

See, then you're cheating yourself out of a more fulfilling reading experience. If you want some sort of auditory stimulation while performing daily activities, then music is perfect. If you're focused on such daily activities, and have an audiobook playing as background noise, how can you be even moderately engaged? If I tried to concentrate on reading Infinite Jest or Naked Lunch while cooking, I'd possibly burn my home down by accident.

I actually feel this to be the biggest advantage of the Kindle. The paper simulating screen allows for long reads without headaches.

Random comment: I've always felt that the eReaders that exist on Iphones, Samsungs or any other phones for that matter ruin the experience of reading. They do not allow for long reads, because of the lighting and damage it causes to your eye.

Though I find this to be the greatest question I have heard so far, regarding the argument about the lose of literature, I believe this question can only be asked when someone is reading literature for the "love" of it.

See, look how horribly distracting reading in print is! She hasn't even read the first sentence, and she's all lost in a Proustian haze about the smell of the binding...

I would add that it's in the public domain, which is a real magnet for my e-reading. I almost always want to buy a new-ish book in print if I think it's any good, but the $0.00 price of classics makes them perfect for throwing on the e-reader for me, especially if it's not "serious" (read: teaching/research) reading for me.

Snob.

http://www.howtogeek.com/181577/e-ink-vs.-lcd-which-screen-is-best-for-reading/

Obnoxious and a clear misunderstanding of the existence e-ink displays over traditional tablets. Also I abhor the fascination with the IPhone - is this person technologically credible enough to write this?

Good way to think about it. Are we really losing touch with literature or are we just losing the physical manifestation of it?

THIS. This is why I think audiobooks can revolutionise reading, especially for those impatient and learning impaired like myself. It's so important to remember that regardless of your position in regards to audiobooks and literature that not everyone agrees. Reading can be the simplest joy, but you have to know how to listen too.

I like the sense of personal nostalgia here. I personally don't have the vinyl/walkman experience so it's nice hearing about the functionality, reality and sensory experience of listening to early-days audiobooks.

Ah, the endless dichotomy. I certainly feel that more classicists need to ask themselves this - regardless of the answer, it reminds people of the distinct joy of each.

"The art of storytelling is reaching its end because the epic side of truth, wisdom, is dying out." Fundamentally, I disagree with Benjamin's argument at this point; wisdom exists within the pages of a novel, and unlike the spoon-fed morals given to you in an oral tale, there is a certain level of personal discovery that must be done while reading a novel. It forces its readers to claim truths and wisdoms at their own pace.

Even in the act of storytelling, isn't interpretation a solitary act? To read a novel is to envision the characters and plot through your own unique perspective; hearing a story requires more imagination in response to the teller's vision versus the listener's.

Familiar though his name may be to us, the storyteller in his living immediacy is by no means a present force. He has already become something remote from us and something that is getting even more distant

This captured me so instantly. The conflict between this concept and the modern author is so apparent, for now the storyteller is subject to dual authorship when interacting online. They shall always be separate in their originality, but the academic and the author are growing ever closer to our consciousness, if not our physicallity

And among those who have written down the tales, it is the great ones whose written version differs least from the speech of the many nameless storytellers (84).

Benjamin's point here fails for me, specifically when one thinks of the individual reimaginings that the "great" storytellers take from oral tradition. This is reminiscent of the tale of King Arthur, a tale that was almost entirely oratory. While I believe that Geoffrey of Monmouth was the first to make mention of this legendary king, Arthur's tales were later penned by an imprisoned Sir Thomas Mallory. The sheer multitude of different Arthurian legends that has semerged is nothing short of extraordinary (T.H. White and Tennyson to name a couple!) and the very epitome of this collective listening and individual reinterpretation that Benjamin describes.

"Counsel woven into the fabric of real life is wisdom. The art of story telling is reaching its ends because the epic side of the truth, wisdom, is dying out. This, however, is a process that has been going on for a long time and would be more fatuous than to want to see in it merely a "symptom of decay," let alone a "modern system."

