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IVANHOE: Education in a New Key
Jerome McGann (in collaboration with Johanna Drucker and Bethany
Nowviskie)
Introduction.
IVANHOE
(http://patacriticism.org/ivanhoe) is a research and pedagogical
project for humanities scholars and students working in a digital
age like our own, where books are only one among many cultural sources
and objects of critical reflection. It is designed within the framework
of the traditional goals of humanities education: to promote rigorous
as well as imaginative thinking; to develop habits of thoroughness
and flexibility when we investigate our cultural inheritance and
try to exploit its sources and resources; and to expose and promote
the collaborative dynamics of all humane studies, which by their
nature both feed upon and resupply our cultural legacy.
IVANHOE emerged in the spring of 2000 from a conversation between
Jerome McGann and Johanna Drucker on the subject of literary-critical
method, and their shared dissatisfaction with the limitations of
received interpretive procedures. They were interested in exploring
forms of critical inquiry that moved closer to the provocative freedom
of original works of poetry and literature.
McGann suggested that Walter Scott's famous romance fiction Ivanhoe
contained within itself many alternative narrative possibilities,
and he added that this kind of thing was characteristic of imaginative
works in general. Scott's book epitomizes this situation in the
many continuations it spawned throughout the nineteenth-century—versions in different genres as well as other kinds of responses,
textual, pictorial, musical. For example, when many Victorian readers
complained about Scott's decision to marry Ivanhoe to Rowena and
not Rebecca, they were clearly responding to one of the book's underdeveloped
possibilities. In our own day readers often react to other unresolved
tensions in the book—for example, to the complex ways it
handles, and mishandles, the subject of anti-Semitism. "Everyone
knows that an anti-Semitic strain runs through the novel," he said.
"The question is: 'What are you prepared to DO about it?'"
Victorians rewrote and reimagined the book. Why are we so hesitant
about doing the same thing?
The concept of criticism as "a doing," as action and intervention,
is a founding principle of IVANHOE. Traditional interpretation is
itself best understood as a set of reflective activities and hence
as something that lays itself open to active responses from others.
It is not so much that "all interpretation is misinterpretation",
as Harold Bloom observed some 25 years ago, as that all interpretation
pursues transformations of meaning within a dynamic space of inherited
and ongoing acts of interpretation. Interpretation is a dialogical
exchange and, ultimately, a continuous set of collaborative activities.
This critical vantage point necessarily resists the traditional
assumption about the self-identity of a particular text or cultural
work. Various factors and agencies so impinge on the textual condition
that the field of textuality, including all the objects we locate
in that field, are in a perpetually dynamic state of formation and
transformation. This view of textuality implies that any textual
object—what in IVANHOE we call "the source text"—has to be encountered within a dynamical "discourse field" (i.e.,
the extended network of documents, materials, discussions, and evidence
within which the work is continually being constituted). Approaching
textuality in this way, we concluded that a digital environment
would provide IVANHOE with an opportune and useful playspace.
When we began playing IVANHOE these initial premises were a somewhat
loosely held set of intuitions. The actual gameplay transformed
them into clear and governing ideas. Not surprisingly, it also drove
us to rethink the whole process of interpretive method and theory.
As a result, we began to see that IVANHOE could be designed and
developed as an environment for the study and encouragement of critical
practices that would make self-awareness pivotal to the whole enterprise.
IVANHOE is what Coleridge might have called "an aid to reflection":
a machinery for making explicit the assumptions about critical practice,
textual interpretation, and reading that remain unacknowledged,
or irregularly explored, in conventional approaches to literary
studies.
In IVANHOE, the idea is that interpretation should no longer be
imagined as proceeding from a subject grappling with a transparent
object. By contrast, IVANHOE discourages players from assuming that
there is something to be called, say, "The Poem Itself". Perhaps
even more crucially, it routes the acts of an interpreting agent
back into the material being studied. Players and their moves are
continually returned to the ongoing process of collaborative investigation
for further critical reflection, both by the agent herself and by
the others players. All players thus move in that Burnsian space
where each is repeatedly drawn "to see ourselves as others see us".
Based on economies of expenditure, deficit, and gain, with winning
conditions and costs, IVANHOE's underlying game model urges the
player—the thinker—to a continuing process of measuring
and assessing his or her moves in relation to everyone else's. IVANHOE
has been dominated from the start by a ludic spirit. This attitude
is reflected in the name of the project, IVANHOE, which references
a cultural work now rarely taken "seriously," though it was once
reigned as perhaps the most popular and seriously influential work
of fiction in nineteenth-century Europe and America. We took that
avoidance as a sign of a poverty of criticism, which goes broke
by following a Gold Standard of value. IVANHOE would encourage,
instead, as much circulation and exchange as possible.
