One of the fastest growing artforms in the world is digital media. Computers and other

technologies allow users to create new and vibrant works of art that could not exist in any other

medium. An excellent example of this is electronic literature. The term “electronic literature”

may seem like an oxymoron, as we often think of literature as physical books. Reading a book

that is projected on a computer screen is no different than a book that is printed on paper! Online

texts, however, are not what the term electronic literature refers to. Electronic literature

capitalizes on the unique qualities of computers and the Internet to create and distribute original

literary works designed for a digital age. Unlike traditional literature, electronic literature—e-lit,

for short—is not bound by the limits of the written word. E-lit marvelously blends literary

techniques with aspects of film, digital art, and poetry that could not practically exist in

traditional literature.

Many universities around the world have already started courses based on electronic

literature and other digital humanities, but there is plenty of debate as to what such a course

should be filed under. The University of Bergen teaches specific courses on electronic literature

in their Department of Linguistic, Literary and Aesthetic Studies (UiB). The University of

Victoria, however, “hosts the annual Digital Humanities Summer Institute to train new scholars”

instead of sequestering the field to English or Art departments (Kirschenbaum 196). Then there

is the interdisciplinary English and Digital Humanities program at Marylhurst University which

“integrates literature, digital technologies, the humanities and service-learning in a hybrid

format” (Marylhurst University). For the past year, my Honors Project has been to figure out

how to introduce electronic literature to the University of Louisiana at Monroe. I have chosen to

present my project not as a fantastically large thesis or a knee-tall dissertation but, instead, as a

prototype English course similar to those taught in other universities.

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The core reason I have chosen to frame the course in the English department is because

the focus of the class will be electronic literature, not the entirety of digital humanities. Students

who take this course will be applying literary criticism and analytical tactics often used in

English courses to digital works that use the English language as their primary medium. There

will not be any in-depth examination of the coding of the works or any assignments that require

students to craft their own electronic literature. While there are many examples of classes in

which these lessons are taught, such as the aforementioned Marylhurst University’s “Hypertext

and Electronic Literature” course, I do not have the expertise to accurately relate to students how

to perform these tasks (Stommel). Such a project would most definitely be an interdisciplinary

feat, but it most likely be a hybrid between a creative writing course and a class on computer

programming. The course’s problems are also compounded by a lack of a dedicated department

for digital humanities here at ULM. Digital media is largely taught by ULM’s Communications

department with some sections sourced to the Art division and the Computer Science section.

While ULM may amalgamate these divided programs into a singular digital humanities

department, I have decided to focus purely on the analysis of the texts themselves for now.

In what ways, then, should electronic literature be analyzed? When I started my research,

I assumed this was a simple question. If someone were to have asked me this a year ago, I would

have replied, “Well, you’d look at it like literature!” This is not entirely false. In any narrative

medium, one can apply literary criticism with relative success. It is not difficult to find, say, a

Marxist examination of James Cameron’s blockbuster film Avatar or an article comparing

Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy with Tennessee William’s A Streetcar Named Desire (Tang

657, Crandell 91). There does exist criticism and research from within each medium, however, to

provide extra information and exploration of the technical and medium-specific portions of each

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work. Literary criticism is not the only way to dissect a film, a play, or a piece of electronic

literature. It is, nevertheless, what I and any student who chooses to take this course will use, and

thus it belongs in an English department.

There was only one other issue I needed to resolve before I could finally set to work on

the project. To prove that electronic literature should be taught as literature, I have to prove that

it is, in fact, worthy of being called literature. The first objection I encountered was that the

medium focuses less on literary techniques and more on flashing lights and heart-racing set

pieces. In other words, the question was whether electronic literature actually focused on using

English first and everything else second. The issue that this question brings up is often discussed

in digital humanities through apologetic essays and examinations of the medium itself. This

question, however, often would devolve into one major core dilemma: what is literature? As

Epsen Aarseth states in his work Cybertext, “apologetic claims and chauvinistic counterclaims…

illustrate only too well the partial and conservative state of the human sciences, in which nothing

can be studied that is not already within a field; in which the type rather than the individual

qualities of an object determines its value as an accepted member of some canon or other” (16).

To bar electronic literature from literary studies because it can be flashy and noisy also directly

singles out the use of film in literature courses. While film is its own medium, academics

continue to scrutinize the literary and narrative techniques used within those works as if they

were literature or in conjunction with literature. I will not attempt to redefine literature in this

paper, but I will say this: one cannot condemn the works of electronic literature before one

examines them under the lens of literary criticism.

