Collecting and recontextualizing writings from the last twenty years of John Cayley's research-based practice of electronic literature, Grammalepsy introduces a theory of aesthetic linguistic practice developed specifically for the making and critical appreciation of language art in digital media. As he examines the cultural shift away from traditional print literature and the changes in our culture of reading, Cayley coins the term “grammalepsy” to inform those processes by which we make, understand, and appreciate language. Framing his previous writings within the overall context of this theory, Cayley eschews the tendency of literary critics and writers to reduce aesthetic linguistic making-even when it has multimedia affordances-to “writing.” Instead, Cayley argues that electronic literature and digital language art allow aesthetic language makers to embrace a compositional practice inextricably involved with digital media, which cannot be reduced to print-dependent textuality.

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Collecting and recontextualizing writings from the last twenty years of John Cayley's research-based practice of electronic literature, Grammalepsy introduces a theory of aesthetic linguistic practice developed specifically for the making and critical appreciation of language art in digital media. As he examines the cultural shift away from traditional print literature and the changes in our culture of reading, Cayley coins the term “grammalepsy” to inform those processes by which we make, understand, and appreciate language. Framing his previous writings within the overall context of this theory, Cayley eschews the tendency of literary critics and writers to reduce aesthetic linguistic making-even when it has multimedia affordances-to “writing.” Instead, Cayley argues that electronic literature and digital language art allow aesthetic language makers to embrace a compositional practice inextricably involved with digital media, which cannot be reduced to print-dependent textuality.

This book examines contemporary forms of digital poetry in emerging technologies such as drones, machine learning, Instagram, virtual reality and mobile devices. Theoretical frameworks that engage with posthumanism, multimodality, hermeneutics and eco-writing are used to examine the changing shape of the literary artefact in the second age of machines. The book contextualises the necessity of a multidisciplinary approach for a complex artefact and gives a broad overview of the field and history of digital poetry as a subset of the genre of electronic literature. Naji examines Instapoetry and the literary algorithm, haptic hermeneutics and poetry apps. The discussion also engages with eco-writing and drone poetry, poetic mirror worlds, and mixed reality poetry, concluding with an examination of the future of poetics and literary expression in the second age of machines.

Electronic Literature considers new forms and genres of writing that exploit the capabilities of computers and networks – literature that would not be possible without the contemporary digital context. In this book, Rettberg places the most significant genres of electronic literature in historical, technological, and cultural contexts. These include combinatory poetics, hypertext fiction, interactive fiction (and other game-based digital literary work), kinetic and interactive poetry, and networked writing based on our collective experience of the Internet. He argues that electronic literature demands to be read both through the lens of experimental literary practices dating back to the early twentieth century and through the specificities of the technology and software used to produce the work. Considering electronic literature as a subject in totality, this book provides a vital introduction to a dynamic field that both reacts to avant-garde literary and art traditions and generates new forms of narrative and poetic work particular to the twenty-first century. It is essential reading for students and researchers in disciplines including literary studies, media and communications, art, and creative writing.

Provides a context for the development of the field, informed by the forms and practices that have emerged through the years, and offers resources for others interested in learning more about electronic literature.

In this extensively illustrated book containing over 80 diagrams and images of artworks, David Burrows and Simon O'Sullivan explore the process of fictioning in contemporary art through three focal points: performance fictioning, science fictioning and machine fictioning.

Book, Text, Medium: Cross Sectional Reading for a Digital Age utilizes codex history, close reading, and language philosophy to assess the transformative arc between medieval books and today's e-books. It examines what happens to the reading experience in the twenty-first century when the original concept of a book is still held in the mind of a reader, if no longer in the reader's hand. Leading critic Garrett Stewart explores the play of mediation more generally, as the concept of book moves from a manufactured object to simply the language it puts into circulation. Framed by digital poetics, phonorobotics, and the rising popularity of audiobooks, this study sheds new light on both the history of reading and the negation of legible print in conceptual book art.

The Bloomsbury Handbook of Literary and Cultural Theory is the most comprehensive available survey of the state of theory in the 21st century. With chapters written by the world's leading scholars in their field, this book explores the latest thinking in traditional schools such as feminist, Marxist, historicist, psychoanalytic, and postcolonial criticism and new areas of research in ecocriticism, biopolitics, affect studies, posthumanism, materialism, and many other fields. In addition, the book includes a substantial A-to-Z compendium of key words and important thinkers in contemporary theory, making this an essential resource for scholars of literary and cultural theory at all levels.

How can we use digital media to understand reading, editing, and writing as literary processes? How can we design the digital medium in a way that goes beyond the printed codex? This book is an attempt to answer those fundamental questions by bringing together a new theory of literary studies with a highly dynamic digital environment. Using the digital archive of the modernist masterpiece Book of Disquiet, by the Portuguese writer Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935), as case study and site for simulation and practical experiment, Literary Simulation and the Digital Humanities demonstrates how computational approaches to texts can fully engage with the complexities of contemporary literary theory. Manuel Portela marshals a unique combination of theoretical speculation, literary analysis, and human imagination in what amounts to a significant critical intervention and a key advance in the use of digital methods to rethink the processes of reading and writing literature. The foregrounding of the foundational practices of reading, editing, and writing will be relevant for several fields, including literary studies, scholarly editing, software studies, and digital humanities.

Winner of the 2017 N. Katherine Hayles Award for Criticism of Electronic Literature A CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title 2018 The digital age has had a profound impact on literary culture, with new technologies opening up opportunities for new forms of literary art from hyperfiction to multi-media poetry and narrative-driven games. Bringing together leading scholars and artists from across the world, The Bloomsbury Handbook of Electronic Literature is the first authoritative reference handbook to the field. Crossing disciplinary boundaries, this book explores the foundational theories of the field, contemporary artistic practices, debates and controversies surrounding such key concepts as canonicity, world systems, narrative and the digital humanities, and historical developments and new media contexts of contemporary electronic literature. Including guides to major publications in the field, The Bloomsbury Handbook of Electronic Literature is an essential resource for scholars of contemporary culture in the digital era.