This dissertation thesis deals with electronic self-publishing of literary fiction, i.e. its publishing by the authors themselves, without involving publishers. Support from big technology companies led to unprecedented growth of this type of publishing in the 2010s and electronic self-publishing has in some countries become one of the standard ways of publishing. In spite of its expansion, electronic self-publishing is affected by many problems. The most prominent one is comparatively lower quality of many independently published e- books, mainly caused by limited knowledge of the publishing process from the side of the authors, many of which are not proper acquainted with publishing practices. The activities that should an independent author perform during the publishing process are the same as those performed by a publisher. Due to complicated character of some of these activities, many independent authors outsource them to other parties, or do not perform them at all. In the Czech Republic, electronic self-publishing is relatively undeveloped. It is true that there has probably been hundreds or thousands e-books published independently and that the number of downloads of these books is in hundreds of thousands copies. On the other hand, majority of this literature is offered for free or for...

Since its development, critics of electronic literature have touted all that is “new” about the field, commenting on how these works make revolutionary use of non-linear structure, hyperlinks, and user interaction. Scholars of digital narrative have most often focused their critiques within the paradigms of either the text-centric structuralist model of narrativity or post-structuralist models that implicate the text as fundamentally fluid and dependent upon its reader for meaning. But neither of these approaches can account completely for the unique modes in which digital narratives prompt readerly progression, yet still exist as independent creative artifacts marked by purposive design. I argue that, in both practice and theory, we must approach digital-born narratives as belonging to a third, hybrid paradigm. In contrast to standard critical approaches, I interrogate the presumed “newness” of digital narratives to reveal many aspects of these works that hearken to print predecessors and thus confirm classical narratological theories of structure and authorship. Simultaneously, though, I demonstrate that narrative theory must be revised and expanded to account for some of the innovative techniques inherent to digital-born narrative. Across media formats, theories of narrative beginnings, endings, and authorship contribute to understanding of readerly progress and comprehension. My analysis of Leishman’s electronically animated work Deviant: The Possession of Christian Shaw shows how digital narratives extend theories of narrative beginnings, confirming theoretical suitability of existing rules of notice, expectations for mouseover actions, and the role of institutional and authorial antetexts. My close study of Jackson’s hypertext my body: a Wunderkammer likewise informs scholarship on narrative endings, as my body does not provide a neatly linear plot, and thus does not cleanly correspond to theories of endings that revolve around conceptions of instabilities or tensions. Yet I argue that there is still compelling reason to read for narrative closure, and thus narrative coherence, within this and other digital works. Finally, my inquiry into Pullinger and Joseph’s collaboratively written Flight Paths: A Networked Novel firmly justifies the theory of implied authorship in both print and digital environments and confirms the suitability of this construct to a range of texts.

New media have become an essential element of our everyday lives. They are also a platform for digital art. Through them, readers can encounter so-called 'electronic literature' as a developing cultural form, allowing to some extent, the the mutual influencing of media and genres. Firstly, all electronic literature needs to be consistently differentiated from electronic books, similarly the conversion of classical, analogue works into a digital form. This thesis deals with the definition of this specific area of literature, its reflection, including its historical anchoring. This work is necessarily based on an interdisciplinary approach, it draws on concepts from literary theory, however electronic literature cannot be viewed through its paradigms alone, as traditional definition frameworks and concepts cannot be fully applied in the new media environment. There is also emphasis upon media studies' theory, specifically studies of new media. Concurrently, the work deals with a specific form of narrative, the so- called 'interactive narrative', which is not found solely in the works of electronic literature, but it also has a wide scope. The final section presents the results of the author's research focused on readers' response to selected works of electronic literature with an interactive...