Of course, a new question quickly arose once this direction was set: what works do I

include or exclude? If a person were to catalogue how much larger the pool of electronic

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literature becomes every hour, he/she would wonder how one could possibly cram it all into a

three-hour English class. It has taken me months to get the syllabus refined to its current state,

and even now I stumble upon things I overlooked that could work better than what I have.

So, what is not considered e-lit? This might come as a surprise, but e-books, such as

those one finds on a Kindle, are out. They are basically books with the push of a button

substituting for the turning of a page and do not fully utilize the electronic medium on which

they are viewed. Most journalism online is also excluded; however, special consideration should

be given to the blogosphere as that was borne from Internet culture imitating real life and should

be considered for its own course. There are also other types of media such as podcasts and

videos, but those are not exclusively made in the digital sphere of the computer. What we are

looking for in electronic literature is something that takes advantage of the medium on which it is

produced and presents a uniquely digital experience that cannot be replicated in another format.

What is left to choose from, then? First, we have hypertext. Hypertext is a fairly old form

of digital storytelling, by Internet standards at least, in which the user will navigate each screen

through a link to the next one and so on. Most users are familiar with this storytelling technique

already just from browsing the Internet. Take for example a news story on an online site. Upon

reading it, one finds links at the bottom of the page or highlighted words within the text itself

that take the user to other stories that are related in some small way to the story currently

displayed on the browser. Clicking one of these links takes the user to a new page with a

different story. In hypertext narratives, authors utilize the links to construct a fractured tale that is

sequestered away in fragments behind each link, placing an emphasis on what is front and center

on the screen rather than creating a single wall of text. Readers are then forced to piece the story

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together on their own as one would a puzzle, but there is typically no true path or arrangement to

construct the story, which leads to multiple and, at times, conflicting narratives.

Second, we have the adventure game. Also known as text adventures or “interactive

fiction,” this style of narrative pits players against a computer program. Just as one would type

into a Microsoft Word document, typing a word into an adventure game evokes a response.

Unlike Word, this response tends to move forward a plotline that the player chases, creating a

game of cat-and-mouse until the resolution of the story is reached. One of the genre’s key

features is audience participation. As Janet Murray, author of Hamlet on the Holodeck, explains,

“You are not just reading about an event that occurred in the past; the event is happening now,

and, unlike the action on the stage of a theater, it is happening to you (Murray 81, original

emphasis). The player’s personal interactions with the “storyteller” program construct a cohesive

narrative experience that is unique to each player but overall the same story. One player may

spend an hour going around in circles, unaware that he/she is being led astray, while another may

find a rare character who gives him/her aid. This may make adventure games more difficult to

teach in a classroom, but the ability to tell multiform narratives is one of the strengths of the

genre that deserve recognition.

One of the more controversial items I have included in the course is video games. The

reason that this is more difficult to make a case for is that many people are still debating about

video games and their societal value. We have conflicting reports that say that video games are

“linked to increased aggression in players” but “insufficient evidence exists about whether the

link extends to criminal violence or delinquency” (APA). Even the U.S. Supreme Court has been

called in to make a statement on whether video games count as free speech, to which they have

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stated that video games, like other forms of media, “communicate ideas—and even social

messages” (Woodham).

This problem is furthered by the apparent focus of games on violence and mature content.

An oft-quoted example was the astonishing popularity of Grand Theft Auto V, which broke the

Guinness World Record for “highest revenue generated by any entertainment product in 24

hours” by grossing over $815.7 million on its release (Guinness). This particular game stirred up

a storm of kickback with its depiction of graphic violence, torture, drug abuse, and crime.

Discontent among consumers led to petitions to take the game off of store shelves, which

actually succeeded in Kmart and Target stores in Australia, but it somehow went over many

peoples’ heads that “the 18+ rating for the game means that children and vulnerable people

should not be playing it anyway” and that those stores also “sell other DVDs and games with

high age-ratings” (Griffin).

It is remarkably easy to target games for their offensive content because players generally

enact the violence themselves. I do find it odd, though, that very few actors are scrutinized for

their roles in mature films or that authors like Cormac McCarthy are praised for their depictions

of violence as “the site where divergent interests converge for dramatic effect” (Brewton).

