“Lector in rebus”

Abstract

The paper focusses on the characteristics of reading and on the role of the reader in hyperfiction in order to determine whether the hyperreader is fundamentally different from the traditional reader and, if so, what form such a difference may take.Once we have identified which elements of hypertext rhetoric may have fostered reading, we could indeed start to better understand the intimate nature of a hypertext ecology.Following Umberto Eco's analysis "Six Walks in the Fictional Woods", the paper focusses on a sample collection of hyperfictions, in order to determine whether hypertext exploits the same rhetorical concepts and techniques adopted in paper-based texts to foster reading.In particular, we want to examine hypertext structure in the light of a combinatorial calculus.Such a combinatorial calculus is what postmodcrn fiction has drawn from Borges's original idea of the labyrinth and the interconnection of multiple paths.It determines the multiple potential ways to connect lexias and the reading agreement between reader and author which results from such a combinatorial structuring.Ultimately, the author's writing strategy is revealed by this combinatorial embedding.

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