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    Electronic Literature: An Exploration

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    Kavisha Alagiya
    Kavisha Alagiya is presenting their research on electronic literature for their PhD coursework. Electronic literature emerged in the 1950s with computers and is defined as digital born work that takes advantage of computer capabilities. It includes various forms like hypertext fiction, kinetic poetry, interactive fiction, and generative poems. While some question if it is truly literature, electronic literature challenges traditional ideas and is an experimental form that builds understanding of digital creative potential. It represents new modes of storytelling that reflect our digital situation.

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    Electronic Literature: An Exploration

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    Kavisha Alagiya
    99 views9 pages
    Kavisha Alagiya is presenting their research on electronic literature for their PhD coursework. Electronic literature emerged in the 1950s with computers and is defined as digital born work that takes advantage of computer capabilities. It includes various forms like hypertext fiction, kinetic poetry, interactive fiction, and generative poems. While some question if it is truly literature, electronic literature challenges traditional ideas and is an experimental form that builds understanding of digital creative potential. It represents new modes of storytelling that reflect our digital situation.

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    Kavisha Alagiya is presenting their research on electronic literature for their PhD coursework. Electronic literature emerged in the 1950s with computers and is defined as digital born work that takes advantage of computer capabilities. It includes various forms like hypertext fiction, kinetic poetry, interactive fiction, and generative poems. While some question if it is truly literature, electronic literature challenges traditional ideas and is an experimental form that builds understanding of digital creative potential. It represents new modes of storytelling that reflect our digital situation.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    99 views9 pages

    Electronic Literature: An Exploration

    Uploaded by

    Kavisha Alagiya
    Kavisha Alagiya is presenting their research on electronic literature for their PhD coursework. Electronic literature emerged in the 1950s with computers and is defined as digital born work that takes advantage of computer capabilities. It includes various forms like hypertext fiction, kinetic poetry, interactive fiction, and generative poems. While some question if it is truly literature, electronic literature challenges traditional ideas and is an experimental form that builds understanding of digital creative potential. It represents new modes of storytelling that reflect our digital situation.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    of 9

    Department of English

    Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University


    PhD Coursework Presentation

    General Area of Research

    Electronic Literature :
    An exploration

    Prepared by:
    Kavisha Alagiya,
    Research Scholar,
    Department of English,
    M. K. Bhavnagar University
    Introduction

    Literature The authors place electronic literature squarely in the digital


    (Conceptual humanities, calling it “a new form of literature” that emerged
    Understanding) in the 1950s with the introduction of the computer. (Grigar and
    O'Sullivan)

    Aestheticism to
    Absurdism Meaning

    Networking and Digital Electronic


    Lexias,
    intertextuality Medium Literature
    Electronic Literature
    • Electronic Literature, generally considered to exclude print literature that
    has been digitized, is by contrast “digital-born”, a first generation digital
    object created on a computer and (usually) meant to be read on a
    computer.
    • ELO defines e-lit as “work with important literary aspect that takes
    advantage of the capabilities and contexts provided by the stand-alone or
    networked computer”. (Hayles)
    • From ‘lexia’ to Multimodal capabilities of Web
    • E-literature reflects our new situation through the work of writers and
    artists who consciously explore the potential of new media for new
    modes of storytelling and poetic practice. (Rettberg)
    Book as a networked computer
    • A complex and multifunctional navigational apparatus
    • Nonlinearity – book can be navigated nonlinearly
    • No particular beginning or ending
    • Interaction is required- would not begin to tell a story until you
    responded
    • The words jumped off the page into three-dimensional space and
    began flying around the room, shifting form and regrouping in the
    physical environment
    • The book is filled with threads connecting it to all of the other books
    • the book as a network, always on, always connected and always
    changing
    Electronic Literature
    • Hypertext fiction (Twelve Blue)
    • Kinetic poetry presented in Flash and using other platforms
    • Computer art installations, which ask viewers to read them or otherwise
    have literary aspects (Enter Sultana’s Reality)
    • Conversational characters, also known as chatterbots
    • Interactive fiction (visual interface and game-like, Conversational program -
    Galatea)
    • Novels that take the form of emails, SMS messages, or blogs
    • Collaborative writing projects that allow readers to contribute to the text
    of a work
    • Poems and stories that are generated by computers, either interactively or
    based on parameters given at the beginning (Poetry Generator)
    • Gestural and Locative app (Breathe – A Ghost Story) (The story)
    The ELMCIP Knowledge Base is a research resource for electronic literature
    Is Electronic Literature really Literature
    at all?
    • E-lit as a recent form of literature
    • Electronic literature is experimental literature in the sense it functions
    much like basic scientific research: there is as much to learn from
    failure in this field as success. (Rettberg)
    • The goal of any genre of e-lit may not to reach the end but rather the
    journey itself
    • The aesthetics or literariness is instantiated in work’s dynamics
    • Though these works are ephemeral; we can’t dismiss it
    • Robert Coover published articles on the emerging forms of e-lit and
    proclaimed the "passing of the golden age" of electronic literature in
    1999. (Coover)
    “Even as we of this time, astraddle the ages, continue to fuse text
    with all the hypermedia at our disposal, we also continue to hunger
    for the old reading experience, until either (the generations come, the
    generations go) it is forgotten and becomes a legend of the past, or
    this magical fusion of image, sound, and text, and perhaps of aroma
    and tactility as well, really happens, and the golden age, thought
    past, begins.”

    (Coover, The Passing of the Golden Age)


    Conclusion

    • E-lit is less about tackling a canon than it is about building a collective


    understanding of the creative potentialities of digital media.
    • Creativity is and always has been considered as product of human
    genius and this idea never allows to think out if the box.
    • E-lit is challenging this kind of idea.
    • It is more about upgradation than a canon.

    • Never ending debate and discussion - Is electronic literature inferior


    to the print canon?
    Works Cited
    • Coover, Robert. "Literary Hypertext: The Passing of the Golden Age."
    Keynote Address, Digital Arts and Culture. Atlanta, Georgia, 29
    October 1999. Web Page. 10 August 2022.
    <https://nickm.com/vox/golden_age.html>.
    • Grigar, Dene and James O'Sullivan. Electronic Literature as Digital
    Humanities: Contexts, Forms, and Practices. Bloomsbury Academic,
    2021. Book. 11 August 2022.
    • Hayles, N. Katherine. Electronic Literature: New Horizons for the
    Literary. United States: University of Notre Dame Press, 2008.
    Paperback. 05 August 2022.
    • Rettberg, Scott. Electronic Literature. United Kingdom: John Wiley &
    Sons, 2018. Paperback. 10 August 2022.

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