Representation and Narrative Creativity - Madiha Zahra Choksi

The idea of textual and digital representation got me thinking about two pieces of literature that grapple with representation and narrative form: Marshall McLuhan’s The Medium is the Massage and T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland. The Medium is the Massage is a piece of literature that highlights the power dynamics of the digital text which enable it to simultaneously deliver a message and also be a symbolic representation of the message itself – an example where form and meaning are symbiotic. McLuhan argues that societies are shaped by the nature of the media through which they communicate rather than by the content of communications and Medium is the Massage embodies this ideology. The medium through which McLuhan’s narrative is shared constantly refers to the media. Every argument McLuhan makes in the book is accompanied by an image or a representation of the message in a digital form, emphasizing the position of digital culture in twentieth century society.

T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, alternatively, is written in a fragmented style that counteracts the Victorian tradition by embracing modernism, the great genre shift taking place at the time. Eliot reimagined the narrative tradition when he wrote The Waste Land through its language, form and content. The original textual version of the The Waste Land is full of lines written in various languages, virtually incomprehensible for his English speaking audience. Integrating foreign languages highlights Eliot’s deep sense of cultural understanding and his formal education. The difficult nature of The Waste Land makes it a major point of contact for its recreation as a digital text. Digitizing The Waste Land makes its rhetoric accessible and comprehendible to the average reader. Though it was not written in digital form, Eliot included extensive footnotes to guide his reader through the poem. Websites like “Representative Poetry Online” and e-readers make it simpler to follow a text as difficult as The Waste Land by providing meanings and interpretations with the touch of a button. For example, the “Representative Poetry Online” website highlights foreign languages in corresponding colours which are then hyperlinked to a translation.

Example:

Click to enlarge.

Another aspect of the poetic tradition that Eliot has recreated is its formal structure. The Waste Land is written in four small sections or vignettes, and multiple voices speak, making it extremely hard to follow. Once again, a digital text version presents the reader with an amalgamation of data and commentary to aid its reading and interpretation. Presented in the digital medium, the poem incorporates the meta-data into the text while leaving the original text intact. In other words, the reader sees and reads the poem in its intended lineage and sentence structure; only now its supplementary features are digitally available, making the process immediate and straightforward.