Evolution and Reinvention of Literary Creation in the Digital Age

Abstract

Several centuries after the invention of the printing press, writing has undergone a new revolution over the past two decades: that of the Internet. Some might immediately object to this comparison, arguing that a book is only valuable as a manufactured object, as the saying goes. Others claim that the Web and the printing press share their immense potential for dissemination, allowing both to reach a considerably larger readership through greatly increased accessibility of the book. However, the digital revolution is not limited to simple computerization. It also transforms our relationship with writing, making the use of digital technology almost unavoidable today. For at least a decade, avant-garde authors and artists have created animated novels, visual poems, interactive works, collective creations, multimedia texts, and hypertext. Thus, new forms of text have emerged thanks to new technologies. Texts are no longer fixed in time and space. It is now possible to constantly enrich a text with hyperlinks, Flash animations, interactive areas, images, videos, and sounds. Web writing, which is currently gaining significant momentum, is still little studied from a truly literary perspective. This article aims to question the mutations linked to these new practices, from the point of view of the relationship to literature and the processes of literary creation by observing not only the place and stakes of the digital in creative practices, but also the new relationships that are established between writers and readers and finally the relationships of writers themselves to the digital. Moreover, the use of computers in literary studies is still far from being recognized, with the consequence that it is difficult not to regret, in the midst of the overabundance of traditional critical publications, the rarity, if not the scarcity, of theoretical and practical reflections. In order to study the ins and outs of these new forms of literary creation compared to past centuries, we will try to answer some questions raised by the relationship between literature and digital technology. The first question must focus on the dematerialization of the text and its now virtual character. Can there be written literature without a fixed material support, without a book, without pages, and without paper? How can we situate in the long history of the book, reading, and the relationship with writing, the announced revolution, in fact already begun, which moves from the book (or written object) as we know it, with its notebooks, sheets, pages, to the electronic text and reading on screen? What is the text in digital literature? What about the digital reader? What is their place? How does it differ from the reader of literary works now considered "traditional" or "classic"? To answer these questions, we have chosen Alain Salvatore's "Total Screen." A work of digital literature, that is to say, whose specificity lies in the potential of computing and the network. A network literature that has no place on paper.