Violence is not all that lies within McCarthy’s works, and that is also true of video games. If

done well, violence in games actually provides insight into the conflict between central

characters and their respective ideologies as well as providing a mirror to the causes of violence

rather than being only a spectacle.

We have spent so much time trying to figure out if video games are good, bad, or in

between that we have forgotten that new genres always face challenges from those invested in

the status quo. Similar discussions were had thousands of years ago over the written word. In

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Plato’s Phaedrus, the philosopher Socrates stated that writing would “make [the people]

remember things by relying on marks made by others, from outside themselves, not on their own

inner resources, and so writing will make the things they have learnt disappear from their minds”

(Plato 78). Socrates may have failed to stem the tide of the then-new medium of writing, but

other forms of writing and art have come forth since then, bringing with each its fair share of

protesters. Theater in the early middle ages was considered “idolatrous, obscene, and dangerous

in [its] effects on the audience members’ passions” by the Christian Church until they began to

produce their own plays (Gainor 26). Novels, too, are still attacked for their content. For

instance, Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye is banned in many libraries and public schools for

“controversial issues” and “sexually explicit” content (ALA). It is almost as if “all the

representational arts can be considered dangerously delusional, and the more entrancing they

become, the more disturbing” (Murray 18). The reactions of society to video games have thus far

been similar to what we have seen in the past when new types of art are introduced. They have

been neglected, then ridiculed, then attacked, but now it has come time to accept them.

To order to do so, I have constructed this course. I have divided the course into four main

modules that emphasize a different way of examining electronic literature as well as literature

and art as a whole. Due to the overwhelming cache of electronic literature, I had to limit myself

to a handful of items, but I was also restricted because this course could draw in people who are

interested in e-lit but possess little experience with the medium. Because of this, the works I have

chosen may seem simplistic compared to other examples. Should more advanced courses in

electronic literature arise, however, more time can be allocated to each genre and to more

complex works.

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Prospective students’ unfamiliarity with e-lit is one of the reasons why the first module in

the course is a novel titled Neuromancer by William Gibson. Written six years before the advent

of the World Wide Web, Neuromancer describes a world in which humans have created

something known as cyberspace, where they can conduct business and search for pleasure in the

blink of an eye. Sound familiar? “Cyberspace” as a term was actually coined by Gibson in a

different work, but it was Neuromancer that popularized it with this definition:

Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate

operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts…A graphic

representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system.

Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and

constellations of data. Like city lights, receding… (Gibson 51).

While we may not physically jack into the net like the characters in the novel do, the Internet of

today is highly reminiscent to Neuromancer’s cyberspace as the Internet features faceless

organizations that use technology to terrorize those they deem enemies (albeit without any Guy

Fawkes masks) and new fads that appear overnight online only to disappear the next day.

Neuromancer also provides a great place to start the course due to its tight link to Internet

culture. Reading Neuromancer will also allow each and every student to practice and learn

techniques for literary analysis that will be the basis for examinations of electronic literature.

This similarly allows everyone in the course to be on the same level, as some students might

have taken twice as many literature courses as others in the class. By the end of the first module,

students will be capable of examining how Gibson’s novel exaggerates the cultural link between

humans and technology while simultaneously observing how those very machines could shape

and create different cultures, associating the major themes in the novel with the time period in

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which it was created, and exploring how the characterization of Case raises questions about the

validity of a heroic protagonist.

The second module is something of a grab bag between new and old electronic literature

formats. We begin with the controversial Depression Quest by Zoe Quinn. The work is an

adventure game which attempts “to illustrate as clearly as possible what depression is like” by

placing players in the role of someone who slips further and further into depression (Quinn). The

game does so by giving players a variety of options from common life events. Depending on

how badly the character is depressed, the choices that the players want to make can be blocked

off, which could encourage a downward spiral if not handled delicately. One of the most

interesting parts of the game is its description, which catalogues the game as “(non)fiction”

(Quinn). The game does contain semi-autobiographical content from Quinn and her

collaborators, but it refers more to the nature of the story itself. While the game’s protagonist and

the events that occur to that character are fictional, there are numerous real cases of depression

diagnosed every day. This adventure game merely puts those stories in the format of a game and

asks the players to place themselves in the mindset of another person.

