Michael Joyce
Michael Joyce (born 1945) is a retired professor of English at Vassar College, New York, US. He is a pioneer creator and critic of electronic literature. Joyce's afternoon, a story, 1987, was among the first literary works of hypertext fiction to present itself as undeniably serious literature, and experimented with the short-story form in novel ways. It was created with the then-new Storyspace software, deployed the ambiguity and dubious narrator characteristic of high modernism, along with some suspense and romance elements, in a story whose meaning could change dramatically depending on the path taken through its lexias on each reading.
Michael Joyce
- Born
- 1945 · Lackawanna.
- Nationality
- United States
- Occupation
- writer · literary critic · university teacher · journalist · scholar of english
- Education
- California Institute of the Arts · Vassar College
- Languages
- English
VALÉORINE Encyclopedia
VALÉORINE documentary reading
Documentary summary
Michael Joyce (born 1945) is a retired professor of English at Vassar College, New York, US. He is a pioneer creator and critic of electronic literature. Joyce's afternoon, a story, 1987, was among the first literary works of hypertext fiction to present itself as undeniably serious literature, and experimented with the short-story form in novel ways. It was created with the then-new Storyspace software, deployed the ambiguity and dubious narrator characteristic of high modernism, along with some suspense and romance elements, in a story whose meaning could change dramatically depending on the path taken through its lexias on each reading.
Admitted source layer · organised and presented by VALÉORINE
Reference Check
Propose documentary evidence for Michael Joyce. A contribution is never written directly as fact: identity, source, rights and evidence gates still decide.
Sign in to contribute
World of VALÉORINE
Documentary connections
Only confirmed graph relationships appear here. Images are shown only when their identity and reuse rights both pass the documentary gate.
Documentary evidence
Documentary basis
Authority files
wikidata · Q727045
In this article
Dated record
Life and career
The full dated record · 1 entries
1945
Michael Joyce born at Lackawanna.
Critical references
Critical references
For instance, a hard-to-find series of lexias presented a new set of facts about the narrator's actions which affects the reader's judgment of the narrator. In The New York Times, Robert Coover called afternoon "the granddaddy of hypertext fictions", while The Toronto Globe and Mail said that it "is to the hypertext interactive novel what the Gutenberg bible is to publishing." His Twilight, A Symphony (1996) was his second hypertext novel. Joyce's published books include War outside Ireland: a novel (1982), Of two minds: hypertext pedagogy and poetics (1995), Othermindedness: the emergence of network culture (2000), Moral tales and meditations: technological parables and refractions (2001) and Foucault, in Winter, in the Linnaeus Garden (2015). He is a graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop. He was a Professor of English and Media Studies at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie. Joyce's work is collected in The NEXT Museum, a digital preservation space. Joyce has collaborated with Los Angeles–based visual artist Alexandra Grant. The work Grant has made based on his texts ("The Ladder Quartet" and the "Six Portals") has been exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and Honor Fraser Gallery in Los Angeles.
• Arnaud Regnauld & Stéphane Vanderhaeghe, "Machiner le subjectif," Traduire l’hypermédia / l’hypermédia et le traduire. Cahiers virtuels du Laboratoire NT2, n° 7, Alice van der Klei & Joëlle Gauthier eds., 2014, np. • Arnaud Regnauld, "The Ghostly Touch of the Blue Devils’ Second Coming: Reading Twelve Blue by Michael Joyce," RFEA#141 – Transferts du religieux / Religious Transfers, Paris: Belin, 2015, pp.145-158. • Michael Joyce, "L'après-midi d'un phonème, or la faune of après-afternoon," Translating E-Lit, Arnaud Regnauld ed., Octaviana, 2015. • Arnaud Regnauld, "Livres de sable et parcours incertains: exploration de trois cyberfictions. Michael Joyce: afternoon, a story (1987), Shelley Jackson: Patchwork Girl (1995), Mark Amerika: GRAMMATRON (1993-1997)," TLE n°28, "La vérité en fiction," Sylvie Bauer & Anne-Laure Tissut eds., Saint-Denis: Presses Universitaires de Vincennes, 2013, pp. 123–136. • Arnaud Regnauld & Stéphane Vanderhaeghe, "afternoon, a story de Michael Joyce: vers une hypertraduction?," Traduire à plusieurs / Collaborative Translation, Enrico Monti & Peter Schnyder eds., Orizons, Paris, 2018, pp. 399–412. • Arnaud Regnauld, "Liquid Times —Michael Joyce’s afternoon, a story." Journal of Comparative Literature and Aesthetics, Maya Zalbidea Paniagua ed., Vishvanatha Keviraja Institute, Orissa, India, 2019, pp. 37–48.
References
Citations
References
Each reference names the institution holding it, so a reader may go to the document itself.
reference work
Secondary witness
Further particulars
Held on the record
Further particulars
Open the remaining particulars
Michael Joyce is recorded as writer, literary critic, university teacher, journalist and scholar of english.
The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 17 August 2026.
Elsewhere in Books
39,200 published records in this field, each with its sources named.
- Michael J. AlexanderAuthor
- Michael J. AstrueAuthor
- Michael J. WellerAuthor
- Michael Joseph BarryAuthor
- Michael Kennedy JosephAuthor
- Michael KenyonAuthor
- Michael KöhlmeierAuthor
- Michael KongehlAuthor
Best supported in this field
For owners
Own a work by Michael Joyce?
A specialist will read what you send and tell you what the house can establish, what it cannot, and whether the object is suited to sale. There is no charge and no obligation. The object stays with you throughout; nothing is shipped to us unless it is arranged in writing beforehand.