This modern system of decay can quite possibly be considered twitter, facebook, instagram or any other social media site. Story telling exists within these systems but rather than having the wandering features or varying details of an oral tale, social media allows for us to review a tale in text or video form over and over with no variation. From this article it seems that Benjamin may not approve of our modern day storytelling. I imagine that he'd say that it is without skill/craft...-_-

His nesting places - the activities that are intimately associated with boredom - are already extinct in the cities and are declining in the country as well (91).

We currently has so many modes of input now that we barely have the capacity to absorb it all! The multitude of options that we have from cable at the touch of a finger, an endless stream of information at the press of a button, to a countless number of cat videos at a single thought, boredom does seem to be dead. We have the entirety of the internet to explore when we're bored, but perhaps it speaks to the resilience of the human mind that we continue to read, and to explore the depths of our own minds, even though external influences do often prove to be so wonderfully interesting.

It is left up to him to interpret things the way he understands them, and thus the narrative achieves an amplitude that information lacks.

Benjamin's emphasis on the space that stories leave for interpretation, for personal re-imagination, and understanding, is something that he believes to also separate stories from information. This room to play, so to speak, as a defining quality of a story is especially interesting when we consider the audio book. As a format that leaves the reader to interpret and portray the author, and the listener to further re-imagine the listener's perspective as well as the text itself, this opens up a conversation about the function of stories and the return, of sorts, to the oratory tradition.

But they enjoy no less listening to the man who has stayed at home, making an honest living, and who knows the local tales and traditions (84).

While Benjamin does emphasize that not all stories are captured and wrangled home to be told around the campfire, and that many are in fact born organically by the hearth and in the homes themselves, I find myself wondering, where are the women? Folktales that later gave birth to fairy tales were originally a predominantly female activity as women had to entertain themselves within the home, and later, entertain and caution children. The exclusion of this entire side of storytelling is more than a little disappointing - we are, in fact, not getting the full story here.

Whenever good counsel was at a premium, the fairy tale had it, and where the need was greatest, its aid was nearest.

Once upon a time (haha), fairy tales were quite violent--the ones we know today have been diluted through centuries of storytelling. There's a theory that the gore of these stories served a purpose: to provide a fantasy world to help children cope with a harsh or dangerous reality.

He is ready to make it completely his own, to devour it, as it were. Indeed, he destroys, he swallows up the material as the fire devours logs in the fireplace.

This seems like a rather violent portrait of the novelist. One that evoked (at least in my mind) this 1823 painting by Goya:

In point of fact, he has succeeded in abbreviating even storytelling.

Benjamin would not like Twitter. Although, perhaps retweeting is a 21st century incarnation of what he writes at the end of this paragraph: "...the perfect narrative is revealed through the layers of a variety of retellings."

Is retweeting the new retelling?

"Writing," he says in one of his letters, "is to me no liberal art, but a craft."

I can't read this without rolling my eyes. The idea of writing as craft was likely novel (get it?) for Leskov--and Benjamin too, apparently--but I'm immediatley reminded of myriad conversations with would-be, actual, or former MFA-ers who go on and on and on about "honing their craft."

Experience which is passed on from mouth to mouth is the source from which all storytellers have drawn.

Benjamin's focus is understandably European, but a great North American example of the oral tradition is Native American cultures. Stephanie Fitzgerald and Hilary E. Wyss wrote a great article on the oral tradition and other alternative texts in "Land and Literacy: The Textualities of Native Studies" (2010).

What ten years later was poured out in the flood of war books was anything but experience that goes from mouth to mouth.

Benjamin's point that the content of post-World War I literature meagerly conveyed experience, if at all, is valid; however, many of these texts that were/are seemingly devoid of such experience (or perhaps stories) have since been labeled masterpieces of literary modernism due to the emphasis on form rather than content. But to be fair to Benjamin, who wrote this piece in 1936, we have a complete picture of the literary trends of the twentieth century that he could not have.