The reason that Depression Quest is controversial has less to do with the work itself than

its reception by the gaming audience. Many of these same users bashed the game for not being a

“real” game due to its serious content and presentation. This criticism eventually died out, but it

was brought back again when Quinn, along with many other female game developers, were sent

numerous death threats and harassed by thousands of online users in an event known as

“Gamergate.” This debacle started when Quinn’s ex-boyfriend posted an open letter online that

claimed she slept with games journalists in order to get good reviews for Depression Quest. This

essay sparked the ire of numerous members of the Internet who became “a faceless multitude,

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who together were profoundly more frightening and disruptive that Gjoni’s blog post ever was”

(Dewey). I hope that by introducing this recent topic into class students will obtain a broader

view as to the societal value of “serious” games, how conversations on the Internet occur and

become distorted, and how disastrous events like Gamergate get started.

The next genre we will examine is hypertext literature. I have chosen two distinctly

different works in an attempt to show how varied the genre itself is within electronic literature.

The first is My Body & a Wunderkammer by Shelly Jackson. The title refers to a drawing of

Jackson’s body, which is the central tie of the work, and how each part is like a drawer in a

“wunderkammer”—literally, a cabinet of curiosities. Like opening a drawer in a cabinet, the

reader will click on a part of the body and “open” a web page detailing Jackson’s experiences

and self-exploration of her body. These range from her childhood fascination with her

fingernails, her various attempts to sketch a nose, and poems about her internal organs. The

content and tone of each piece is connected through blue hyperlinks in the text, allowing readers

the ability to traverse the entire wealth of the work without necessarily having to go back and

forth between the “table of contents” that is her body and the works hidden within her. This

autobiographical work places the literary spotlight on the parts of us we neglect and take for

granted while also cherishing the inquisitive nature of children, preteens, and teenagers as they

attempt to understand their own bodies.

The other work, The Brain Drawing the Bullet by Alan Trotter, depicts a single blank

page that grows in content as the user follows the links. As the reader progresses through the

story of a man known as L, they will find that L has been obsessively combing over the story of

the author William S. Burroughs and the events that led to the death of his wife Joan Vollner.

This case, which did in fact occur, is then presented through the testimonies of Burroughs and his

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companions. The story is complicated, however, as words begin to shift and change on the

screen. As more testimonies are brought forth, the previous testimonies are adjusted in an

attempt to revise what occurred. The end result is a constantly altering narrative that leaves L

with one course of action, which is to replicate the event and see if the result is the same.

Readers will likewise question what the true course of events was, as the characters in the story

cannot do so in a trustworthy manner.

Just as writers use media other than prose in traditional literature, prose is not the only

way creators can express themselves online. Sometimes people need to add a little bit of style

and flair to the words through poetry. E-poetry, therefore, is “poetry that arises from engagement

with the possibilities offered by digital media” (Flores). E-poetry is not simply “poetry on the

Internet,” though, and this is illustrated by the works I have chosen for the course. Robert

Kendall’s poem “A Study in Shades,” for example, is visibly split in two. On the left are the

thoughts of an old man with Alzheimer’s along with a bust of his face. The right side contains

the thoughts of his daughter, who is also pictured above the poem. As readers advance through

both sides of the poem, the father’s face grows darker, and the daughter’s face disappears,

representing the debilitating effects of the disease. This poem is stylistically the most “poem”-

like of the group, as it uses a small amount of hypertext and some digital images to frame the

story and the mental state of the old man.

Christine Wilks’s “We Drank” also uses multimedia to illustrate and emphasize its major

themes and motifs. In this case, readers are subjected to a young couple who try to use alcohol to

hide and forget their relationship problems. As the two delve deeper and deeper into the bottle,

the words that appear become muddled, constantly being replaced with their opposites. This

poem is drastically different from Kendall’s poem, as it incorporates kinetic typography, musical

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accompaniment, and haunting imagery to emphasize the descent of the characters into an

alcoholic stupor.

K. Michael and Dirk Vis’s “Ah (a shower song)” also uses kinetic typography, but its

tone is significantly more upbeat than Wilk’s poem. In “Ah,” the words of the poem begin as a

single line of text, jumbled together along with thoughts on Einstein and breathing. After a time,

the words begin to flow in all different directions. The poem is intended to represent the

scattered and calmed state of mind a relaxing shower can bring as well as to more accurately

picture the stream of consciousness.

Bruno Nadeau and Jason Lewis’s “Still Standing” is a third example of kinetic

typography, but its use is very different from both “We Drank” and “Ah.” In this case, the poem

initially is scattered onto the floor of a projection. As people walk in front of it, motion detectors

cause the poem to scatter and fly in the direction that the person in front of it moves. If the

viewer stands still, the poem will eventually form a shadow for the person, allowing the reader to

finally find out what the poem says. In this way, Nadeau and Lewis convince the reader to take a

moment to practice “still standing” and to actually pause to read the work they have created.

