The Hypertext Edition: Reading Old English

Craig Branham
Saint Louis University






The last chapter presented a view of hypertext from a cognitive perspective. Though hypertext is usually considered as a representation of an intrinsic structure of connected ideas within a field of information, it is more accurate to think of it as a working model of a reader's understanding of that information. Such models of understanding, when embodied in print or as software, limit the reader's interaction with the information based on physical constraints in the system. Such constraints result from the ways that authors and designers understand the nature of the relationships among different texts within that structure, and the function of these relationships. What an electronic hypertext and a scholarly edition of a literary text represent is exactly this act of cognition which can be "re-experienced" by the reader of the edited text. To put it in the terms of cognitive psychologist Donald A. Norman, the scholarly edition (electronic or otherwise) grows from a need to "[distribute] cognitive effort... across time and people."[c1] The problems with such inventions always result from their very physicality. Until technology can make possible a completely seamless link between minds, the constraints inherent in the media and in language will always alter that understanding. With existing technologies, as the first chapter has shown, much is lost in "translation." As I have argued; if designed carefully, an electronic hypertext can provide less arbitrary functional constraints than printed texts, and they are therefore often superior in their ability to convey procedural knowledge.
There is general agreement among those using computer-aided methods in Old English Studies that the greatest service that computers, and computer networks, will provide for scholars is that they will help make primary materials (both standard editions and manuscript facsimiles) freely available to all with the right hardware. Such capabilities have never been possible because of some basic economic necessities in print publishing. Many manuscripts are poorly reproduced in outdated photo-facsimiles[cn2], and most remain unpublished for lack of sufficient demand to make them profitable. From the perspective of Old English pedagogy, instructors have long recognized the computer's ability to make learning Old English more interactive and more individual[cc3]. Despite this potential and the resolve of hypertext developers that most research in the future will be done entirely on-screen[nc4], it is compelling that very few students of English literature currently do most of their reading with hypertext applications. In most courses, when used at all, computer applications are still used to supplement regular readings from printed editions, and then mostly for grammar drills or for electronic conferencing. Some reasons that computer-based approaches have not been implemented are the lack of dependable online texts[c5], the lack of available computer facilities to English departments, lac of sophistication in computer hardware[c6], or "Ludditism" among scholars in the humanities[nc7]. Yet, computer facilities and curricula that promote "computer literacy" are now fashionable in English departments, the power and user-friendliness of personal computers continue to grow rapidly, and computer applications like wordprocessing and communications have become less novel and increasingly orthodox in research methodology[n8]. While these reasons may still play a (diminishing) role, for Old English, there is a much more fundamental reason, which seems to have gone virtually unaddressed in the literature in this discipline: there is no generally effective design model for electronic hypertext editions of Old English texts. The reasons that this problem persists are clear. Old English scholars comprise a market which is too small to attract the interest of commercial developers of specialized applications[n9]. Moreover, the cognitive demands involved in reading vernacular chirographic texts are fundamentally different than those of reading other kinds of literary texts. As a result, most of the popular hypertext environments are useless for reading Old English. Finally, the prevalence of the printed edition as a design metaphor in existing hypertext applications for reading Old English have made them prohibitively difficult to use.
