So, call outs to various comments, posts, from the second symposium (aka a lecture pretending not to be).

Rachel does an interesting job of joining the material quality of the book (and film for that matter) to how it has a beginning and end, so it makes sense that we emphasise narrative forms that suit this media (i.e. insist on stories with ends). Niamh has a really good summary and picks up the problem of colonialism. Tilly has an example of what is known as a mise-en-abyme structure of a novel about a novel about finding the end. Angus takes away the idea that technology is material and matters, and that if the internet is a different sort of technology, then what differences to stories (and knowledge) might that make? Kiralee wonders about accidents, stories, and the real world and Laura picks up some things about books having endings so encouraging stories like this. Yes, such stories exist on the web, but should they?

More from Kiralee noting the question about Greek myth. Perhaps in a culture that treats these stories not as myth but more like ‘news’ it might not be that they are ‘finished’ stories, and they certainly aren’t stories in the fictional sense. We also know that in oral cultures each telling is different, which doesn’t mean they don’t have endings, but that their purpose keeps changing, and the idea of stories changing with each telling is also something that print culture has sort of eroded for us.