The final poem, “A Hole in the Sky” by Niyi Osundare, utilizes the power of video to

present a choreopoem, a genre which sets poems to music and emphasizes the speech of the

orator. The accompanying video helps to define regional words and enhance the experience for

the viewer. By both reading and watching Osundare’s poem, readers will be able to hear the

poem as poems have traditionally been read aloud. The poem itself deals with the ever-present

issue of climate change and humanity’s impact on the natural world, another popular and current

topic to discuss.

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After viewing one of these poems, students will take what they have learned from

previous sections and apply those literary tactics in an explication assignment. As with any

poem, they will observe the form, meter, rhyme scheme, imagery, and major themes in an

attempt to uncover the meaning of each poem. In addition, they will also have to examine the

style of the e-poem and how it makes use of its digital format to emphasize its message.

The next major works are from Y0ung-Hae Chang Heavy Industries, the South Korean

group composed of Young-hae Chang and Marc Voge. Their short stories are excellent examples

of kinetic typography and of Aarseth’s concept of ergodic literature, a phrase taken from the

Greek term for work, “ergon” (Aarseth 1). Compared to traditional, “nonergodic” literature,

“nontrivial effort”—denoting more than the act of turning a page—“is required to allow the

reader to traverse the text” (Aarseth 1). Students will have already encountered this in the e-

poetry section, as poetry in general requires readers to agonizingly inspect each word of each line

in each stanza in order to interpret the deeper and hidden meanings of the work. Because of this,

the normally passive reader becomes an active participant. Here, students will have to pay close

attention to the story presented to them by the words that flash onto the screen. The reader has no

control as to when or how quickly the next line of the story will appear and thus will have to

make extra efforts to absorb everything that is occurring. This active experience is more difficult

than it sounds, as a boisterous soundtrack and the speed at which the words can appear will

undoubtedly challenge all readers to absorb as much as they possibly can in a very short time.

The third section of the course is a special module that I call “Compare and Contrast.” I

believe that lessons go better with themes, and so the theme for this section is horror.

Coincidentally, if this course should be taught during the fall semester, this section will occur in

October, making the horror theme doubly powerful. Students will be observing how three

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different mediums approach the topic of scaring the life out of us, but, more importantly, they

will be able to take what they know of traditional and electronic literature and apply them

practically by forming a short compare-and-contrast essay at the end of the module. The first

items on the list are two short stories by renowned horror author H.P. Lovecraft. His stories

popularized the “cosmic horror” genre, which is could be described as “attempting to describe

the indescribable.” Lovecraft’s tales of suspense, sleeping demons, and waking nightmares have

found a cult following on the Internet, as it, too, is difficult to describe at times.

Short stories like “The Thing on the Doorstep” and “The Call of Cthulhu” have inspired

many authors and artists, such as the group behind the Welcome to Night Vale podcast. I said

before that podcasts are not exactly electronic literature, and I stand behind that statement. I do,

however, believe they are a part of digital media I call “transitory literature,” which are products

of storytelling techniques that have been transferred to a new medium but are otherwise still the

same. Notable examples would be audiobooks and Osundare’s “A Hole in the Sky,” in which a

written story is told through the spoken words of another reader. This adds additional complexity

to the work by making both the words of the story and how the reader says those words of equal

importance. This is especially true in the Welcome to Night Vale podcast, which basically asks its

listeners, “What happens to horror stories when they are told by someone with a pleasant but

monotone voice?” Students who listen to Night Vale will be able to hear the elements of horror

that Lovecraft developed, but they will have to analyze them through these deconstructive and

sometimes absurdist performances. For example, “A Story About You” literally tells a story

about the listener, as the narrator Cecil relates all of the things that are occurring to you right at

this moment. While the “you” that Cecil describes is eluding government agents and trying to

figure out what sort of creature is hidden in the trunk of the car, listeners will notice that nothing

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is actually happening to them. The story parodies the second-person narrative style of novels by

attempting to “narrate” the life of the listener, despite the fact that neither the narrator nor the

story has any power in reality.

