Conference 2003

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Literature and Industry: From the printed text to the hypertext

Literature has responded in changing ways from the period of the industrial revolution and the advent of the printing press through the scientific and technological revolution of the early twentieth century to the digital and information revolution of the current era. Dramatic social changes span this era: from the rise of the bourgeois nation state and the expansion of colonialism, through revolution and anti-colonial upsurge, fascism and counterrevolution, to the contemporary world driven by ‘globalised’ finance. The social and technological transformations have been accompanied by no less dramatic changes in the modes of literary production as well as in the nature and preoccupations of the literary text. These changes in the literary text have also been influenced by parallel changes in other forms of artistic activity. The revolutions in science and technology that came in the wake of industrialisation gave rise to new means of communication such as photography, film, radio, television, and the Internet, which in their turn engendered new modes of artistic activity. They also brought new forms of human experience, new perceptions of space and time and new ways of looking at the world.

Some of the markers in this process have been the emergence of the individual subject and the advent of the masses, urbanisation and migration, the rise of the mass media, and the transformation of the city from the early stages of industrialisation into the anonymous metropolis and finally to the present day ‘globalised’ megapolis. These have posed challenges to the literary text and spawned various forms of writing, from linear forms of representation through the various forms of experimentation with time and space and the juxtaposing and counterposing forms of collage and montage to the interactive and nonsequential hypertext.

The seminar will explore the connections between technology, society, art, the media and the literary text as they change and transform each other from the onset of the industrial revolution to the present ‘globalised’ world. It will attempt to bring together scholars from different disciplines to reflect upon the nature and implications of these changes.

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PROGRAM

Thursday, 27 February 2003, Room 22, Arts Faculty

 Friday, 28 February 2003, Room 22, Arts Faculty

 Saturday, 1 March 2003, Room 22, Arts Faculty

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