As the Dictionary coalesced and emerged as an environment that we the contributors could navigate and explore, we found ourselves strangely defamiliarized from the works we had included, even from works that had seemed very familiar before the project began. The Dictionary defined a space in which these works seemed to communicate with each other, engaging with each other in ways that were often surprising to us. It seemed absolutely appropriate to use a hypertextual format for the project to enhance this sense of an emergent community of works. We felt that by enacting a dialog between the contemporary works of the Dictionary we wer able to envision the cultural scene of their original publication. Of course, there was some degree of fiction-making in the effort to resuscitate the discourse communities of the age of Sensibility, but even so, the new kinds of critical and interpretive approaches that this fiction encouraged were intensely valuable.

• Defamiliarization
  
• Hypertext
  
• Enactment
  
• Discourse Communities

Back to the Launch Page

Back to the list of keywords