Re-Writing Literary Past in the Digital Age

2015

The concept of knowledge society has by now become an inseparable part of modern human been said that the Internet has transformed knowledge into a global library and made it into a circulating hypertext. According to Umberto Eco it has created such an explosion of semiotic fireworks, where any point in space can be connected with any other similar point.1 The new Library of Babylon does not acknowledge borders between states, nations and cultures. This process is global with respect to the consumption of culture, but local regarding the creation of digital content. Thus, Marshall McLuhan’s phrase ‘the medium is the message ’ should also be considered when memory documents created with the old analogue media are re-mediated and reconstructed in the environment of new digital media.2 Below, we will examine the new practices of culture, and in the age of new media, its development can use seemingly limitless resources. It has representing the past from the viewpoint of memory institut...

2002

Digital technology is changing the landscape of literary studies. In essence, the proliferation of computer technology and hypertext is forcing literary scholars to look at how the expanded role of the visual in our society is influencing the way we read and disseminate texts, especially hypertexts, while they also come to a better understanding of the role of the reader in a digital environment and the overall value of electronic literature. Literary studies is witnessing the birth of a new paradigm through digital technology in textual production and dissemination that will not only raise new questions, but further examine age-old literary issues. The following thesis will then explore several ideas concerning digital technology and literary studies including: ekphrasis, authenticity 'and value, and the nature of narrative. The introduction of digital technology onto the literary landscape has forced the re-evaluation of several aspects involved with literary studies, but more...

Semicerchio, 2015

In presenting a special issue of “Between Journal” on Technology, Imagination, Narrative Forms (4.8, 2014), this article explores the varied interconnections between literature and technology in the contemporary age, and tries to define the contours of theoretical frameworks for a wider consideration of digital humanities. It does so by mapping some of their inflections in narrative at large, such as: the thematic or metaphoric representations of new or futuristic technologies in literature; the interaction between digital culture and more ‘traditional’ literary forms – from digital versions of classics to the use of IT technologies to facilitate experimental narrative techniques; the transformation of narrative under the influence of new mediascapes; the growth of intermedia or transmedia storytelling as a typical expression of the new convergent and participative culture.

While evaluating this critical thought whether it is necessary to include Digital Humanities in the course of present day Comparative Literature studies, many of us find the entire subject to be utterly complicated and try to avoid it as much as possible, even exclude it without generating the question of necessity. I personally exposed my thought that I am not being able to fit myself into it and hence do not want to read it in its greater course. But then one can just not avoid the question of ‘necessity’ of Digital Humanities, especially being a Comparative Literature student of 21st century. The choice of streams from ‘plus 2’ level indulges a student to learn ‘Humanities’ along with Science and Commerce where the student (who chose to learn Humanities) makes a division and recommends a part as ‘Pure Arts’ and the other part involving Eco-Stat-Math combination which was granted ‘technologically’. This part includes subjects like History, Political Science, Sociology etc which are theoretical and read and answered from ‘text books’. ‘Books’ which are hard bounded. But often students took help from internet which, as a product was their ‘digital’ aid, but only as a product. The ‘Wikipedia’ pages or even the portable files never led the student to think who all are the authors constantly updating the current issues occurring in several countries, at the same time tracking the huge record of the past histories. Different subjects, objects are getting preserved unvaryingly. But what shall be the actual procedure, this question was never thought. We never had primarily discussed how texts were ‘digitalised’ and the availability of our so called text books on the internet. After not getting the concrete study materials from the Libraries, the only solution for this never ending problem of ours is to check for those online materials. Henceforth the discipline and methodology of Comparative Literature gives us a chance to explore the important account of Humanities when it gets ‘Digitalised’, how literature gets related to new developments in technology. Apart from writing my own estimation I would also like to include Gunther Martens article “Literature, Digital Humanities and the age of Encyclopaedia” in the course of my writing.

Journal of Writing in Creative Practice (JWCP), 2011

Bouchardon, S. (2011). « Digital Literature and the Digital », Journal of Writing in Creative Practice (JWCP), volume 4 numéro 1, juin 2011, Londres : Intellect Books, 65-78. ---------- In this paper, the approach to the Digital is based on the distinction between three levels: a theoretical level, an applicative level and an interpretative level. Now digital literary works play on the tensions between the three levels and allow these tensions to be highlighted. Studying the conjunction of the Digital and of literary creation – by analysing digital literary works – thus proves to be relevant. Looking into the specific properties of the Digital can throw light on the potentialities of digital literature; in the same way, digital literature can act as a revealer for the Digital.

“Metafizika” Journal (ISSN 2616-6879) S. № 3, 2018

This paper scrutinizes how Roland Barthes’ notion of Text can be reinter¬pre¬ted in the Inter¬net era. Barthes' “From Work to Text” is the main theoretical piece on which the ar¬ticle’s theoretical framework is grounded. Geoff Ryman's 253: or Tu¬be Theat¬re is taken to serve as the example for Internet hypertext literature, and is exa¬mined vis a vis Barthes' conceptualizations and ideas. The essay starts with a brief discussion on the nature of Internet literature in re¬la¬tion to that of print literature. This discussion consists of ‘the transition pe¬riod’ spi¬rit in literature, and the advantages of Internet publishing. The essence of this part is about how traditional paper-based print literature is endangered by on¬li¬ne publishing. After the section on the new literature style come the analysis of Barthes' “Text” and the application of his theories on 253. In this analysis, Barthes' text is ‘des¬tructed’ into three metaphors: the metaphors of Text as the sea, the network and the game. Analysis of 253 according to Barthes follows the same order as quo¬ta¬tions from Barthes. After the comparative analysis of “From Work to Text” and 253, the paper fo¬cuses on the contributions of 253 in the framework of the old questions of li¬te¬ra¬tu¬re. These questions include collaborative authorship, Internet readership, self-ref¬lexivity and fundamental authorship.

