This thesis takes into consideration the presence of computers and electronic equipment in French literary and multimedia discussions, beginning in the first chapter with the foundation of the Oulipo group in 1960 and taking as a starting point the group's conceptions of the computer in relation to literature. It proceeds in the second chapter to explore the materialities and physical factors that have informed the evolution of ideas related to the composition and reading of digital texts, so as to illuminate some of the differences that may be purported to exist between e-literatures and traditional print works. Drawing on Roland Barthes' 'Between Work and Text,' the chapters gradually progress into an exploration of spatiality in digital and interactive literatures, taking into account the role of exhibitions in accommodating and diffusing these forms in France, notably the 1985 exhibition 'Les Immatériaux,' to whose writing installations the third chapter is dedicated. The first three chapters thus focus on computer assisted reading and writing prior to 1985. The chapters that form the second half of the thesis deal with more recent years, exploring online and mobile application works, reading these as engendering their own distinct physical spaces that extend beyond the 'site' of the work - both the website or display and the tactile materials on which the work is operated - creating in relation to the reading what Roberto Simanowski terms a 'semiotic body'. The fourth chapter takes into consideration the role of the reader's body in Annie Abrahams' 'Séparation' and Xavier Malbreil's 'Livre des Morts'. The fifth chapter explores gesture as a mode of reading and reinscription in the online, interactive works of Serge Bouchardon. Finally, the sixth chapter looks at mobile application narratives, spampoetry and email art, offering ways of reading the new spatialities these forms generate. The work as a whole aims to offer some perspectives for considering digital literatures as capable of creating complex spatial experiences between work and text.

This thesis conducts a critical investigation into digital literature—a genre of literary expression that is integrated with, and articulated using, digital computing systems and infrastructures. Specifically, it presents a framework for evaluating the expressive capacities of this genre as it relates to particular conceptions of knowledge-making in the contemporary technocultural environment. This framework reveals how the generation of critical knowledge concerning digital literature, as crystallised through a reader’s material engagements with specific works, enacts a ‘performative’ conception of knowing and being, in which the observable world is treated as emerging in the real time of practice—as being articulated through the entanglement of human and nonhuman agencies, rather than existing as a fixed array of passive, unchanging primitives. Digital literature is presented subsequently as a model of this greater performative vision—as a means of evaluating the structures and processes that manifest it, particularly within digital systems, and for assessing its practical and political implications for art and culture more broadly. In so doing, this thesis aims to justify the value of engaging digital literature from a standpoint that is more expressly political, contending not only that these texts are revealing of key processes shaping digital activities, artefacts, and environments, but are enacting alternative vectors of thought and practice concerning them.

R/Nosleep is a digital publishing platform for horror literature. A unique quirk that defines this platform is the common understanding between its authors and readers that any story published to the platform is to be treated as a recollection of actual events. In other words, the fiction is to be treated as plausible non-fiction, both by those who write the texts and those who comment on them. This collaborative performance is enforced by a series of rules that authors and readers need to abide by. In this thesis I examine what exactly it is that authors and readers on r/Nosleep engage in when they treat the fiction as plausible. To do this I have conducted two analyses. First I have done analysises of three different stories posted to R/Nosleep, where I examine paratextual and narratological elements in each text to find if they either make a claim for authenticity or fictionality. And second I have analyzed the top comments for each of these stories to determine what sort of readings the users of r/Nosleep engage in and whether or not these readings play along with the rules established by the platform and its performance. From my analysises of the literature as well as the reader response I come to the conclusion that the seemingly strict rules enforced by R/Nosleep still leave a lot of wiggle room for authors and readers alike to engage in a rich variety of creative expressions both when it comes to writing and interacting with works of fiction.

