Patchwork girl, shelley jackson s brilliant hypertext parable of writing and identity, generates both its themes and techniques from the kind of collagewriting intrinsic to hypertext. The text below is a complete transcript of jackson s presentation at the transformations of the bookconference held at mit on october 2425, 1998. Essay about shelley jacksons patchwork girl 1958 words. It is comprised in part of patches of other works, most notably mary shelley s frankenstein i have made this essay entirely out of parts from the novel. Shelley jacksons patchwork girl is not simply a new recreation of mary. Flickering connectivities in shelley jacksons patchwork girl. It has come to my attention that a young woman claiming to be the author of my being has been making appearances under the name of shelley jackson. Patchwork girl is a work of electronic literature by american author, shelley jackson. Creating the senses sensation in the work of shelley jackson. Discussions by members of english 276, neovictorianism, brown university, 2010 reading in time, reading in fragments. In the patchwork girl folder, doubleclick on the storyspace reader icon. On the oz kids, she was voiced by lori alan and had numerous infant patchwork kids.
In both projects i mean to push awareness of the materiality of the written word so far that it slows the leap to denotative meaning way down, and at the same time complicates that meaning by inviting all sorts of intrusive extra associations, many of. Flickering connectivities in shelley jacksons patchwork. May 29, 2014 part 1 of shelley jackson s traversal of her hypertext poem, patchwork girl, for the pathfinders project, led by dene grigar and stuart moulthrop and sponsored by the national endowment for the. It was written in storyspace and published by eastgate systems in 1995, and tells the story through illustrations of parts of a female body that are stitched together through text and image. Shelley jacksons representation of patchwork girl plays on such blurring of identities through the recombinaition of her proper name into that of another. Gathering the limbs of the text in shelley jacksons. Jun 16, 2011 of these firstgeneration hypertext novels, one of the most widely acclaimed has been shelley jackson s patchwork girl. I expect there are some of you who still think i am shelley jackson, author of a hypertext about an imaginary monster, the patchwork girl mary shelley made after her firstborn ran amok. Hypertext requires a way of joining a word or image to another page. Jan 01, 2014 this is raw footage of pioneering artist, shelley jackson, traversing her work of electronic literature, patchwork girl, for pathfinders. Shelley jackson biography yborn in 1963 in the philippines yraised in berkeley, ca yher family ran a bookstore, which had a great influence on her. Although shelley jacksons patchwork girl is hypertextual. Feminist alternatives tofrankensteinianmyths in shelley. Jackson, a published book illustrator as well as author, creates a digital collage out of her own words and images as she tells us about the female companion to frankensteins.
Fisher center lecture series, life of words, patchwork girl, shelley jackson add a comment. Shelley jackson s patchwork girl and the gothic nature of hypertext. And who else but the reader somehowwhose epitaph shelley jacksons work as a whole, and patchwork girl exemplarily, may be meticulously spelling out, in a possible reminder of milorad pavics opening epigraph in dictionary of the khazars. Reconstructing boundaries in shelley jackson s patchwork girl. Request pdf flickering connectivities in shelley jackson s patchwork girl. Frank baum, 19 frankenstein mary shelley, 1818 current literary and cultural criticism the cyborg manifesto, donna haraway. Shelley jacksons patchwork girl patchwork girl, a hypertext vision sewn together by shelley jackson, is a story and an account of the creation of a monster and the relationship the mind has with the monster within the technical boundary of lexia. It was written in storyspace and published by eastgate systems in 1995. Shelley jackson s hypertext consists of five main sections. Finnegans wake, bringing together the leitmotifs of resurrection of osiris. Jackson gained recognition with her first hypertext novel patchwork girl eastgate systems, 1995, which reworks the frankenstein myth. To click on each hyperlink is to venture into a different zone of the story.
Thundertoad animations comparatively primitive cgi version from 2005 featured cyndi. Landow, professor of english and art history, brown university patchwork girl, shelley jackson s brilliant hypertext parable of writing and identity generates both its themes and techniques from the kind of collagewriting intrinsic to hypertext. Political and ethical concerns linked to the hypertext novel. Pioneering artist, shelley jackson, traversing her work of. A selfdescribed student in the art of digression, jackson holds an ab in studio art from stanford university and an mfa in creative writing from brown university. Hypertext is a term coined by ted nelson for forms of. Gathering the limbs of the text in shelley jacksons patchwork girl. You can access lexiasindividual screens of text or imageby clicking on words or images, or you can use the map to go to selected lexias. Shelley jacksons hypertext consists of five main sections. Certainly one way that patchwork girl is monstrous has to do with technology big surprise thereit takes hours just to figure out how to read the novel. Ub s exhibit x f iction series presents shelley jackson.