From the initial provocation, IVANHOE quickly spun itself into
life. Playing with Scott's novel generated new practical design
features, the most important of which was the idea that the game
would have to be played "in" a role, or en masque, under an explicitly
assumed conceit of identity. Players would make their moves only
through that role. This device would introduce into IVANHOE another
vehicle—in addition to the dialogic form and performative
procedures—for encouraging critical self-reflection. We
also began to see that a robust environment would only be built
if we tested our ideas in as many kinds of gameplay as possible.
(Top)
The Development Schedule
IVANHOE was initially conceived as a general purpose tool for enhancing
a person's range and acuity of critical reflection on some given
set of cultural material. The first test iterations of its use focused
on particular, paper-based literary works Scott's Ivanhoe,
Wuthering Heights, Frankenstein, several stories
by Murakami, "The Fall of the House of Usher," The Turn of the
Screw, and Blake's The Four Zoas. These sessions were
run to test IVANHOE's performative methodology and its logical structure,
and to clarify the requirements needed for building IVANHOE as a
digital environment.
Played in what was essentially an electronically enhanced paper-space,
these iterations were most successful in the ways they exposed the
critical and interpretive power of performance-based acts of textual
invention. They supplied us with useful information about how to
construct an initial IVANHOE design for studying traditional text-based
materials. The test runs also suggested two other useful ways in
which to explore the tool's design possibilities: first, to deploy
IVANHOE as both a pedagogical and a scholarly research tool; second,
to launch its functions in a born-digital database of materials.
IVANHOE's interpretational capacities were conceived to have wide
range and flexibility across every sort of informational material
in the humanities and the social sciences
In the past year (2003-2004) the online playspace has been in development
and we have run test sessions with Poe's "The Fall of the House
of Usher", Hawthorne's "Rappaccini's Daughter", D. G. Rossetti's
"The Orchard Pit", Swinburne's "A Criminal Case", and Jerome K.
Jerome's Three Men in a Boat. These sessions were run to
clarify the technical and interface issues and lead us to implementation.
The 1.0 IVANHOE was released on 1 December 2004. (Top)
"What Does a Session
of IVANHOE Look Like?"
A group of people, two at a minimum, agree to collaborate in thinking
about how to reimagine a particular work, say Ivanhoe.
The agreement is that each person will try to reshape the given
work so that it is understood or seen in a new way. The reshaping
process in IVANHOE is immediate, practical, and performative. That
is to say, the interpreters intervene in the textual field and alter
the document(s) by adding, reordering, or deleting text. Interpreters
are expected to produce a set of interventions that expose meaningful
features of the textual field that were inapparent in its original
documentary state. Interpreters will also look for ways that their
interventions might use or fold in with the interpretive moves of
others working in the collaborative session of IVANHOE. An IVANHOE
session typically extends for a set period of time—we have
found that a week seems a useful timeframe for pedagogical purposes.
To this point we have played IVANHOE by focusing on single literary
works. Nonetheless, a session of IVANHOE might focus on a set of
works that define an interesting cultural phenomenon—the
Salem Witch Trials, for example—and in that case the pedagogical
event might well run on for a much longer period.
Some analogies may be helpful for understanding what it means to
play IVANHOE. Interpreting agents in IVANHOE approach their work
much as performers or conductors approach a piece of music, or the
way a director approaches a play. Performance fashions an interpretation
of the original work, and the result is what Gertrude Stein, in
a slightly different sense, called "Composition as Explanation."
Performative interpretations of all kinds—translation, for
example—have much in common with IVANHOE. Book artists and
illustrators work along similar interpretive lines, and we have
many cases where authors themselves illustrate or design the embodiments
of their own textual works, thereby glossing them with intervening
sets of interpretive signs. Some notable figures integrate text
and visualization into a composite or double work—in England
one thinks immediately of Blake, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Edward
Lear, Lewis Carroll. Or consider how "The Matter of Arthur" or "The
Matter of Troy" are conceived and elaborated. A set of legends centering
in the Trojan war and in King Arthur multiplies as versions and
variants that expose fresh ranges of meaning resting latently in
the materials. The interpretive transformations that unfold in a
session of IVANHOE seek to exploit a logic of interpretation of
that kind.
-
IVANHOE
is not like a "creative
writing workshop," however.
Its textual transformations
get executed
in a frame of
reference focused
on the significance
of the changes
in relation to
the originary
textual field
and the changes
that one's collaborating
agents make to
that field. The
presence of the
initial state
of the text(s)
is always preserved
because the point
of IVANHOE is
to study that
field of relations
as it provokes
or licenses its
readers to reimagine
its implications
and textual possibilities.
