Electronic Publishing Models for Experimental Literature

Abstract

The impact of hypertext and hypermedia on scholarly editing of our literary legacy, which is increasingly published in electronic formats, has fostered a conceptual shift from the archive as a classified hierarchical collection of texts to the archive as a decentred and reconfigurable network of texts. Another important set of questions concerns new methods for editing and organizing multimodal textualities resulting from combinations of materials and media (graphic, audio, video, digital). The convergent multimodality of digital textuality opens up a new editing and archival space for multimedia and intermedia forms of writing. In the current technological context, innovative and experimental literary forms become relevant, as many of the operations that the machine provides can be found in previous literary practices: from collages and automatic writing to narrative permutations and intermedia poetry. This issue of the journal addresses problems of representing, archiving, and publishing experimental literary forms in digital spaces.