Given the general, perhaps abstract, surveys of chapters three and four, about the complexity of script acts and problems of developing an electronic infrastructure to contain its knowledge sites, it is now time to turn to a different aspect of the complexities of moving print literature into electronic forms – to confront in one area the sheer enormity of and seemingly insurmountable obstacles facing such an enterprise. And yet, if the project is not conceived comprehensively and grandly, the results will fail to satisfy more from the failure to attempt a miracle than from its impossibility.

Much of literary theory and criticism of the past two or three decades has, perhaps ironically, been devoted to making us aware of our “situatedness” – of the ways in which our present time, our geographic and cultural place, our interests, our acknowledged and unacknowledged ideologies, and our personal experiences and skills or lack thereof limit, direct, and focus our critical insights and our sense of history.