Literature in the Digital Age

A guide through the theoretical and creative possibilities opened up by the shift to digital literary forms. It contextualizes the digital in literary theory, explores the questions readers can ask of texts when they become digitized, and investigates the challenges that forms of born-digital fiction pose to existing models of literary analysis.

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Literature in a Digital Age: An Introduction guides readers through the most salient theoretical, interpretive, and creative possibilities opened up by the shift to digital literary forms such as e-books, digital archives, and electronic literature. While Digital Humanities (DH) has been hailed as the 'next big thing' in literary studies, many students and scholars remain perplexed as to what a DH approach to literature entails, and skeptical observers continue to see literature and the digital world as fundamentally incompatible. In its argument that digital and traditional scholarship should be placed in dialogue with each other, this book contextualizes the advent of the digital in literary theory, explores the new questions readers can ask of texts when they become digitized, and investigates the challenges that fresh forms of born-digital fiction pose to existing models of literary analysis.