Les théories et pensées de la lecture ont, au tournant du XXIe siècle, valorisé des approches pragmatiques de la lecture et de l’expérience qu’elle procure. De manière synchrone, le récit contemporain français réinvestit les figures de la lecture et du lecteur. Habituellement rattachées à une tradition parodique et anti-romanesque, elles constituent en fait une force de relance narrative et permettent de repenser les imaginaires littéraires et critiques de la lecture. À l’heure où la démocratisation des outils numériques semble transformer le rapport des sujets au livre et aux savoirs, interroger ces représentations dans les textes littéraires permet de mettre en évidence l’influence du numérique sur les pratiques de lecture comme les attitudes de la réception. Par leur manière d’impliquer le lecteur, de mettre en récit ou en abyme la lecture, et d’accueillir dans le livre de nouvelles figures de la réception, les textes du corpus dessinent et déclinent différents arts de lire. En faisant un objet de fiction du rapport des sujets aux signes qui les entourent ou les traversent, ces récits mettent à distance les méthodes de déchiffrement héritées des théories du texte et du moment formaliste de la théorie. Une pensée de la lecture s’élabore ainsi depuis les textes littéraires. Matière fictionnelle et narrative, elle fonctionne comme relance romanesque, et fait ressurgir la tentation critique d’une parole théorique des écrivains / Theories of reading and reader-response criticism have, since the turn of the 21st century, emphasized pragmatic approaches to reading and the reading experience. Meanwhile, contemporary French fiction has also been focusing on representations of reading and the reader. Although such representations are usually seen as part of a parodic, anti-novelistic tradition, they have in fact had a revitalizing impact on contemporary narratives and suggest new ways of looking at fictional and critical visions of reading. At a time when the democratization of digital tools seems to be revolutionizing the reading subject’s relationship to books and knowledge, a study of the representations of reading in literary texts can illuminate the impact of digital data on reading practices and reception. By devising new strategies of reader involvement and new embodiments of reception in the text, as well as by their fictionalization or mise en abyme of reading, the narratives of our corpus evolve and express new and diverse “arts of reading”. They turn our relationship to the signs in our world and in ourselves into fiction and thus call for a rethinking of our interpretive processes, away from classical hermeneutics and from formalist-inspired theories. Innovative thoughts and imaginings about literature are thus produced by literary texts themselves. They have a re-energizing impact on contemporary fiction and also explain why writers of fiction are once again lured into adopting theoretical discourses

Thesis (MA)--Stellenbosch University, 2012. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: In the recent past, the large-scale production and marketing of e-reading devices, such as Amazon’s Kindle, and tablet computers, such as Apple’s iPad, have allowed literary works to be presented in a digital reading space, both in the form of standard e-books and, more recently, as enhanced or “amplified” e-books. Much of the position-taking on the matter is polarised: technologists continue to imagine the myriad possibilities of multimodal online “stories”, focusing on opportunities for interactive engagement, while the guardians of literary tradition fear the digital reading space might well cause fluency disruptions and break the hermeneutic immersion necessary for strong reading, irrevocably altering a traditional, paper-based reading experience known to promote a state of deep attention and imaginatively engaged reading. This thesis looks realistically at the current literary climate in which the so-called “digital native” operates, scrutinises the “print” versus “electronic” debate, paying careful attention to how an online environment may well prevent hermeneutic immersion, and then discusses recent enhanced literary products, such as the transmedia fiction title, Chopsticks (Penguin Group USA 2012), and the nonfiction titles released by online publisher Atavist. Then, in an attempt to bridge the gap between the technologists and the print-book purists, and based on what might be considered to be literature’s original value, the thesis proposes a digital reading product in which a formalised set of conventions and a strategic instructional design, or interface, attempts to protect the qualities of traditional, paper-based reading, while at the same time taking advantage of on-screen, online environments to reconnect digital natives with the relevance of past literatures. More specifically, the product presented herein is an attempt to demonstrate 1) how a new aesthetic of literary presentation might stimulate renewed interest in the humanities and liberal arts; 2) how fiction might be reinstated as one of the central components in the education process; 3) how works of fiction that have become increasingly obscure over time or inaccessible to young people might be re-energised; and 4) how what one might call “local” literatures might be “de-parochialised” within an increasingly globalised reading environment. