Literature and the Digital World

  • Laura Di Michele University of Naples, L'Orientale
Keywords: Electronic/digital literature, Humanities, Visual Culture, Remediation, Mediamorphosis,

Abstract

This essay discusses literature’s persistent diffidence against electronic productions, wrongly perceived as on the verge of erasing the print world of the literary. At the same time, the essay shows how deep the digital world’s fascination over a literary mind may be, and in how many ways the ‘established’ field of human knowledge may be significantly enriched by opening paths of communications where no boundaries are constructed, so that the free circulation among all of them is made possible without endangering the identity of the electronic and literary worlds. Rather, the perspectives belonging to these two worlds may give major contributions not only to the creation and study of electronic /new media literature, but also to the exploration and understanding of the full implications of what the transition/transformation/translation from page to screen may signify. The complexities of the processes involved are illustrated through the analyses of theories and critical thinking, as well as the study of written and visual materials.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Author Biography

Laura Di Michele, University of Naples, L'Orientale

Laura Di Michele taught English at the University of Naples ‘L’Orientale’ and at the University of L’Aquila. She is the author of books and articles on Shakespeare, the novel and poetry of the eighteenth and twentieth centuries, the city and its representations, multicultural diversity, cultural and gender studies. Among her recent publications: “Matrimonio e divorzio nella narrativa vittoriana” (2012), “L’assedio delle passioni nell’universo tragico di Shakespeare” (2013), “Smart cities tra fantascienza e realtà urbana” (2013), “Performance and the City: Constructing urban identities in contemporary London” (2014), and “Dieci anni di narrativa inglese nel terzo millennio” (2014). She is editor and co-editor of books on Shakespeare, the city, and diversity, and series editor of ‘Critica e letteratura’ and ‘Angelica’ (Liguori); ‘Ricerca e didattica’ (E.S.I.); ‘Biblioteca di Anglistica Fernando Ferrara’ (Giannini).

References

Appadurai, Arjun, “Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy”, Theory, Culture & Society, 1990: 295-310.

Baricco, Alessandro, I barbari. Saggio sulla mutazione, Milano, Feltrinelli, 2006.

Barthes, Roland, S/Z, Torino, Einaudi, 1970.

Barthes, Roland, Il piacere del testo, Torino, Einaudi, 1973.

Barthes, Roland, Roland Barthes, Paris, Seuil, 1975.

Beckett, Samuel, Embers (1959), Id., The Complete Dramatic Works, London, Faber & Faber, 1990.

Beckett, Samuel, Krapp’s Last Tape (1959), in Id., The Complete Dramatic Works, London, Faber & Faber, 1990.

Beckett, Samuel, Watt (1968), Ed. Gabriele Frasca, Torino, Einaudi, 1998.

Beckett, Samuel, Teatro completo. Drammi, Sceneggiature, Radiodrammi, Pièces televisive, Ed. Paolo Bertinetti, Torino, Einaudi-Gallimard, 1994.

Benjamin, Walter, L’opera d’arte nell’epoca della sua riproducibilità tecnica, Torino, Einaudi, 1955.

Bertinetti, Paolo, “Beckett, o la compressione della forma”, in Beckett, Samuel, Teatro completo. Drammi, Sceneggiature, Radiodrammi, Pièces televisive, Ed. Paolo Bertinetti, Torino, Einaudi-Gallimard, 1994: xvii-xlix.

Braidotti, Rosi, In metamorfosi, Milano, Feltrinelli, 2002.

Calvino, Italo, Lezioni americane. Sei proposte per il prossimo millennio, Milano, Oscar Mondadori, 2002.

Chambers, Ross, Loiterature, Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press, 1991.

Clifford, James, Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century, Cambridge Mass. – London, Harvard University Press, 1997.

Coe, Jonathan, The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim, London, Viking, 2010.

Collis, Betty – Moonen Jef, Flexible Learning in a Digital World. Experiences and Expectations, New York and London, Routledge, 2001.

Di Michele, Laura, “English Literary History as a Voyage of Discovery”, Literary Landscapes, Landscape in Literature, Eds. Michele Bottalico, Maria Teresa Chialant, Eleonora Rao, Roma, Carocci, 2007: 32-45.