Before considering the nature of these problems it is important to keep in mind that whether in print or electronic form, scholarly editions are a representation of a specific cognitive, and largely unconscious, experience. This "hypertextual" experience is familiar to anyone who has worked extensively with Old English texts. A student might encounter, for instance, a line from the Parker manuscript of the Chronicle, annal 937: "he wæs his mæga sceard.  freonda gefylled . ónfolcstede . beslagen æt sæcce . 7 his sunu forlet . ónwælstowe. wundun fergrunden. giunge ætgude."[c10] The student would begin by decoding the letters and word boundaries based on his/her familiarity with square minuscule in other manuscripts. The words or their collocations evoke memories of other occurrences of the same words within a field of other texts[nc11]. The reader's larger understanding of the poem is based on what Alain Renoir describes as "three separate but interacting contexts [that the reader brings] to bear upon the interpretation of the text"[c12]: the reader's historical context and the "immediate context"[nc13] within the manuscript (within the Chronicle, and within a document that contains the Lanfranc and the Laws). Finally, the reader also applies this understanding the literary tradition.[c14] A reading of a line like the one just quoted might bring to mind points raised in several different books and articles that the reader may have encountered. This is a basic description of a process of understanding Old English, and such a process is presumably cultivated (formally or informally) when students take courses on Old English literature. The ultimate purpose for the edition (hypertext or otherwise) and all of the methodologies and critical approaches that have grown around them is sharing exactly this experience with readers who use them. The shape of this experience and its expression in the edition always has a degree of subjectivity in it. The first context in the list, the readers' historical context (which Renoir suggests have social, political, and cultural elements), will have to be considered carefully. The reader's technological environment has a role in shaping this context. A critical look at the design of critical editions will show the role it plays in understanding texts.
Klaeber's edition of Beowulf[c15] is one of the most sophisticated examples of a critical edition of an Old English poem. It approximates an expert's reading of the poem better than any other in existence because of its encyclopedic approach. In an early review, W. W. Lawrence remarked,
The hearty thanks of all students of Beowulf are due Professor Klaeber for this admirable edition, which reveals the most painstaking care, good sense, and discriminating scholarship... [The critical apparatus] contains an astonishing amount of information, touching, it would seem, every subject of importance about Beowulf upon which a scholar might desire information.[c16]
Though much of the edition is now out of date (some of it was when Lawrence reviewed it), it is still the most complete edition of the poem. The edition presents the reader with a basic hypertext of Beowulf. Apart from the edited text of the poem itself, there are three running "dialogs" throughout Klaeber's work: at the foot of the page, Klaeber describes his editorial decisions, provides manuscript readings, and lists abbreviated references to readings from various other critics. Another dialog runs between the text and Klaeber's commentary. These endnotes connect the text with Klaeber's own scholarship and the work of other scholars. Appendices provide excerpts of historical and poetic documents that might enrich a reading of the main poem as well. The most impressive part of Klaeber's edition is his glossary, which provides definitions, parses every word in the poem, and provides line references back to almost every occurrence of each word as well.
The inherent problems involved in using this edition reflect design issues that electronic text designers have hoped to remedy. First, though the text has gone through several printings and three separate revisions, every month its scholarship is further superseded. Scholars have devised new techniques like back-lighting and UV lighting to uncover words in the manuscript that were hidden when Klaeber transcribed the text. As extraordinary a scholar as Klaeber was, and however staggering is his list of works cited, his critical apparatus still represents only one critic's view of the poem, situated in one position in time, and one place in the history. Yet, the most important problem with the edition to consider for the purposes of this chapter is a purely functional one. Examine the edition from the novice's perspective. First, most of the edition's features are buried deep within the text: there are no typographic signals within the text of the poem to indicate that commentary is available for a particular line, or that there is a textual note. Careless or inexperienced readers may not notice that endnotes exist because the pages that contain them are physically indistinguishable from the rest. As a result of this design, even under the best conditions, the reader may spend as much time not reading Klaeber's edition during a study session as reading it. They may spend more time flipping pages to decode the apparatus or the abbreviations used in it, or to search for words in the glossary. Studies conducted with books having far less formidable critical apparatuses, have shown that undergraduate students do not even use the textual apparatus in editions very consistently[c17]. Granted, the edition is a closed system; though arbitrary and counter-intuitive in some respects, such conventions become second nature with time and attention. Yet, none of the drudgery involved in developing these skills is strictly necessary. It does not facilitate language learning or studying literature, it is only a kind of cognitive and procedural "baggage" that comes with conducting these activities with books.