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Die produksie en bemarking op groot skaal van e-lesers soos Amazon se Kindle en tabletvormige rekenaars soos Apple se iPad het dit moontlik gemaak om letterkunde in ’n digitale ruimte aan te bied, hetsy in die vorm van e-boeke, of (meer onlangs) in versterkte en “aangevulde” e-boek vorm. Meningsvorming rondom die letterkundige toepaslikheid van e-boeke is sterk gepolariseerd: tegnoloë sien net die magdom moontlikhede raak wat multi-modale aanlyn stories en interaktiewe betrokkenheid inhou, terwyl tradisionele literêre kurators vrese koester oor hoe die digitale leesruimte inbreuk sal maak op die vloei en hermeneutiese onderdompeling nodig vir ’n grondige leeservaring; dit, meen hulle, sal dan ook lei tot die onherroeplike verlies van diep en verbeeldingryke aandag, eienskappe wat lees op papier veronderstel is om mee te bring. Hierdie proefskrif werp ’n realistiese blik op die huidige literêre klimaat, veral die omstandighede waarin die sogenaamde “digital native” deesdae funksioneer. Die debat rondom gedrukte teenoor elektroniese boeke word noukeurig ondersoek, veral met betrekking tot die mate waarin aanlyn lees dalk wel hermeneutiese onderdompeling onderdruk. Verder word versterkte literêre produkte soos die transmedia fiksie titel, Chopsticks (Penguin Group USA 2012), en nie-fiksie titels deur aanlyn-uitgewer Atavist, noukeurig bekyk. Voorts, in ’n poging om die gaping tussen tegnoloë en gedrukte-boek puriste te oorbrug, en op grond van wat mens die oer-waarde van letterkunde dalk kan noem, stel hierdie proefskrif ’n digitale leesproduk voor met ’n geformaliseerde stel konvensies en ’n strategiese instruksionele ontwerp, of koppelvlak (‘interface’). Dit word gedoen in ’n poging om die eienskappe van tradisionele, ‘papier’ lees te behou, maar terselfdetyd voordeel te trek uit die aanlyn-omgewing, en om sodoende die ‘digitale inboorling’ te herenig met die relevansie van vervloë letterkunde. Hierdie voorgestelde produk, dan, is meer spesifiek ’n poging om te wys 1) hoe ’n nuwe literêr-digitale aanbiedingsestetika hernieude belangstelling in die geesteswetenskappe en liberale kunste kan werk; 2) hoe fiksie weer ingestel kan word as kern-komponent in die opvoedingsproses; 3) hoe nuwe energie verleen kan word aan fiksie wat toenemend onbekend of ontoeganklik vir jongmense word; en 4) hoe die Suid-Afrikaanse letterkunde opgehef kan word binne die opset van ’n toenemend-globale leesomgewing.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-08-10T11:06:59Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 LUCILELIA LEMES DE CASTRO SILVA NASCIMENTO.pdf: 1559212 bytes, checksum: f28a9b74e30c324bec433f840c7af921 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-04-11 / This study investigates a range of poetic works created with and disseminated through digital computer media, for their visual, kinetic, and textual practices. We seek to articulate an analytic method grounded in close readings of selected poems out of several contemporary subgenres chosen to focus on poetic practices that raise questions about spatiality, temporality, kineticism, and word-and-image construction. Our chief interest lies in the systematization of the management procedures to access cyber poetry as a poetic form that emerges and is orchestrated in digital media and the forms of engagement presented to the reader. We focus the study on three clusters of poems, the poetic events, the cinematographic poems and visual noise poems. In this study, the attention to the material is applied on the analyzed digital poems. We base on the N. Katherine Hayles s analysis of media. In studying the selected digital poems, we highlighted their spatiotemporal properties and the kinetic and word-picture constructions. We dealt with Flash and animated Poems in the visual noise poetry. We argue that the reader/user s active embodied engagement that is required in the poems analyzed in chapter two and the denial of an active participation in the poems of chapter three is part of the materiality of the works. We emphasize that digital poetry is in a field that is expanding and changing, we dare to say that the poetic writing exploration and experimentation in the age of new media has just begun. / Este estudo investiga uma série de obras poéticas criadas e divulgadas através das mídias digitais, por meio de suas práticas visuais, cinéticas e textuais. Procuramos articular um método analítico fundamentado em leituras de poemas selecionados em vários subgêneros contemporâneos escolhidos para se concentrarem em práticas poéticas que levantem questões sobre a espacialidade, a temporalidade, o cinetismo e a construção de palavras e imagens. O nosso foco principal reside na sistematização dos procedimentos de manejo para acesso à ciberpoesia como forma poética que emerge e é orquestrada em mídias digitais e as formas de engajamento que são apresentadas ao leitor. Concentramos o estudo em três grupos de poemas: os Eventos Poéticos, Poemas Cinematográficos e os Poemas de Ruído Visual. Neste estudo, a atenção ao material é exercida sobre os poemas digitais analisados. Baseamo-nos na análise de mídia de N. Katherine Hayles. Ao estudarmos os poemas digitais selecionados, destacamos as suas propriedades espaço-temporais, as construções cinéticas de palavra-eimagem. Tratamos de poemas em Flash e poemas animados na poesia de ruído visual. Defendemos que o engajamento ativo incorporado que é exigido do leitor/usuário nos poemas analisados no capítulo dois e a negação de uma participação ativa nos poemas do capítulo três faz parte da materialidade das obras. Ressaltamos que a poesia digital constitui-se em um campo que está se expandindo e mudando, não seria ousadia afirmar que a exploração e a experimentação da escrita poética na era das novas mídias apenas começaram.