Welcome to Night Vale’s status as transitory literature allows it to be an intermediary

between the traditional literature of Lovecraft and the electronic literature of Hideo Kojima and

Guillermo del Toro’s P.T. This game, technically a demo for the now-cancelled Silent Hills, was

released mysteriously with no advertisements and no announcements. It simply appeared on the

Playstation Online Store, but it transfixed the gaming world with its simplistic yet horrifying

story. The player is trapped in a never-ending loop of corridors as the world seems to degrade

and the protagonist’s unsavory past is brought to light. As the game has been removed from

digital stores, there are still many people who possess the game and many more who have posted

recordings of their playthroughs. I will attempt to track down a legitimate copy of the game for

the class, however I will be encouraging students to watch these playthroughs online. Like Night

Vale, I also expect students to analyze how the player they watch reacts to the events of P.T. and

how that influenced their perception of the game.

After experiencing the horrors of Lovecraft’s prose, the haunting absurdity of Night Vale,

and the player’s downward spiral into madness in P.T., students will work together to analyze

how each work uses the elements of horror to tell their stories. By placing students into a forum

discussion of the works, the assignment provides an excellent opportunity to take the literary

techniques they have practiced since the beginning of the course and apply it to three different

types of media. Together, Lovecraft, Night Vale, and P.T. represent the different stages of

literature as it has advanced over the years, and they provide students with a contrast between

what is read, what is heard, and what is seen.

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For the fourth and final module, I have chosen to feature what I believe to be one of the

most popular genres of electronic literature: video games. This section has a dual purpose. I hope

that not only will students obtain an appreciation of video game narratives but also that they will

see how the Internet has opened up discussions about stories, characters, and the player’s own

experiences with each game. For every game I list, I will post lists of YouTube channels

featuring what you could call the rising stars of the Internet. These Let’s Players focus on

engaging their audience in the story of the games while also showcasing just what makes each

title charming and emotional its own right. This also allows students to save a few dollars if they

cannot buy the game or are otherwise unable to play it.

To begin this module, we will first look at some of the discussions about video games. As

I have mentioned before, there are many who would rather see these works disqualified from

artistic discussions. An excellent example comes in an infamous article from the late film critic

Roger Ebert who stated that “video games can never be art” (Ebert). He later recanted this

statement, but many feel just as strongly as him. David Masciotra, as an example, claims that

“the novel is an adult medium” while “video games are overly stimulating…avenues into

arrested development, not art” (Masciotra). As the medium of the video game grows both in

quantity and in quality, the argument for why games should be or should not be an artform have

become more critically focused. As Phil Owen states, a notable jab is the distracting “video game

logic” that tells players of The Last of Us that they “need four scissor blades to make a single

shiv” and that continues to remind players that they are, in fact, playing a game (Owen). There is

also the dilemma of meshing narrative and gameplay. Owen explains that “if the gameplay is

itself part of the art, then that’s fine…, but endless repetitive shooting or dungeon crawls rarely

fit that bill” (Owen). To be considered as true art comparable with film and literature, the

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mechanics of the video game have to be interwoven with the narrative the developer seeks to tell,

so I must restrict what games can be literature by their reliance (or lack thereof) on the English

language as the core artistic element.

The first example of this narrow breed students will encounter will be Gone Home. Like

P.T., the house that the player explores is dark and filled with equally murky secrets, and players

will have to explore the house to piece together the central story. The similarities end there,

however, as Gone Home is significantly lighter in tone and would be better classified as drama

rather than horror. The story itself revolves around Kaitlin Greenbriar (played by the player), her

sister Samantha, and their parents Terry and Janice. When Kaitlin arrives at the house following

a year abroad, she finds the house empty as well as a note from her sister, who has run away

from home. The player must walk around the house and follow the clues to understand Sam’s

decision as well as the troubled family life of the Greenbriars. I believe this game does an

excellent job of setting the bar for games as both an artistic and a literary work. The mechanics

of discovering the mysteries hidden within the house and of examining the notes left behind by

the family members work together with the overall tale to create a cohesive narrative experience.

Following Gone Home is another game that involves a lot of walking and a lot of piecing

together of stories: The Stanley Parable. Unlike the previous game, there is no end to The

Stanley Parable. Every time a player believes they have “beaten” the game, it simply restarts.