As someone who has listened to audio books quite a bit over the past few years (specifically when I am traveling, be it in on trains, planes, or automobiles) I have to absolutely agree with Rubery that the audio format does not seek to replace books, but instead, to supplement them. Instead of a type of reading that "emphasises silence, solitude, and introspection, a model of the individual reader closest to our own antisocial experience of reading books" (60), it instead allows the individual to interact with an entirely new variety of forms and creators. Not only is the reader (or perhaps listener would be more appropriate?) interacting with the author and reader(s) of the book itself, but with the audio book's very format, it also allows listeners to interact with different forms of media, thus allowing them to tweet instantaneous reactions to the novel as they receive it, allowing them to further interact with it.

"To put it another way, there was a vast readership that would have heard rather than read these narratives." I totally agree with Rubery when he says that some of the readings of the time would have rather be heard than read. I feel that Jane Eyre is one of the text from the time that I would prefer to listen to than read it. Last semester, I was dragging my self through the book and now I just discovered the audio-book and I find it so much easier and practical. I wish that I would have found it sooner because it would have helped me with my papers and the understanding of the book.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QB2FHfiVv4Y

The distinction between professional and amateur readers brings us

to the second reason that digital audio technology has the potential

to change the way we think about reading practices.

Strong contrast between a-book and other forms of media: I would argue that it's much easier for yahoos like us to compete with professional voice actors than with professional musicians, not to say professional directors/actors/editors in cinema! Isn't there something inherently democratic about reading/listening?

It should be said that a ‘talking article’ may have been the most effective way to make the case for digital audio presented here.

Whoa there, Matt. I'd rather shoot myself than read 99% of academic articles in an a-book format, even ones written as lucidly as this one. Nor would I like to take in most experimental work in this fashion: I agree with the drift of the article that there's something about the Victorian period's comfort with oralization that makes it a good fit for the a-book.

Only by vocalising these expressions through the practice of reading aloud are we assured of appreciating how central voice is as a source of meaning in the Victorian novel.

Productive force of reading aloud: it doesn't merely produce a new version, it feeds back into one's reading of the printed text.

In 2004, for instance, the BBC became the first British broadcaster to make its radio programmes available to the public for free download via digital formats. The radio has been of profound importance overthe last century in sustaining a listening culture, though it is only with the advent of digital playback that this content can now reach audiences beyond its fixed time slots.

Very subtle comparison of different technologies, reading/listening practices, and historical moments here. With almost 10 years of retrospect on this argument, we can see how prescient Rubery is, especially thinking about the success of podcasts like SERIAL, which are almost novel-like in their extensiveness, long narrative arcs, and serial installments.

To take an extreme case,

Tolstoy’s War and Peace requires 45 cassettes when spoken by Walter

Zimmerman (1982) or 50 compact discs when told by Neville Jason

(2006). These cumbersome formats showed little improvement over

Edison’s wax cylinders in terms of convenience – it may be easier to

bring back the live orator in such cases than to swap discs that many

times.

This reminds me of listening to the unabridged version of Tolkein's The Hobbit in the back of the family station wagon in the early 80s! It was an awful lot of cassettes...

members.16 If there is a

sense in which no one ever reads a Dickens plot for the first time, it

is because that story has been heard to some extent before it has been

read. A Christmas Carol is only the most obvious example of such a twice- heard tale.

Wow: this comment takes us all the way back to the traditional storytelling mode that Benjamin contrasts with the printed novel (as we'll see next week). For Benjamin, traditional storytelling has little use for the idea of originality or authorship and hence locates both teller and hearer as reversible positions: one listens closely, because one might be a teller next. With Victorian lit, Dickens is still Dickens when he's oralized; nonetheless, the text has something of a "twice told" and unoriginal aspect in this format.

