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Diverse Mappings Of Electronic Literature: Expanding The Canon(S

2023, Global Perspectives on Digital Literature, A Critical Introduction for the Twenty-First Centur

Abstract

Every day thousands forms of writing are born and distributed on social media. As text-based and digital-born artifacts they are forms of electronic literature, regardless of their authors' intention or awareness (Flores 2019). Making sense of such prolific literary production and forming bridges between the current generations of digital natives and prior literary traditions is an enormous task. While existing classifications of e-literature greatly contribute to such task by bringing order into an ever-evolving field, the sheer scale of digital works offered to contemporary audiences encourages scholars to expand established categories, propose alternative source materials, and introduce new conjunctions. It is especially true if one wants to embrace the notion of electronic literature as both a global and a local phenomenon, as World Literature with divergent roots and multiple strands (Tabbi 2010, 20). Such diversification is necessary because despite having a global, common denominator-the emergence of digital technologies-the field of electronic literature witnessed processes of canon formation similar to those in the print world (Ensslin 2007, 4). Consequently, a pattern of relations between hyper canon, counter canon and shadow canon, a dynamic governed by the rule which David Damrosch described as "the richest of the rich get richer still" (Damrosch 2006, 40), could also be observed. Exposing divergent roots, variable timelines, and alternative classifications of e-literary practice might not entirely prevent some authors to raise to the "hypercanonical celebrity" (Damrosch 2006, 53) at the expense of others, but at least might point at a strategy of accompanying the most often discussed works of digital poetry and fiction by their counterparts from other languages and cultures. My goal in this chapter is to offer alternative approaches to the established genealogies, historical models, and typological frameworks within which global community of scholars and authors discuss and practice electronic literature. The existing historical models offer either a generational (first, second and third) or a web-based classification (pre-Web, web and post-Web) of electronic literature. In my overview of these models I will also pay attention to perhaps the most persuasive theoretical typology that distinguishes between modern and postmodern e-literature. However, if one wants to look at e-literature as a global phenomenon and takes into account-for example-unequal access to digital technologies, some of