African Journal of Biological Sciences(South Africa), 2024

This study examines how digital culture has changed how the younger generation writes, reads, and comprehends. Focusing on contemporary literature, it explores how technology influences stories, global viewpoints, and cooperative creation, gaining knowledge from surveys and interviews conducted with 200 Indian students between the ages of 18 and 25.Postmodernism witnessedvarious cultural, social, and technological changes. This paper mainly focuses on the new culture and practices that are taking place in postmodern literature and literary involvements. The rise and influence of digital culture have accelerated the evolution and expansion of traditional media, creating new narratives, cross-national thinking, and collaborative creativity. There have been significant changes in the new generation's traditional practices and understandings because of online culture. Technology has a diverse impact and influence on all aspects of human life. Digital culture has dominated all areas of our lives. The postmodern period brought a lot of new perspectives to the existing knowledge.

Humanist Studies & the Digital Age, 2013

Journal of Pragmatics, 2007

The Writer's Craft, The Culture's Technology is a collection of articles derived from papers given at the Twenty-Second International Conference of the Poetics and Linguistics Association (PALA) at Birmingham in April 2002, which explored the connections between literary creativity and the new technologies available to text producers and text interpreters in contemporary societies. As the objects of analyses are not only literary productions but also other forms of cultural expression, such as hypertexts, web artworks, newspaper stories, television programs and online book reviews, the book is addressed to those who are interested in the interface between discourse analysis and new digital and multimedia technologies, and on how these new technologies impact the forms and functions of literary canons and other post-modern cultural products. Following a preface by Donald C. Freedman, the series editor, and an introduction by the two editors of this particular volume, the book is divided into four parts. Part I, The Writer's Web, includes four papers loosely connected by a focus on Internet genres. The first essay, ''Anti-Laokoön: mixed and merged modes of image text on the web'', by George Dillon, discusses how relations between text and image (and sound) are being created in contemporary web artworks, and argues for the centrality of the cross-modal link to the reader/viewer's processing of hypertexts. The relevant point argued by Dillon is that hypertext links allow users to create complex signifying structures by weaving together different textual fragments, an indication of the constant transformations in the interpretive rules and frames we use to make sense of the world. The second article, ''Personal web pages and the semiotic construction of academic identities'', by Carmen Rosa Caldas-Coulthard, follows the argument that, in late modernity, public discourses are being colonized by traces of discourses of the private world (Chouliaraki and Fairclough, 1999). In this particular case, the author investigates how web pages of individual staff members, linked to a broader institutional web page, are more and more influenced by discourses of the self, and how new forms of fictionalized identities are being created in the process. The third essay, ''Hypertext, prosthetics, and the netocracy: posthumanism in Jeanette Winterson's 'The Powerbook''', by Ulf Cronquist, also explores the issue of identity in discourse. The initial premise is that in the present technological age, essentialist and biological notions of sex and gender have been left behind, and that we have moved into a world where we are all cyborgs, our bodies representing the final frontier in terms of predetermined identity traits. To illustrate this premise Cronquist investigates an Internet novel, which offers the reader a chance to escape from her/his body, and through this e-novel examines issues of hypertextuality, prosthetics and the change from autocracy to netocracy in the postmodern world. The last essay

Literatures in the Digital Era: Theory and Praxis. Ed. Amelia Sanz and Dolores Romero. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007. 201-20., 2007

The article raises the question of how the materiality of media products, such as literary manuscripts or books, influences the production and comprehension of textual significance. Far from being a subsidiary discipline, textology is vitally intertwined with the theory, interpretation, and history of literature. It transfers literary texts from the domain of art to the discourses of scholarship and education, strengthens their social relevance, and influences their canonization. Thanks to the textual critic, the literary text, restored and purged of all subsequent interference and error, should speak beyond the confines of its historical frame. The “old” historicism attempted to reconstruct an image of the text closest to the original, but in fact produced an additional textual version, marked with normative finality. Modern, text-centered trends in literary studies, striving to ensure aesthetic pleasure, would, in the process of editing, also filter and retouch the text’s historicity. The postmodern humanities have deconstructed history, presenting it as an interplay of interpretation and narration; however, they have striven for a return of the historical presence, but within a structure of the present: the past should reveal itself in its contingency, polyphony of detail, openness, and becoming. Within these horizons, a different understanding of texts has been formed: they are seen as an open process of writing and reading. Such views have touched the theory and practice of textology as well. The role of the two subjects, the author and editor, becomes looser, as does the notion of the literary work as a finished product. The literary work, observed in the processes of genesis, distribution, and post-production, is presented as a “fuzzy” set of drafts, versions, corrections, and rewriting. Postmodern textology does not reduce the text to its verbal structure, but also pays attention to the circumstances of publication, as well as to the medium; these factors are crucial for the meaning of the work and its cultural position. The postmodern tendencies to restore the historical presence and mutability of literary texts are—paradoxically—answered by the potentialities of virtual cyberspace, which is “in the service of postmodern detailism and the micro-contexts of knowledge” (Sutherland). Moreover, the electronic medium and the hypertext have led to recognition of the semantic role played by older media, the book in particular. E-text is thus not only a rival to a classical book-text, but also a useful tool that represents and interprets its historical specificity.