Patrick Conner's Beowulf Workstation[c18] (hence BWS) is designed as a first step toward solving some of these problems. Though it is now about 7 years old, the BWS is still among the most advanced software currently available, and its design is an important forerunner of other hypertext editions Old English texts. Connor explains that the BWS has three components[c19]: "the interface, a linguistic component, and a contextual component." There are two main text windows in the workstation's user-interface. The first presents a read-only text which contains links to commentary, criticism, and graphic illustrations. The second text at the bottom of the window is a kind of "workspace" for the user. This window is where users can leave annotations and notes in the text, create their own translation of the poem, or export sections of the text from the Workstation directly into a wordprocessing document. The "linguistic component" offers an automatic lexicon and grammar which facilitate translation. A set of reflex buttons are arranged vertically on the right side of the window which invoke controls to help users orient themselves within the hypertext, or control file and printing options. The horizontal pull-down menu bar across the top gives users access to the native Hypercard controls, and access to special articles about aspects of the poem's context and language displayed in the "read only" window. Each article treats a specific subject (including onomastics, analogues, grammar and syntax, and metrics) and contains its own link structure. The rationale for the BWS was, and remains, very important: Conner designed it to help students focus on the problems of learning the language and to give them direct access to secondary sources to better understand the poem in relation to its material context[c20]. The inclusion of a pre-linked, and very well organized and presented, apparatus that allows study of the poem is an extraordinary innovation over regular printed texts because its links are "active", and so students are more likely to explore the introductory material as a companion to the poem.
There are several basic concerns that the design of this software raises, however. Though the worst of the constraints in the BWS are imposed by Hypercard's somewhat limited and clumsy scripting tools. Whatever their ultimate source, these concerns arise conceptually from the BWS's reliance on the book as a basic design metaphor. While Conner's software does automate processes that are difficult to accomplish with books, the software does not reinvent or significantly improve the effectiveness of these processes. Judging from experience using the BWS and reading Conner's article, the pedagogy that the software was designed to facilitate is really not procedurally different from that of traditional Beowulf courses.
To cite an example, the linguistic components of the stack are conceptually the same as existing printed tools, thus it does not seem to encourage innovation or accommodate a variety of translation styles. First, the guide to grammar and syntax, and the lexicon, are each distinct tools: when accessed by means of menu bar selection, the guides are displayed with their own interface. They are buried within different parts of a hierarchical structure of controls, just as they are concealed in the backs of printed texts. The guides to inflections are clearly for reference only; they are non-interactive and cannot be used in tandem with the text[c21]. The the guide to syntax, for example, is a static reference page; because there are no links to the text anchored there, the syntax page could not be used by a student to organize a specialized reading of Beowulf to study the poem's syntax and style. The lexicon tool, while comprehensive and fully automated to greatly reduce the drugery of looking up unfamiliar words, is clearly modelled on printed glossaries. Its design serves little heuristic function, and thus does not help students to shape much better translation habits than its printed forerunners. Thus, the process of translating the poem with the BWS is still procedurally the same as working with printed texts, though probably much easier. Apart from its feature of storing published translations for comparison, the software itself might not encourage critical thinking about vocabulary by not providing access to other occurrences of the same word in the text within the glossary (though there is a "search for string" function, it has a different place in the structure of controls, and it is not immediately apparent that such a function could be used to investigate semantic fields). Moreover, the software tacitly endorses an even worse habit of translation that has grown up around use of printed texts: the work area affords marginal glosses and interlinear translation. In fact, the work area is designed specifically for that purpose, while the "Print" command is designed so that students can print out such translations and bring them to class for recitation. Interlinear translations do not encourage language learning as they provide no reinforcement for fast word recognition.
In the classroom setting, the BWS does not encourage any but the typical corrective role of the professor and does not encourage innovation in translation practices. Ideally, language learning software should continuously improve students' translation skills and not just their translations. Moreover, translation itself, is a transitional skills anyway. All language work in Old English classes should lead to fluency with the language so that students will have time to think about the larger cultural matrix from which literature emerges.
The idea and design of the BWS was innovative for its time, and it remains one of the most advanced prototypes of an Old English reading application[n22], yet, it illustrates the close relationship between the design of hypertext software and pedagogical assumptions. Specifically, it demonstrates that our understanding of texts is largely shaped by print. In order to see this, we need to examine the BWS in light of Donald Norman's view of software as "cognitive artifact,"[c23] not as an objective text but as a representation of a particular process of reading the text within a theorized task domain.
