SOURCE: "Changing Texts, Changing Readers: Hypertext in Literary Education, Criticism, and Scholarship," in Reorientations: Critical Theories and Pedagogies, edited by Bruce Henricksen and Thaïs E. Morgan, University of Illinois Press, 1990, pp. 133-61.

[Landow is an American educator and critic whose works include Hypermedia and Literary Studies (1991), Hypertext: The Convergence of Contemporary Critical Theory and Technology (1992), and The Digital Word: Text-Based Computing in the Humanities (1993). In the excerpt below, based on his experiences at Brown University where literature courses have used hypertext in the classroom, he defines the distinguishing characteristics of hypertext and remarks on its potential impact on the reading and study of literature.]

It is eight P.M., and after having helped put the children to bed, Professor Jones settles into her favorite chair and reaches for her copy of Milton's Paradise Lost to prepare for tomorrow's class. A scholar who specializes in the poetry of...