[pt] O texto literário pode hoje ser encontrado em diferentes plataformas, tornando-se acessível no computador, em tablets e até em celulares. Os paratextos editoriais, definidos por Gérard Genette como aparatos que giram em torno do texto principal de um livro, têm acompanhado estes deslocamentos. Sem deixar de exercer suas antigas funções, eles assumem outros formatos e proliferam no ambiente virtual, tendo muitas vezes mais acessos do que o texto da própria obra, considerado principal, veiculado frequentemente na plataforma impressa. Nesta dissertação, abordaremos os paratextos não só como um fenômeno de mercado que concede uma importância crescente à figura do autor, mas também à luz das quebras na hierarquização dos discursos provocadas pela tecnologia digital. Com este propósito, discutiremos o trailer do livro Todos nós adorávamos caubóis, de Carol Bensimon; a coluna As 15 coisas que sei sobre meu próximo livro, de Luisa Geisler, veiculada no Blog da Companhia; a hashtag Vida de escritor, no Instagram da editora Rocco; o folhetim Delegado Tobias, de Ricardo Lísias, publicado pela editora E-galáxia; e o blog da revista Peixe-elétrico. / [en] Nowadays, the literary text can be found in different platforms, including computers, tablets and even mobile phones. Editorial paratexts, defined by Gerard Genette as devices which gravitate around the body text of a book, have followed this shift. Not abandoning their former purposes, they have taken on other formats and have spread around the web. These paratexts are often more accessed than the actual text of the literary work, which is considered the principal part, frequently published and made available in print. This dissertation approaches paratexts not only as a market phenomenon, which grants the image of the author a growing importance, but also as a breach of discourse hierarchy, fueled by digital technology. Bearing that in mind, this study discusses the book trailer for Carol Bensimon s Todos nós adorávamos caubóis (We all loved cowboys); Luisa Geisler s column called As 15 coisas que sei sobre meu próximo livro (The 15 things I know about my next book), published online on Blog da Companhia; the hashtag Vida de escritor (Writer s life) on the Instagram account of the publishing house Rocco; the serial by Ricardo Lisias, Delegado Tobias (Tobias, chief of police), published by the e-book publishing house E-galaxia; and the Peixe-elétrico review s blog.

Three-dimensional literature is a virtually non-existent or in any case very rare and emergent digital art form, defined by the author as a unit of text, which is not confined to the two-dimensional layout of print literature, but instead mediated across all three axes of a virtual space. In collaboration with two artists the author explores through a bodystorming workshop how writers and readers could create and experience three-dimensional literature in mixed reality, by using mobile devices that are equipped with motion sensors, which enable users to perform embodied interactions as an integral part of the literary experience.For documenting the workshop, the author used body-mounted action cameras in order to record the point-of-view of the participants. This choice turned out to generate promising knowledge on using point-of-view footage as an integral part of the methodological approach. The author has found that by engaging creatively with such footage, the designer gains a profound understanding and vivid memory of complex design activities.As the outcome the various design activities, the author developed a concept for an app called TEXTILE. It enables users to build three-dimensional texts by positioning words in a virtual bubble of space around the user and to share them, either on an online platform or at site-specific places. A key finding of this thesis is that the creation of three-dimensional literature on a platform such as TEXTILE is not just an act of writing – it is an act of sculpture and an act of social performance.

This dissertation investigates meaning-making in children's joint-reading transactions with literary apps. The analysis of meaning-making focuses on embodiment as a central aspect of literary app's texts and their reading and on children's negotiation of agency in the act of joint-reading. Meaning-making is understood through a multimodal social semiotics perspective, which considers that meaning is realised in the dynamic transaction between reader, text and social context. Therefore, the dissertation integrates the analysis of the apps and of the children's responses to capture the dynamics of meaning-making in such transactions. Case studies were conducted with six families, who read the apps The Monster at the End of This Book (Stone & Smollin, 2011) and Little Red Riding Hood (Nosy Crow, 2013) in an English public library. The central method of data collection involved video-recorded observations of parent-child joint-reading events, complemented by graphic elicitation, informal interviews and a questionnaire. The video data was analysed through multimodal methods. The findings indicate that the participant readers used their bodies not only as a material point of contact and activation of the interactive features but also as a resource for meaning-making in their transactions with the apps. The reader's body was essential in their engagement with the material and interactive affordances of the apps, in reader's expressions of their responses, and in the sharing of the reading experience with the parents. The body of the reader, through spontaneous and interactive gestures, is a mode of communication in the multimodal ecologies of both the text and the reader's responses. Furthermore, the child readers constantly negotiated their agency within the constraints posed by the text, which include the narrative itself and its interactive features, and those posed by the joint-reading situation. The bodies of the readers played an essential role in this dual negotiation of agency. Children's agency was scripted, that is, the readers exerted their agency within the limitations of a script. The script, however, allowed readers to improvise, and their performances also involved resistance to the script through playful subversion. In the joint-reading event, children's agency was foregrounded, positioning the children as protagonist readers, who performed most of the interactions and lived the aesthetic experience of the text fully, to the expense of their parents, who mostly participated as supporting readers, transferring their agency to the children through scaffolding.

