People express concerns that they tend to be getting indifferent to literature as the mass media has become more diversified. However, they have found signs on the Internet that suggest a novel is still a beloved genre. The Internet environment has ch...
People express concerns that they tend to be getting indifferent to literature as the mass media has become more diversified. However, they have found signs on the Internet that suggest a novel is still a beloved genre. The Internet environment has changed the ways how people create, distribute and enjoy novels. In the line with this, the novels have developed the characteristics of oral literature. This paper focuses on determining the oral literary characteristics of Internet novel.
First of all, this study considers revealing an oral literary background. And it analyzes the oral literary characteristics of Internet novel which are posted on message boards in the Internet novel portal "www.munpia.com" and Internet novel communities obtaining more than 3,000 members. It also turns its eyes to investigate some Internet novels shared in the form of a complete file through P2P and others circulated as a conventional printed book.
On the Internet, authors have an expanded relationship with readers and they are extraordinarily communicative. The Internet has become functioning as a common memory bank because people are able to stretch their thoughts and experiences without any restraints on the Web. In this setting, no literary work belongs to the sole author.
The oral literary characteristics of Internet novel are established in this eccentric setting and they can be divided into two categories; the characteristics of text implementation methods and of story telling methods.
First, the text in Internet novels has shown a travesty by containing emoticons and refashioning the shape of letters and paragraphs. It means that the nonverbal communication occurred in face-to-face situations happens in the Internet text as well. The text also directly reveals the contents of communication between an author and readers using the interactive reply writing. With the original text, these reply writings become a potential source of a whole new novel.
In addition, the Internet novel constitutes story telling methods in several ways, such as the use of Cliche, illustrative composition, narrator's intervention and rewriting by making references to the authentic text. Each of them, in fact, contrasts with the art of rhetoric, minstrel's narration, minstrel's intervention in the oral literature and rewriting presented in the transcription culture.
The use of Cliche is inclined to be characterized in accordance with each of different communities. The certain promise between the author and readers strengthens the unity of communities and constantly creates stories. In tandem with the illustrative composition of Internet novels, extra pieces are often appended. This subtext can be attached infinitely and this distinctive feature makes the Internet novel an open text. Furthermore, a point in time is exceedingly liberal and this tendency sometimes leads the texts to the novels with an experimental form. At last, the Internet novels exist in numerous copies through making references to the authentic text. Each copy is an outcome which has been transcribed and already rewritten several times and it is also an object which will be transcribed and rewritten some time or other. No one can be apart from the influence of intertextuality and a border between the author and readers becomes faint.
A serious novel starts to come into the Internet recently. People need to carefully observe the development of inflow and its influences on the existing enjoyment process of Internet novels. After the serious novel settles itself in the Internet, it would be remarkably intriguing to observe how the oral literary characteristics of Internet novel are assimilated into the serious novel.