Teaching foreign literature through multimedia

This paper argues that simpler techniques explaining visual symbols (the referents) such as illustrations, annotation of texts with commentaries, explanations, word meanings, maps and pictures are not sufficient for conveying the message in culturally displaced (i.e. foreign language) texts. The definition of technology in relation to the teaching of literature would go beyond the machine‐tool definition and into the hermeneutic sciences, which say that the message of the literary text lies above the lexical and syntactic levels in the creative unconscious of the gifted individuals. The transfer of the message has not been successfully achieved even with the combination of different media. Literary texts create an overall impression with the help of pieces of information, and hypertext seems to promise a medium for providing explanations which would help convey the ‘essence’ of the texts.