[pt] A emergência de um novo fenômeno – a literatura digital – na esfera disciplinar dos estudos literários provoca a reorganização e invenção de seus instrumentos analíticos e de seus circuitos de comunicação. Concepções de literatura, historicamente instáveis e deslocando constantemente as suas fronteiras e seu horizonte de expectativa, hoje são marcadas também por travessias do espaço escritural. Neste quadro a tese, Literatura Digital: Desafios Teóricos e Estéticos responde aos desafios teóricos e estéticos contemporâneos elaborando novas formas de saber que permitem entender e circunscrever a literatura digital em contextos de produção e recepção alterados. Inserida simultaneamente em uma tradição e defendendo o seu lugar no cenário contemporâneo, este tipo de literatura requer assim revisões e reformulações significativas. Por enquanto ainda faltam contornos à própria literatura digital, e os processos de teorização circulam em espaços predominantemente transdisciplinares. Ao estabelecerem reciprocidade através da epistemologia da complexidade, a cultura midiática e a teoria da literatura vêm desenvolvendo alianças no campo das possibilidades analíticas das obras literárias digitais. Como estratégia metodológica, a tese alia teorias de produção de presença (GUMBRECHT), eventilização (HAYLES), remediação (BOLTER), teorias autopoiéticas de comunicação (LUHMANN), análise estética do fenômeno digital – interatividade, intermidialidade e performance (SIMANOWSKI) – e Medienumbrüche (GENDOLLA e SCHÄFER) a um olhar sobre realizações concretas (close-readings). Em suma, a tese oferece um repertório conceitual inovador formulando fundamentos para uma nova poética digital. / [en] The emergence of a new phenomenon – digital literature – within the field of literary studies calls for the reorganization and creation of new theoretical and analytical repertoires. Since digital literature partakes of literary tradition as well as introduces critical medial and conceptual innovations that challenge the very concept of literary frontiers and spaces, its scholarly analysis demands significant reformulations in literary studies. As models of communication change, so do the reception and production processes accompanying these changes. Within these altered scenarios, the thesis Digital Literature: Theoretical and Aesthetic Reflections is a response to the aesthetic and theoretical challenges brought on by computer-based literature. As a methodological strategy, the thesis articulates recent trends in the theory of digital aesthetics – remediation (BOLTER), eventilization (HAYLES), correlations of performativity, intermediality and interactivity with meaning-driven analysis (SIMANOWSKI), Medienumbrüche (GENDOLLA and SCHÄFER) – with theories of production of presence (GUMBRECHT), autopoietic communicative models (LUHMANN) and closereadings of digital works. By scripting a dialogue with key theorists from print literary theory as well as new media theorists and artists in the burgeoning field, the thesis offers conceptual and theoretical contributions to the formulation of a poetics of new media.

Les outils de création numériques, conçus pour faciliter la publication des textes en ligne ou la création d’animations interactives, proposent et parfois imposent des façons de présenter les contenus. Les auteurs sont-ils conscients de la possible influence de ces présupposés, anticipations de pratiques et contraintes ? Jusqu’à quel point l’écriture est-elle conditionnée par l’outil que l’auteur emploie ? Quelles sont ses effets sur l’écriture numérique ? Dans cette thèse, nous montrons que les outils-logiciels sont structurés comme des « discours » adressés à l’auteur-concepteur, fondés sur des stratégies que nous nommons « rhétorique de la conception ». Comme l’auteur d’un texte numérique anticipe lors de l'acte d'écriture sur les pratiques du lecteur, l’outil propose des discours qui constituent un ensemble de présupposés, de sous-entendus et d'implicites anticipant sur les pratiques de l'auteur. Il s’agit alors de se pencher sur les relations de pouvoir ainsi établies, et nous nous demanderons si certains éléments de discours de l’outil-logiciel ne sont pas de nature à influencer considérablement le créateur, pour qu’il adhère aux propositions défendant les intérêts ou les stratégies de l'industrie culturelle du logiciel. La création à partir d’éléments préfabriqués remet-elle alors en cause le statut de l’auteur ? / The tools for digital creation, designed as they are to facilitate the publication of online texts or the creation of interactive animations, propose and sometimes impose ways of presenting contents. Are writers aware of the possible influence of these assumptions, patterns of practice and constraints? How much is the act of authoring conditioned by the tool used by the writer? What effect do such tools have on digital creation? In this thesis we will show that software tools are structured as « frameworks » aimed at the writer-designer and based on strategies that we have called « rhetoric for creative authoring ». Just as, in the act of authoring, the writer of a digital text anticipates the practices of the reader, the tool itself proposes a framework which amounts to a number of underlying or implicit givens which anticipate the practices of the author. We therefore need to look into the power relationship thus established and to ask ourselves whether certain elements of the software-tool framework are not strongly influencing the author in order to make him/her adhere to propositions which defend the interests or strategies of the software cultural industry. When starting from prefabricated elements does the creative act not call into question the very status of the author?