Shelley jackson shelley jacksons patchwork girl patchwork. April 12, 2007 this is a response to they hypertext fiction work patchwork girl by shelley jackson. Once the program opens, choose file, open and patchw. She also appeared in walter murchs return to oz as an unbilled extra. Shelley jackson s patchwork girl patchwork girl, a hypertext vision sewn together by shelley jackson, is a story and an account of the creation of a monster and the relationship the mind has with the monster within the technical boundary of lexia. Patchwork girl sometimes called a new standard in hypertext fiction consists of 323 lexias, 462 links inspirations novels the patchwork girl of oz l. The author will make every effort to attend the funerals of her words. The patchwork girl aka scraps is a character from the fantasy oz book series by l.
Shelley jacksons patchwork girl was created in storyspace, is distributed by eastgate systems, inc. Shelley jackson s patchwork girl and the persistence of print in the age of hypertext paul hackman bio in the early 1990s a number of academics began to note the potentially drastic changes new media might have on the place of print literature in college classrooms and society at large. Perhaps the true paradigmatic work of the era, shelley jacksons elegantly designed, beautifully composed patchwork girl offers the patient reader, if there are any left in the world, just such an experience of losing oneself to a text, for as one plunges deeper and deeper into ones own personal exploration of the relations here of creator to created and of body to text, one never fails to be rewarded and so is drawn ever deeper, until clicking the mouse is as unconscious an act as. Whoever shelley jackson may be, if she wants me to mouth her words, she can expect them to come out a little changed.
Patchwork girl is a work of electronic literature by american author shelley jackson. Shelley jackson born 1963 is an american writer and artist known for her crossgenre experiments, including her hyperfiction, patchwork girl 1995. Shelley jackson talks with vito acconci, the believer 911 and the. Shelley jackson writes on snow for a new type of story. She was originally brought to life by a magician who lived in the munchkin country named dr. It is often discussed along with michael joyces afternoon, a story as an important work of hypertext fiction. In a perhaps intentional irony, the eastgate title page inscribes jacksons name below as the authorized. Jacksons numerous and varied publicationsher novel half life, a 440page novel about conjoined twins chosen as one of the village voices favorite books of 2006, her story collection the melancholy of anatomy, the acclaimed hypertexts patchwork girl a reworking of the frankenstein myth, the doll games, and my body, her illustrated chil. She is seen in the background at princess ozmas coronation.
Shelley jackson s hypertext, patchwork girl, begins with a series of, not so much headings, but hyperlinks. Encouraged to patch up the scattered chunks of text, the. Jackson, a published book illustrator as well as author, creates a digital collage out of her own words and images as she tells us about the female companion. The event took place in october 20 in the electronic. I havent seen many authors speak about one of their pieces that i have not studied some myself. She first appeared in the patchwork girl of oz she is a living doll made of patchwork, button eyes, brown yarn hair, a felt tongue, and pearl teeth. In the late nineties, jackson alternated hypertext work with writing short stories. Jan 17, 2014 a fter inscribing a story word by word on to the skin of 2,000 volunteers in 2003, the author and illustrator shelley jackson has embarked on a fiction project that is already much less solid. Shelley jacksons patchwork girl and the gothic nature of hypertext. Shelley jackson born 1963 is a writer and artist known for her crossgenre experiments, including her groundbreaking work of hyperfiction, patchwork girl 1995.
Patchwork girl reading guide university of washington. Shelley and her female monster alongside text by jacques derrida, donna haraway, and others. Shelley jackson s patchwork girl patchwork girl, a hypertext vision sewn together by shelley jackson, is a story and an account of. Shelley jackson is an american writer and artist known for her crossgenre experiments, including her hyperfiction, patchwork girl 1995. It picks up the monstrous bodymonstrous text idea from mary shelley s frankenstein and really explores monstrosity in all its various forms. Eine passage aus einem interview kann als ubergang zu ihrem hypertext. On the body the original body is dissociated, porous and unbiased the mind, on the other hand has an obsession with stasis, centrality, and unity.
