The Digital Literature – THeoretical Approaches to Virtual Textuality

Abstract

In this article we make a theoretical approach to virtual textuality, namely digital literature, as a form of its manifestation, starting from studies signed by Espen Aarseth, Luciana Barroso Gattass, Esko Lius, Mirela Rusu et al. The concept of “digital literature” marks the emergence of a literature located in the virtual environment, that goes beyond traditional textualism by providing a new material and environment for creation. The reader moves to another level, and the pose of a network user gives him the opportunity to be (co)author and character. Virtuality offers a much wider creative space, in which different portals are opened that offer both access to literature and the software to create it. Digital literature products start from digitized versions of printed literature, culminating in literary products created exclusively on the network; it challenges the limits of language, fusing the artistic image with the code, and the Saussurian signifier and signified reconfigure from a binary unit into a “flickering” unit. Digital literature causes a serial reorganization and innovation of the theory of literature, requiring an appropriate tool, performing genres and literary species with novel, hybrid forms, which involve the merging of textuality with technology. Literates, with or without implications in the production of digital literature, react quite adequately and positively to the development of digital literature, an example is the extract of opinions from the ”Vatra” magazine survey. Literature is not ”dying”, but in a crisis of (re)conceptualization, which announces the emergence of new forms, which respond to the evolving technologies, culture, politics, society, etc.

Keywords

• digital literature
• virtual textualism
• literary theory
• digitization
• literature