When beginning work with the BWS, its "default position" is the critical text. This "printed" text, which is at the "ground level" or root directory in the stack, has a kind of special status. The critical text is the only one that users can alter, it is also the one that gives access to all of the links, which move only "upward" into the critical articles. Thus it is designed for only one kind of study; one studies the critical text and refers to the articles or grammars. It would be impossible, as I have already suggested, to study the grammar through the text. While one key feature in the BWS is its ability to display a scanned facsimile of the Beowulf manuscript, but again, this facsimile is only available for reference, and cannot be viewed alongside the critical edition. The facsimile cannot be used as a root directory as it is not designed to contain links for references back to the main text. These functions and constraints delimit the kinds of studies available to classes devoted to the poem. As I have already suggested, though the software does enhance the effectiveness of traditional Beowulf classes, the software does not afford a great variety of alternative approaches to teaching the poem.
There are some inherent problems in using computers for working with chirographic texts. An electronic "hypertext," as it is currently conceived in the work of critics like Landow, Bolter, and Nelson, represents unchained textuality. For the study of Old English, the "liberation" of the literary text from the physical document that these critics promise, may further divert critical attention from the texts' original material context. The view of the text as "virtual object", as a disembodied phonemic string that Doane points out[c24] may be very unlike the way that the Anglo-Saxons viewed their texts, is still the favored mode of presentation in most electronic hypertext environments[n25]. The Intermedia environment is a realization of this type of post-modern attitude. The type of presentation available with most web browsers has the same problem because image annotation is still, at this time, rather primitive.
The potential solution to all of the problems discussed in this chapter would be to reconceive the software environment, redesign the software tools and the user-interface for greater flexibility, without losing functionality or complicating the task of reading for the user. I have maintained that no matter what form the software takes, it always constrains the user procedurally, just as print has always done, but that it has the advantage that it can do so in ways that are not necessarily as arbitrary. The designer can choose constraints and affordances to make users most effective of action, for rhetorical purposes, or for other reasons. The challenge of design is to provide users with choices for these procedures. While the user and software interact in an environment devised by the designer and editor of the electronic hypertext, the user would have the ability to selectively redesign the environment to suit their own methodologies.
There is a known method of software design for hypertext software that has been outlined by Elizabeth Duncan[c26] that could create this kind of flexibility. The "faceted approach" to hypertext interfaces, which was independently conceived by Gregory Crane who created a complement of optional "plug-in" tools for the Perseus Project database,[c27] provides an interface in the form of a "construction set". The interface can be "assembled" by the user to create an environment for a specific kind of interaction with the texts.
Of course, an environment offering this many options would be extraordinarily complicated to work with, and would demand a great deal of time and experimentation to get a set of tools to facilitate exactly the kind of study the user wishes to undertake. The remedy for this problem would be to build into the interface a wide range of "preset" paradigms that the user could select and simply modify to suit individual needs. This philosophy is a natural next step in the development of "object-oriented" approaches to software design. The need for this type of software is obvious. Students who are just learning the language have entirely different needs than researchers, and skill levels and critical interests vary, sometimes over the course of the same project. The reader has always interacted with literary texts on the terms dictated by the text or the user environment, and this will always be the case. However, if a "faceted" interface were ever designed, it may at least insure that the constraints in the software are appropriate for the reader's tasks.
The difference between this approach and others is that it accounts for individual differences in readers and in the readers' purposes where most models focus on the logical design of the information, and provide an exclusive view of users' interactions with it. Though such logical design is an important component in the reader's experience of the hypertext, the design of the interface and the tools within it are more fundamental in the creation of the text. Unlike models that present a single user-interface, the faceted approach recognizes the complexity of reading activities for specialized tasks.
