Digitally Mediating Literary Texts

adapted from gHiRo3, DeviantArt
(creative commons 3.0 license)

One of the great changes to literary study in the digital age is the ability to do things with texts previously not possible, or possible only to few. While literature's new digital life has entailed some disorder, it has has generally proven an enormous benefit, expanding the reach and role of literature as never before: providing access to and exposure of literary texts otherwise unknown or unavailable; adding a variety of aids for interpreting and exploring texts; opening new methods and theories of analysis; putting literature to new creative and educational uses; and generally giving new life to old texts. By multiplying the media through which texts are experienced, it has benefited both the creators and consumers of literary works.

What can be learned by playing with literary texts through various new media? Plenty. Using Moby Dick as a test case, I'd like my students to explore various ways of mediating literature digitally. As they do so, I want them to pay attention to how these electronic ways of dealing with literary texts open up the texts to new audiences, new meanings, and new uses. I hope that they will see that meaningful mediations do not require highly sophisticated tools in every case.

Literary Study in the Digital Age: 17 Comparisons and a Provocation

How is the study of literature evolving today? This is a crucial question for the digital humanities. It is a topic that prior students and I explored in our eBook, Writing About Literature in the Digital Age. I invite you to browse its table of contents or download it for free.

I'm taking our thinking from there a bit further. Below, I list 17 specific comparisons between traditional literary study from the print period and the ways by which it is transforming in our digital age.

We who study literature need to come to terms with the new conditions for communication that are operative in our digital culture. I offer these starting points. For good measure (and to invite response), I conclude this post with a spirited challenge to the future of literary study as we know it.