Calvino
My name is Devin Culclasure, and I am a University of Florida journalism senior. This blog stems from a project for Professor Gregory Ulmer’s Literature on the Internet course, which focuses on the emerging field of electronic literature. The focus of my blog will be Six Memos for the Next Millennium, a collection of essays by Italo Calvino that seek to identify and explain several core values that have been and will continue to be important in literature. These five core values (a lecture on the sixth value, consistency, was not completed before Calvino’s death) are lightness, quickness, exactitude, visibility, and multiplicity. Besides presenting a summary of Calvino’s views on each value, I will try to further explain them through analogies and emblems that draw from my own personal experiences, interests, and tastes.
But what does any of this have to do with electronic literature? To help draw a connection between Calvino’s values and the world of electronic literature, I will show how each value is manifested in an example of e-lit. Furthermore, I will use ideas from Katherine Hayles’ Electronic Literature to highlight other aspects of e-lit featured in these examples. Above all, I hope my austere, no-nonsense aesthetic will help explain these ideas as clearly as Calvino does in his memos. Hopefully, the bare essentials of e-lit will become apparent as you explore my blog.