1 "Cognitive Artifacts," ed. John M. Carroll, Designing Interaction: Psychology at the Human-Computer Interface (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1991) 21. [Back]
2 See Kevin S. Kiernan, "Digital Image Processing and the Beowulf Manuscript," Literary and Linguistic Computing 6.1 (1991): 20-27, for discussion of some of the advantages of digital photography. [Back]
3 Patrick W. Conner, et al., "Computer Assisted Approaches to Teaching Old English." Old English Newsletter 23.2 (1990): 31; cf. M. Deegan, S. Lee, and C. Mullings. "Computing in Textual Studies," Computers in Education 19 (1992): 184. [Back]
4 Spelling out the "death of the books" has become a topos in "revolutionary" hypertext literature beginning with Nelson, Literary Machines (Swarthmore: Mindful P, 1981) N. pag. [Back]
5 Jerome McGann, "Radiant Textuality," Online. Internet. IATH Text Center. Dec. 1995. [Back]
6 Peter S. Baker, "The Reader, the Editor, and the Electronic Critical Edition." Forthcoming. ed. Douglas Moffat, A Guide to Editing Middle English (Ann Arbor: U of MI P, 1996). [Back]
7 Interpreted as symptomatic of a reluctance among professors to give up institutional power in George P. Landow, Hypertext: The Convergence of Contemporary Critical Theory and Technology (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1992) 162-168. [Back]
8 The fourth edition of the MLA Handbook (Joseph Gibaldi, ed. New York: MLA, 1995) now includes citation styles for electronic texts and software. I also includes some limited guidelines for conducting research with computer databases. [Back]
9 Though privately funded organizations, like Kevin Kiernan's GRENDL group, may provide a good substitute in the future. [Back]
10 CCCC 173 (MS A), fol. 26b.28-30. [Back]
11 This process might also describe traditional editing processes. See A. N. Doane, "Oral Texts, Intertexts, and Intratexts," eds. Jay Clayton, et al., Influence and Intertextuality in Literary History (Madison, WI: U of WI P, 1991) 97. [Back]
12 "Old English Formulas and Themes as Tools for Contextual Interpretation," ed. Phyllis Rugg Brown, Modes of Interpretation in Old English Literature. (Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1986) 66-67. [Back]
13 Renoir is, of course, referring to the context described in Fred C. Robinson, "Old English in its Most Immediate Context," ed. John D. Niles, Old English Literature in Context: Ten Essays (Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Littlefield, 1980) 11-29. [Back]
14 Renoir 66-67. [Back]
15 F. Klaeber, ed., Beowulf and the Fight at Finsburg (3rd Ed, Boston, Mass.: D. C. Heath, 1936). [Back]
16 JEGP 23 (1924): 294-300. [Back]
17 An Office Program Analysis (OPA) study on Intermedia discussed in George P. Landow, "Hypertext in Literary Education," Computers and The Humanities 23 (1989): 183. [Back]
18 Diskette. West Virginia: Unpublished, 1990. Available for review from the author, e-mail: u47c2@wuvnvm.wvnet.edu . [Back]
19 Patrick W. Conner, "The Beowulf Workstation: One Model of Computer-Assisted Literary Pedagogy," Literary and Linguistic Computing 6.1 (1991): 51. [Back]
20 Conner, "Workstation" 51 [Back]
21 Conner, "Workstation" 53; he hopes to find a new model for the design of this feature. [Back]
22 There are two newer programs that were unavailable for review: The Poetry Shell by Ann Squires and Peter Baker's unnamed software designed for use with SEENET texts. Both seem to promise more power and features. [Back]
23 Norman 21. [Back]
24 Doane 101. [Back]
25 Projects like The Electronic Beowulf and Jerome McGann's Rossetti Web are developing new ways of working with facsimiles of primary documents, however. [Back]
26 "A Faceted Approach to Hypertext?" ed. Ray McAleese, Hypertext: Theory into Practice (Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1989) 157-163. [Back]
27 Explained in Gregory Crane, "Redefining the Book: Some Preliminary Problems," Academic Computing (1988): 6-11, 36-41. [Back]

[logo] © 1996 Craig Branham

Saint Louis University
03-Nov-96



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