[pt] A tese se propõe a refletir sobre as múltiplas faces do escritor Marcelino Freire, considerando tanto seus escritos, em especial aqueles que não foram publicados por grandes editoras, como os projetos por ele desenvolvidos com o objetivo de repensar o cenário de produção e circulação da literatura, reconhecendo em Freire um desempenho semelhante ao de um autor-ator, pode-se assim dizer, por identificarmos em suas ações não apenas o desejo de criar obras e movimentos em torno da palavra, mas também uma insistência em recriar-se, como um sujeito imerso em um jogo cênico. A partir do lançamento de seus livros de contos Freire conseguiu projetar-se no ambiente literário, despertando o interesse tanto de leitores como da crítica. Com Angu de Sangue (2000) o escritor registrou seu modo particular de criação, a saber: uma escrita vingativa, centrada em tornar protagonistas indivíduos marginalizados que em suas atitudes desafiam o esperado, movimento levado ao extremo em Contos Negreiros (2005), vencedor do prêmio Jabuti (2006) na categoria Melhor livro de Contos e Crônicas. Nos últimos anos, o escritor tem alcançado destaque também por ser uma das vozes mais atuantes da literatura brasileira contemporânea a advogar um outro cenário para a escrita, promovendo eventos como a Balada Literária e o projeto Quebras. Um agitado cultural, assim se define Freire, fazendo referência ao seu interesse em movimentar a cena cultural e estimular tanto a entrada de novos autores como a circulação da palavra literária por inúmeros meios. Partindo desse panorama, o estudo problematiza até que ponto as práticas de Freire se colocam de forma tão ruidosa como os livros que o projetaram, ou se, pelo contrário, Freire, apesar de alardear uma renovação da cena, caminha muito próximo a um modo de fazer já existente. Assim, a tese perseguiu dois eixos centrais: perceber como o escritor se coloca diante de um ambiente aberto a novas possibilidades de produção narrativa, em especial, por conta do diálogo com as novas tecnologias da comunicação e da informação e, em paralelo, discutir a relação entre literatura e engajamento, atenta ao transitar e ao agir do escritor tanto nos circuitos tradicionais como nos alternativos. Como um escritor que se esquiva de catalogações rígidas, Marcelino Freire desliza entre a desobediência e o comedimento, entre o ativismo e a reserva, entre a exibição e a invenção, como um criador interessado em ser plural no espaço da página e também fora dela, borrando as fronteiras entre o real e o ficcional, através do gesto de publicização de sua própria pessoa. / [en] The thesis proposes to reflect on the multiple faces of the writer Marcelino Freire, considering both his writings, especially those that were not published by major publishers, and the projects he developed with the objective of rethinking the scenario of production and circulation of Literature, Recognizing in Freire a performance similar to that of an author-actor, one can say, for identifying in his actions not only the desire to create works and movements around the word, but also an insistence on reinventing himself, as a person immersed in a scenic game. From the launching of his short story books that Freire was able to project himself into the literary environment, arousing the interest of both readers and critics. With Angu de Sangue (2000) the writer defined his particular way of creation, namely: a vindictive writing, centered on making protagonists marginalized individuals who in their attitudes defy the expected, this characteristic was pushed to the limit in Contos Negreiros (2005), winner of the Jabuti Award (2006) in the category Best Book of Tales and Chronicles. In recent years, the writer has also achieved prominence for being one of the most active voices of contemporary Brazilian literature to advocate for another scenario for writing, promoting events like the Balada Literária and the Quebras project. A cultural agitated, thus defines Freire himself, referring to his interest in moving the cultural scene, stimulating both the entry of new authors and the circulation of the literature by many means. From this perspective, this study questions the extent to which Freire s practices are as noisy as the books that designed him, or if, on the contrary, Freire, despite boasting a renewal of the scene, walks very close to an already existing modus oprerandi. Thus, the thesis pursued two central axes: to perceive how the writer places himself before an environment open to new possibilities of narrative production, especially, due to the dialogue with the new technologies of communication and information and, in parallel, to discuss the relationship between Literature and engagement, attentive to the transit and the acting of the writer in both traditional and alternative circuits. As a writer who shies away from rigid cataloging, Marcelino Freire slips between disobedience and restraint, between activism and reserve, between exhibition and invention. He wants to be plural in the world of the pages and also outside it, blurring the boundaries between the real and the fictional, through a gesture of publicity of his own person.