beyondliterature

Let me let you know…

...what's going on around here. 

I sat staring at this computer screen thinking of some illuminating way to introduce
myself and this project to the world. 
I am, however, speechless...perhaps more appropriately, typeless. 
My mind is swirling with the ideas and values instilled in me by Calvino. 
But let me start at the beginning.

My name is Aisha Rees, and I am a senior English major and Pathways to Teaching minor. 
This blog was put together as a "learning screen" for Internet Literature (LIT3400)
at the University of Florida.
This learning screen reflects a new perspective on the research paper,
and is beautifully entwined with the new perspective on literature
in this technologically driven generation.
For our learning screen, we were required to read Italo Calvino's Six Memos for the Next Millennium.
This book discusses five values of great literature from ancient to contemporary times,
and by doing so, postulates,
"Can these values transcend into the new millennium, into emerging media?"
The main vein of this blog is to answer that question for Calvino
by experiencing e-literature as it is today
(it is in such a constant state of motion, as is the nature of the Internet age,
it very may be different in the blink of an eye).
After our personal experience with different forms of e-literature,
we must apply them to Calvino's values: interpret them and connect them. 

But perhaps the real question is...what is electronic literature?
We know that it is literature that has to be viewed, heard, read, or a combination of all three,
through an electronic interface, such as the Internet (in the case of this project).
It is precisely the combination of sensory reactions
that forces the reader of e-lit to quickly adapt to the type of reading,
or rather experiencing, that is necessary to extract meaning from it.
This new type of literacy our professor, Gregory Ulmer, calls "electracy."
E-lit is fluid and interactive in a way that was not possible
for readers to experience before its emergence as an aesthetic. 

This interpretation and connection of Calvino's values to the e-literature
I have exposed myself to is only the beginning...

Experience my experience, and wait for part two.