To put it another way, there was a vast readership that would

have heard rather than read these narratives. Although this may be the

era during which Great Britain became a ‘reading nation’, we should

not forget the extent to which it remains a ‘listening nation’ to this very

day.12

Link to the piece by Berube et al. on "community reading": in both cases, the authors want to push us readers to question our assumptions about the "right" or "normal" or "proper" way to read, uh, I mean experience literature.

My intent will

be to trace a number of continuities between today’s reading practices

and the presumably outdated forms of reading aloud favoured by

the Victorians. As the title of this piece indicates, one unexpected

consequence of the new digital audio has been to bring back old

ways of reading, specifically the practice of reading aloud associated

in the popular imagination with the Victorian family.

Rubery emphasizes usefully the rhythm of continuity and difference along two axes: a) the relationship between past auralizations of Dickens and present ones and b) the relationship between Dickens's work as printed object and as oral performance.

Ahem.

I love the cheekiness of this opening for the way it calls attention to throatclearing, an element of spoken discourse that infiltrates into this written document.

However, with a physical, action-driven scene such as this, it is difficult to argue that nothing is lost; on the one hand, you hear Nancy's murder and are forced to visualise it differently to how you may under the influence of physical representation, however someone who is not entirely focussed, imaginative or even experienced with the text may struggle in a way they would not with visual prompts, be they textual or physical

Having both seen and read this scene in a variety of platforms, I concur, however importance is also to be placed on the reader themselves, the format in which they read the piece as well as the actors, set and production of the visual-audio performance.

If there is a sense in which no one ever reads a Dickens plot for the first time, it is because that story has been heard to some extent before it has been read. A Christmas Carol is only the most obvious example of such a twice-heard tale.

Housing Works hosts an annual "marathon" reading of A Christmas Carol called "What the Dickens?" Here's the lineup/info from this past December.

The recitation of a scene that takes a mere ten minutes to read silently to one’s self can take upwards of forty minutes when read aloud before an audience.

Audiobooks take away readerly agency, transforming readers into listeners. It seems that through audiobooks, literary audiences become more like theatrical audiences, and therefore engage less directly with the written text, or "text itself."

Death becomes one of the main drivers for storytelling. It's something the novel can't mimic in reality, leaving storytelling to be a very real form. Now things are even more confusing because audiobooks become a medium that not only cover storytelling, but novels as well. Does it posses a greater authority as a keeper of both forms without either form losing its own integrity?

Benjamin on one of his anti-capitalist rants where capitalism perpetuates the discourse of information vs. intelligence where information circulates at a greater rate due to the concentrations having more capital importance than where true intelligence comes from.

But today, it's a significant event because it signified the rebirth of storytelling. Obviously Benjamin couldn't have predicted the rise of the audiobook.

Storyteller breaks down into two categories: the wanderer, or spreader of information, and the local in the community who not only contains the local lore, but also compounds the stories that come from other places as well.

The most innovative aspect of Benjamin’s argument is its framing of the novel, not as a distinctive narrative mode in an evolutionary sequence of literary forms, but as a function of changing relationships between storytellers and their auditors with the advent of printed books.

Benjamin published "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" the same year as "The Storyteller" (1936). I wonder how Benjamin's idea of mechanical reproduction, which I recall as primarily visual, pertains to literary forms. Also, I think this intersection dovetails with Rubery's discussion of Victorian culture and aural literature.

Distinction between close listening and listening in any other form. Not reproducible by any means but closed audio from a reader of a printed text.

Wouldn't the accessibility of audio recording technologies and sharing also be indicative of the augmented usage of audiobooks?

This is important to note because I believe audio criticism hasn't really moved beyond those who wish for it to take off, or those who wish it receives more recognition.