The “story,” if it can be called that, is that a worker named Stanley is trying to figure out what

happened to his coworkers when they disappear one day. Or it could be just him shutting the

door and not paying the event any mind, only for the player to find the game has restarted once

again. The player’s attempts to find an exit to the labyrinth (which the player can observe in its

entirety during certain playthroughs) always lead back to the exit. This illustrates Murray’s idea

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of the rhizome, which is a “digital labyrinth” that is “like a set of index cards that have been

scattered on the floor and then connected with multiple segments of tangled twine, they offer no

end point and no way out” (Murray 132). This very postmodern narrative “[privileges] confusion

itself” and “frustrates our desire for narrational agency, for using the act of navigation to unfold a

story that flows from our own meaningful choices” by removing any significance those choices

could have (Murray 133). The rhizome is captured perfectly in The Stanley Parable as it “takes

the fact that [the player’s] choices in games almost always exist within a system that has been

predesigned and in which [the player’s] options are severely limited, and applies that to the real

world and the choices that society sets up for us” (Petit). The mechanics of the game are not just

exposed in this way but are also thrown into the faces of the players in a self-aware attempt to

remind players that they are trapped in a maze with no exit, save for shutting the game itself off.

Another type of story that Murray believes electronic literature excels at is the “journey,”

or something akin to the feats of Odysseus in Homer’s Odyssey. Murray states, “One of the

consistent pleasures of the journey story in every time and every medium is the unfolding of

solutions to seemingly impossible situations” (Murray 138). While most people may not be

physically capable of stringing Odysseus’s bow or outwitting the Cyclops, video games offer the

ability to do so vicariously. One such game is Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. Like the Odyssey,

Brothers uses the mythic arc as a framework for its story, but how it tells that story is

extraordinarily unique. By using a controller, the player controls both brothers at the same time,

but each brother can perform tasks the other cannot. The player must solve puzzles and escape

dangerous creatures to survive and complete their quest, just like Odysseus did in his own

journey. Brothers, however, contains no dialogue, separating it from the other works in this

module. When the characters Naia and Naiee converse, they speak in a fictional language. The

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story is instead told almost exclusively through the mechanics of the game and the animation of

the characters. I included this work for the distinct purpose of showing how a video game can be

a narrative art but not literature. While it does tell a beautiful and heartwrenching story, it does

so without utilizing the English language (or any language, for that matter), which is the key

characteristic of literature. Therefore, Brothers, while not eligible for the title of “electronic

literature,” does provide a counterpoint to the idea that all games that are art are also literature.

The final game of the module and the last work of the course is Undertale. Similar to The

Stanley Parable, Undertale seeks to deconstruct the standard game narrative by taking one of the

most controversial aspects of gaming and placing it front and center for the player to see:

violence. Undertale gives players the choice to “fight” the monsters they encounter, which

eventually leads to one killing the other, or to show “mercy” and seek a non-violent path to end

the conflict. Depending on the decisions the player makes, the world changes, and the characters

will interact with the player differently each and every playthrough, as every event is recorded

and saved regardless of how many times the player loads or reloads a save file. The three endings

of the game each depend on what the player does when given the option to inflict violence upon

others. Most players will achieve the Neutral route to begin with, as it triggers if any character—

regardless of their importance to the story—is killed. This ends with the player leaving the

Underground alone. Choosing to go to the extreme and follow the Genocide route will find

players systematically murdering monsters until none remain. Completing this route causes the

death of the player, who must sell their “soul” to restart the game from the beginning. The final

route, Pacifist, can only be obtained if the player refuses to kill a single monster. This is done by

either running from battle or finding a way to end the fight peacefully. This is not enough,

however, as the player must also befriend the monsters they encounter, and the player is

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rewarded for their efforts by shattering the barrier that keeps the monsters trapped underground,

brokering a new age where monsters and men walk side by side. Each ending tells a portion of

the full story, and the actions the player makes in one route can drastically affect how characters

react due to the hidden record. It is a significantly longer game compared to any other game in

this course due to these three wildly different endings, so I will be giving students roughly three

days to analyze and complete the game.

At the end of the course, students will take what they have learned over the semester and

utilize it by researching another instance of electronic literature that they believe should either be

taught in this course or studied academically in a more focused course. Perhaps they will choose

a wealth of hypertext literature or choose another video game to add to the pantheon of e-lit. This

course is hopefully only the first of many, and, if we are going to have more complex courses in

electronic literature, we need to draw from and add to the international canon. When these

students complete the course, I hope that they will take with them a greater appreciation for this

new medium and seriously consider what this new style of literature can teach the world. Perhaps

we can even start that discussion by this having this course here at the University of Louisiana at

Monroe.

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