This thesis examines key examples of materially experimental writing (B.S. Johnson’s The Unfortunates, Marc Saporta’s Composition No. 1, and Julio Cortázar’s Hopscotch), hypertext fiction (Geoff Ryman’s 253, in both the online and print versions), and video games (Catherine, L.A. Noire, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, and Phantasmagoria), and asks what new critical understanding of these ‘interactive’ texts, and their broader significance, can be developed by considering the examples as part of a textual continuum. Chapter one focuses on materially experimental writing as part of the textual continuum that is discussed throughout this thesis. It examines the form, function, and reception of key texts, and unpicks emerging issues surrounding truth and realism, the idea of the ostensibly ‘infinite’ text in relation to multicursality and potentiality, and the significance of the presence of authorial instructions that explain to readers how to interact with the texts. The discussions of chapter two centre on hypertext fiction, and examine the significance of new technologies to the acts of reading and writing. This chapter addresses hypertext fiction as part of the continuum on which materially experimental writing and video games are placed, and explores reciprocal concerns of reader agency, multicursality, and the idea of the ‘naturalness’ of hypertext as a method of reading and writing. Chapter three examines video games as part of the continuum, exploring the relationship between print textuality and digital textuality. This chapter draws together the discussions of reciprocity that are ongoing throughout the thesis, examines the significance of open world gaming environments to player agency, and unpicks the idea of empowerment in players and readers. This chapter concludes with a discussion of possible cultural reasons behind what I argue is the reader’s/player’s desire for a high level of perceived agency. The significance of this thesis, then, lies in how it establishes the existence of several reciprocal concerns in these texts including multicursality/potentiality, realism and the accurate representation of truth and, in particular, player and reader agency, which allow the texts to be placed on a textual continuum. This enables cross-media discussions of the reciprocal concerns raised in the texts, which ultimately reveals the ways in which our experiences with these interactive texts are deeply connected to our anxieties about agency in a cultural context in which individualism is encouraged, but our actual individual agency is highly limited.

Everyware, ubiquitous computing, connexion ambiante, condition hyperconnectée, hypersphère,… Dans la dernière décennie, les chercheurs de tous domaines confondus ont convoqué une série de termes très différents pour évoquer les conséquences de l’introduction des dispositifs mobiles ont engendrés sur notre manière de vivre et habiter l’espace. En poursuivant les réflexions entamées par les chercheurs appartenant au « tournant spatial », cette thèse se propose d’interroger l’imaginaire spatial dans la littérature numérique contemporaine tel que modifié par les nouvelles technologies ainsi que les modalités dont la littérature s’est emparé de ces technologies pour les détourner ou les intégrer en tant qu’éléments poétiques à part entière. Quel est le nouveau rapport à l’espace que dessinent le téléphone intelligent, les réseaux sociaux et la géolocalisation ? Comment la littérature se modifie-t-elle en devenant géolocalisée ? Qu’il soit question de l’espace urbain ou d’autres types d’espaces, cette thèse interroge l’intégration d’outils, de pratiques et de techniques numériques à l’écriture littéraire de l’espace. Au moment où la présence d’une technologie de géolocalisation participe également au processus de redéfinition de notre position dans le monde, en redéfinissant notre rapport à la fois personnel et littéraire à l’espace, comment notre position spatiale devient-elle une donnée partageable, conversationnelle et sémiotique – signifiant et matière poétique à part entière, tout autant que le langage ? / Everyware, ubiquitous computing, ambient connection, hyperconnected condition, hypersphere... In the last decade, researchers from all fields have used a series of very different terms to evoke the consequences of the introduction of mobile devices on our way of living and inhabiting space. By continuing the reflections started by the researchers belonging to the "spatial turn", this thesis proposes to question the spatial imaginary in contemporary digital literature as modified by the new technologies as well as the modalities in which literature has seized these technologies to divert them or integrate them as poetic elements in their own right. What is the new relationship to space that the smart phone, social networks and geolocation draw? How does literature change by becoming geolocated? Whether we are talking about urban space or other types of space, this thesis questions the integration of digital tools, practices and techniques into the literary writing of space. At a time when the presence of geolocation technology also participates in the process of redefining our position in the world, redefining our personal and literary relationship to space, how does our spatial position become a shareable, conversational and semiotic datum - a signifier and poetic material in its own right, as much as language?