Esposito, Lucia, Scene sonore. I radiodrammi di Samuel Beckett, Napoli, Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 2005.

Ferrara, Fernando, “La letteratura e i codici della comunicazione” (1977), Il Novecento di Fernando Ferrara, Eds. Laura Di Michele, Daniela Cuccurullo, Flora de Giovanni, Napoli, Giannini, 2000: 67-83.

Ferrara, Fernando, “L’origine del concetto moderno di letteratura e la comunicazione culturale” (1980), Il Novecento di Fernando Ferrara, Eds. Laura Di Michele, Daniela Cuccurullo, Flora de Giovanni, Napoli, Giannini, 2000: 10-29.

Ferrara, Fernando, “Statuto del testo letterario e logica della comunicazione sociale: i termini di una dialettica” (1990), Il Novecento di Fernando Ferrara, Eds. Laura Di Michele, Daniela Cuccurullo, Flora de Giovanni, Napoli, Giannini, 2000: 52-66.

Frasca, Gabriele, “Introduzione”, in Beckett, Samuel, Watt, Ed. Gabriele Frasca, Torino, Einaudi, 1998: vii-xlix.

Frasca, Gabriele, La lettera che muore. La ‘letteratura’ nel reticolo mediale, Roma, Meltemi, 2005.

Gere, Charlie, Digital Culture, London, Reaktion Books, 2002.

Hayles, N. Katherine, How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics, Chicago, Chicago University Press, 1999.

Hayles, N. Katherine, My Mother Was a Computer: Digital Subjects and Literary Texts, Chicago, Chicago University Press, 2005.

Hayles, N. Katherine, “Electronic Literature: What is It?”, Electronic Literature: New Horizons for the Literary, Notre Dame, University of Notre Dame Press, 2008: 1-42.

Hutcheon, Linda –Valdes Mario (eds.), Rethinking Literary History: A Dialogue on Theory, Oxford, OUP, 2002.

Liu, Alan, “The Meaning of the Digital Humanities”, PMLA, 128.2 (2013): 409-423.

Locatelli, Angela, “‘The Ecology of Wonderland’: Textual, Critical, and Institutional Perspectives in Literature”, Literary Landscapes, Landscape in Literature, Eds. Michele Bottalico, Maria Teresa Chialant, Eleonora Rao, Roma, Carocci, 2007: 46-53.

Manovich, Lev, The Language of New Media, Cambridge, The MIT Press, 2001.

Masten, Jeffrey – Stallybrass Peter – Vickers Nancy J. (eds.), LanguageMachines: Technologies of Literary and Cultural Productions, New York and London, Routledge, 1997.

McGann, Jerome, Radiant Textuality: Literature after the World Wide Web, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2001.

Mills, Kathy A., “Multiliteracies: Interrogating Competing Discourses”, Language & Education, 23.2 (2009): 103-116.

Moretti, Franco, Graphs, Maps, Trees: Abstract Models for Literary History, London, Verso, 2007.

Morris, Adalaide – Swiss, Thomas (eds.), New Media Poetics. Contexts, Technotexts, and Theories, Cambridge, The MIT Press, 2006.

Olsen, Stein Haugom, “Progress in Literary Studies”, New Literary History, 36.3 (2005): 341-358.

Paulson, William, Literary Culture in a World Transformed: A Future for the Humanities, Ithaca and London, Cornell University Press, 2001.

Siemens, Ray – Schreibman, Susan (eds.), A Companion to Digital Literary Studies, Oxford, Blackwell, 2007.

Tyner, D. Kathleen, Literacy in a Digital World: Teaching and Learning in the Age of Information, London, Routledge, 2009.

Widdowson, Paul, Literature, New York and London, Routledge, 1999.

Williams, Raymond, The Long Revolution, Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, 1961.

Williams, Raymond, Communications, Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, 1962.

How to Cite
Di Michele, L. (1). Literature and the Digital World. Between, 4(8). https://doi.org/10.13125/2039-6597/1803
Section
Between Literature and Digital Culture: Intersections and Contaminations