Just as a general response to this article--coming from a place of total ignorance of what the "Digital Humanities" were before reading this--it seems to me that English departments are almost playing a necessary game of catch-up by jumping on board. In my experience, many literary people have historically been the most reluctant to bring their craft to the web or to credit web-based writing. Writers often put-down blogging and intellectuals in general often show disdain towards social networking and other such things. Meanwhile, these technologies are believed to be the major entity that is pulling young people away from what has traditionally been viewed as literature. Now, English departments maybe realize that there is no combating the lure that these computerized networks have on the younger generations, so, they acknowledge that the stage of the internet is one that they must establish themselves on.

I've heard this argument so many times and have often questioned how untrue it is? It is true that with the introduction of technology we (students and teachers) become more involved with the text and one another, but at the same time it assist in our laziness toward texts. Texts may lose beauty and innovation for the sake of involvement.

Re: audiobooks...

I took a course with a reading list of recently published "high-brow" literary works. When we read Lorrie Moore's A Gate at the Stairs (2009), a blind classmate commented that the audiobook narrator sounded like a ditzy, college-aged Carrie Bradshaw, which affected his perspective of Moore's narrator, who most students characterized as a somewhat intense and reserved young woman. To me, this distinction reinforces McLuhan's idea that the medium is the message--the words were the same, but the audiobook offered a different interpretation from the one Moore seemingly hinted at in the text itself.

Rather, screen-based media constitute a matrix from which new forms spring—blogs, tweets,and feeds, for example—and older ones are “remediated,” a process in which old content is transformed in and through a new medium (Bolter and Grusin 5).

Does this mean that the tablet/smartphone/computer/etc. is the container while the various forms that appear on that container are the media?

This, for me, is one of the most critical developments in online production. In time, if not already, this function negates the necessity for lengthly chains of e-mails exchanging drafts and edits, and could drastically speed and expand the production of literature.

Web 2.0 diagram is literal embodiment of super-saturation of information in today's media. While giving everyone a voice surely democratizes the Web, for me it often probes suspicion of what I am reading, since chances are it has been reshaped/rewritten/heavily-biased.

literature attempts to describe human experience. However, it appears as though everything becomes either based on life(celebratory or suffering) or death(tragic or honorable)

as juvenile as this may be, I do question the transition of 1 > 1.5 > 2? what about the progression suggests increments of half-change? Yes, 2 is entirely different to 1, but what dictates that 1.5 is merely a mid-point between the two? In it's own right, Web 1.5 was revolutionary, as it coincided with the early stages of frequent domestic use (at least, in my household and knowledge!)

interesting idea

This is an interesting concept-- implementing these types of tools offers a breath of fresh air into stale, canonical texts. Over time the criticism and the text become so seamlessly intertwined that it's hard to postulate where the author ends and the discourse begins. That being said, using scientific tools to analyze and find patterns into classical texts can bring a new understanding of unknown trends and patterns in literary history.

Facts are not simply admitted into the Archive, and it is fortunate that Wikipedia affords the curious reader a chance to see this debate in action.

Liu's fascination of Web 2.0 fails to mention the idea of data security, as well as the option to be anonymous as well. Should we be thinking about the who's-who in the comments or rather just let them fill the net and stick to the general structure of building upon buildings.

In what Walter Ong calls “primary oral culture,” after all, the literary act is perhaps best conceived not as transmission at all instead but as community—the original village behind Marshall McLuhan’s mediated global village.

"The medium is the message." What is the message of the medium of Web 2.0?

Similarly, blog and social-network platforms can be used to engage with literary works. For instance, one team of students in the 2008 version of my Literature+ course used the LiveJournal blogging platform to create profile pages for the characters in the General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales. They themed each profile page with images and language they thought appropriate to the character and then wrote comments “in character” on other characters’ pages or on a shared community page (e.g., the Miller commenting rudely on the Knight’s or Wife of Bath’s pages, much as Chaucer’s original Miller was wont to do).

This reminds me of Mallory Ortberg's Texts from Jane Eyre (2014) and various Twitter accounts of long-deceased authors.