Interpreters
are expected to
keep a journal
in which their
interpretive
moves are justified
and explained
in relation to
the originary
work and/or the
moves made by
the other agents.(On IVANHOE
and Scholarly
Research,
see IVANHOE.)
IVANHOE and Pedagogy
In recent years the scene of humanities instruction grows less
like the classroom of the 1930s, when the remarkably successful
teaching protocols of the New Criticism were invented. New Critical
pedagogy centered in a single textual object—"The Rime of
the Ancient Mariner," The Symposium, Pride and Prejudice—that would be brought into the classroom for close reading
and discussion. That model for a classroom procedure was so effective
that it still dominates the way the Humanities classroom is conducted
in high schools, colleges, and universities. Indeed, its procedures
remain in certain ways foundational to any kind of effective education.
But our classrooms now are populated by students for whom the book
is only one kind of communication tool. Like ourselves, they live
every day in a complex communication network of paper as well as
electronic texts, and of texts as well as all sorts of other media,
much of it mixed. Because we all bring that world with us into the
classroom as (so to speak) the cultural air we breathe, New Critical
models of instruction now regularly specialize and restrict both
the materials and the arena of that general education the Humanities
educator has always so carefully cherished. Because the Humanities
have never been about specialization but about the training and
education of broadly informed citizens, we are being called to imagine
new instructional methods and procedures. IVANHOE is being developed
to help answer that call.
Research in the field of education has made a convincing case for
the use of games in promoting goal-centered learning. IVANHOE makes
use of selective principles of role-playing scenarios—such
as requiring players to choose a real or fictional identity and
create their interpretation or analysis from that point of view.
Likewise, role-playing is an established practice in the constructivist
classroom. IVANHOE makes use of some of these features of entertainment
and game models to motivate reading, interpretation, and study of
documents that are traditionally associated with the Humanities.
Most fundamentally, IVANHOE seeks to promote self-conscious critical
thinking.
IVANHOE works by encouraging players to work with a designated
textual work and its sources, variations, versions, and other materials
relevant to the history and production of the text. At a basic level,
this will encourage such activity as the comparison of an illustrated
version of a classic work to a text-only edition, or a facsimile
manuscript to a printed edition. Students will be introduced to
the concepts of bibliographical studies and to theoretical issues
in textual interpretation without having to first engage with a
technical vocabulary. IVANHOE allows them to enact the principles
of comparison and critical analysis that are essential to the Humanities
and social sciences where informed qualitative judgments are crucial.
Collaborative, peer-exchange models of engagement will encourage
cooperative development of analytical skills in reading and comprehension
and appreciation of individual points of view in writing. IVANHOE
promotes curricular dependence on creative, synthetic practices
and engagement with primary materials that have traditionally been
inaccessible in classrooms.
In a post-secondary context, players will be encouraged to develop
library and research skills through the integration of traditional
text-based materials and on-line resources for playing the game.
A great degree of self-conscious awareness, and a higher level of
bibliographical skill will be required. Crucial skills in assessing
the validity and credibility of sources and self-conscious awareness
of the point of view from which a player makes a critical judgment
will be encouraged by the structure of the game. Players will be
rewarded to the degree that their critical interpretations have
been made explicit within an interactive community of other players
through the creation of well-documented commentary on their individual
contributions, and critical assessment of other players' work. (Top)
Conclusion
In summary then, IVANHOE can be used in a variety of ways as a
competitive, game-like environment, as a collaborative study and
research situation, or as a context in which players strive to achieve
their own individual goals. In a classroom setting, IVANHOE could
encourage students to improve bibliographical and research skills
in one round and critical-reading skills in the next. Individual
students could decide which of several interpretive skills they
wish to improve in a round of play, or they could consult with a
teacher to set these goals. For more mature players, various competitive
or collaborative situations might be imagined to promote specific
types of critical reflection and scholarly research. IVANHOE can
be played in a game mode with points, scoring, and competitive interactions.
It can also be used for non-competitive collaborative work within
a community of scholars or in classroom activities.
It is important to note that although developed from models taken
from literary studies, IVANHOE is not subject specific, and can
be readily adapted to the questions that are a regular concern throughout
the Humanities and social sciences. Rather than operating as a delivery
mode of pre-packaged content, it is a tool that can be configured
anew by instructors and scholars according to the goals that suit
their research or pedagogical circumstances. It is an effective
web environment for any field of cultural investigation that is
primarily document and text-based, and in which access to electronic
archives, collaborative work, and critical interpretation are central
concerns. (Top)
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