The thesis explores how shelley jackson s hypertext work patchwork girl 1995 provides a feminist alternative to dominant frankensteinian mythologies of unethical creation, arguing that it succeeds in doing so by offering alternative approaches to. I expect there are some of you who still think i am shelley jackson, author of a hypertext about an imaginary monster, the patchwork girl mary shelley made after her firstborn ran. In a perhaps intentional irony, the eastgate title page inscribes jackson s name below as. Shelley jackson s brilliantly realized hypertext patchwork girl is an electronic fiction that manages to be at once highly. Before going any further, a general description of. Jackson, a published book illustrator as well as author, creates a digital collage out of her own words and images as she tells us about the female companion to. Part 1 of shelley jackson s traversal of her hypertext poem, patchwork girl, for the pathfinders project, led by dene grigar and stuart moulthrop and. Here lies the reader who will never open this book. Request pdf flickering connectivities in shelley jacksons patchwork girl. In the patchwork girl folder, click on the patchwork girl icon to open the novel. We can now, based on our examination of nelsons texts, provide the first two sentences of a historicallybased definition of hypertext appropriate for a world familiar with the web. Patchwork girl is not only a culminating work for the classical period of electronic literature hayles 2008, 7 but also the beginning of jacksons careerlong unfolding of the material, literary, and embodied relations between text and. In patchwork girl, however, shelley jackson reawakens the female monster by having. Shelley jackson s patchwork girl demonstrates how intertextual allusions are used as piecework in order to construct new literatures together from various sources of the past.
These tales of the anatomys ludicrous sorrows are deliciously crafted, maintaining always a fine balance between outrageous comedy and profound melancholy. So language and thought already relates to my body, to my senses, and it gives me a visceral pleasure to make the connection explicit, by naming a piece of text my foot or. Shelley jackson s patchwork girl and the persistence of print in the age of hypertext paul hackman bio in the early 1990s a number of academics began to note the potentially drastic changes new media might have on the place of print. Mapping shelley jacksons patchwork girl the bookstore. Jackson s literary works consist of the hypertexts patchwork girl 1995,my body 1997 and the doll games n. A fter inscribing a story word by word on to the skin of 2,000 volunteers in 2003, the author and illustrator shelley jackson has embarked on a fiction project that is already much less solid. View essay shelley jackson from wmst 3440h at trent university. Shelley s books for adults include the melancholy of anatomy anchor books, 2002 and half life harpercollins, 2006. The monstrosity of media in shelley jackson s patchwork girl and other posthumanist critiques of the instrumental.
Seeing shelly jackson speak this last week really helped me to sew the pieces of her patchwork girl together. Patchwork girl is great hypertext and a great novel. Shelley jackson biography yborn in 1963 in the philippines. She is well known for her pioneering crossgenre experiments such as her groundbreaking hypertext novel, patchwork girl, and her ongoing skin project, a novella published exclusively in the form of tattoos on the skin of. Although shelley jackson s patchwork girl is hypertextual, navigating through the novel differs from reading a web page. Shelley jackson s patchwork girl and the persistence of print in the age of hypertext i n the early 1990s a number of academics began to note the potentially drastic changes new media might have on the place of print literature in college classrooms and society at large. Jacksons literary works consist of the hypertexts patchwork girl 1995,my body 1997 and the doll games n.
Essay about shelley jacksons patchwork girl 1958 words cram. Presented in hypertext format, patchwork girl uses intertextual allusions borrowed from canonical texts such as mary shelley s frankenstein and l. Although shelley jackson s patchwork girl is hypertextual. Journal of american studies of turkey 18 fall 2003.
She fell in love with books and she knew she wanted to become a writer. Jackson, a published book illustrator as well as author. The importance of mediaspecific analysis 2000pmc 10. Perhaps the true paradigmatic work of the era, as robert coover put it, shelley jackson s elegantly designed, beautifully composed patchwork girl offers the patient reader, if there are any. No, i am the monster herself, and it is shelley jackson who is imaginary, or so it would appear, since she always vanishes when i turn up. Jacksons text relies equally on the conventions of print that inform its relationship to mary shelleys frankenstein, the links between material cultures of print and of weaving that are evoked by the stitching together of the patchwork girls parts, and the electronic, hypermedia form of the text itself. Gathering the limbs of the text in shelley jackson. Shelley jackson, with sound by john wesley harding and html coding by ken fricklas the author and artist shelley jackson has produced a corpus of work in print and electronic media that takes as its central focus the relationship between human identity and the bodys constituent organs, fluids, connective tissues, and other parts. Patchwork girl, shelley jackson s brilliant hypertext parable of writing and identity generates both its themes and techniques from the kind of collagewriting intrinsic to hypertext. Shelley jacksons hypertext novel patchwork girl is a continuation of the work. The osiris myth seems to have had a special appeal to modernist writers. Aug 14, 2014 shelley jacksons hypertext, patchwork girl, begins with a series of, not so much headings, but hyperlinks. Shelly jackson march 4, 2009 posted by smike97k in cyborgs.