ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the establishment of a set of criteria for reviewing cyber literature. It first gives a review of people’s different ideas of cyber literature, focusing on the contestation between such ideas. In the past decades, while some people gave negative reviews of cyber literature, others started to seriously study this new type of literature, focusing on how it carries on the literary tradition, especially the “the humanistic spirits,” and manifests some new characteristics, such as “hypertextuality,” in the social context where market and technology play dominant roles. Nevertheless, a new set of criteria is still needed to guide scholars for their review of cyber literary works. This chapter then reviews several scholars’ idea to illustrate how we should consider the literary, the ideological, the technological, and the commercial aspects while studying cyber literature.