Reader-response and reception theory, for instance, elevated reading activity in the circuit.

Hans Robert Jauss, Wolfgang Iser

I refer in particular to literary theory from the 1960s onward—precisely Landow’s reason for analogizing hypertext to Barthes and other poststructuralists.

How do the ideas Barthes presents in his 1967 essay "The Death of an Author" coincide with social reading in the context of Web 2.0? It seems that the previously deceased author has been resurrected, or perhaps undergone a simultaneous reincarnation and multiplication through the dynamic web page. However, given the anonymity that the Internet facilitates, the author(s) can stay dead, rendering the reader's evaluation of the "text 'itself'" much more feasible. In the context of the digital age, perhaps the author is indeed dead but inhabits a ghost-like space.

There is an interesting emphasis here on the social aspect of reading, especially since reading is often thought of now as a solitary activity. While reading returns to its social roots (oral traditions, etc), it is also transforming itself by colliding into and integrating with the age of social media.

Any reading done on any type of digital format does tend to be less "serious" for whatever reason. Is it because of the sheer mass of content, and that quality is instantaneously believed to be lost to quantity? In "Novel Hacks," Allred adresses this as well when he speaks of the "superficiality of web culture" (119).

In relation to the idea of digital humanities, social justice has now been taken from the public sphere of open protesting to the "public" interface of the web; anyone has access to these accusations, and news can spread at the speed of light. But how does this change the effectiveness of said accusations? Where does the reliability of what one says online start to lose its authenticity and effect? In regards to our class, where does the novel lose its power when its taken out of the pages of its parent-text?

I want to hear more about the tech side of things here. Is the face to face interaction of the Whitehead event and the writing/reading at the nursing home the "special sauce" here? What about the virtual communities that grow up around literature in spaces like Twitter, Facebook, and (well) hypothes.is?

I'm curious about what the authors think about genre: are all genres and modes good at this, or is this fundamentally an argument about the novel?

What's the boundary between the "literary" mode of civility and the boisterous modes of exchange that happen elsewhere on the web (say, among Trump and his legions of Twitter followers)? The norms of the rational public sphere here seem like something that is often honored in the breech.

Yet reading was not always so solitary...

Reminiscent of Liu's discussion of the interrelation of the margins of the text and the margins of society.

I'm reminded of Ian Watt's moving account of how difficult it was to read the novel for non-elite readers in the 18thC, the cost in terms of desperately needed sleep, candles, lamp oil, books themselves, and the opportunity cost of other, free forms of entertainment.

Note the implicit challenge to the inherited model of solitary reading of novels, as in Benjamin's "The Storyteller": the communal setting for the event, and the communal reading leading up to it, renders the novel as a space that convenes everyone as a writer, just as for Benjamin traditional storytelling convenes everyone as a potential teller of the tale.

Gorgeous ending: props to MK for including pedagogy (a missed opportunity in the essay is to discuss how DH elevates the stature of pedagogy, making teaching/scholarship more closely aligned endeavors) and for emphasizing the public-facing aspect of DH, a particularly important facet in a political moment of defunding of education and culture.

Astute reading of how the form of Twitter maps onto the densely networked structure of the DH field/movement itself. Might also consider the flipside of the second point, however: the networked culture of DH speaks to the collapse of the academic job market in the humanities, but its also gains some of its high profile from the support from upper-level admins who are chasing the "next big thing."

As with history of cinema, the tech and the narrative possibilities are intricately related throughout.

Another bit of "phatic" play.

Methodology: challenging issue of how to recover the aural aspects of literature for the present. How many authors saved "prompt copies" from the era before recordings?

Clever opening that calls attention to what theorist Roman Jakobson calls the "phatic" function of language: basically the "channel" that the message is using to convey itself. The glottal "ahem" foregrounds the aural dimension of language and plays with the slippage between writing and speech that is a central concern of the essay.