Literatures in the Digital Era: Theory and Praxis - Hardcover

The application of technology to information, communication, and culture has been through the history of humanity a key factor in social progress and well being. Literatures in the Digital Era: Theory and Praxis analyses in its twenty chapters the impacts of digital technology for the contemporary culture. The literary system is being powerfully affected in three aspects. In the first place, computer resources have been used to preserve and edit literary texts, associating to them graphical material, links with related texts or with dictionaries, and, above all, developing search tools of concordance and syntactic/semantic analysis. Secondly, we are watching the birth of a digital literature, with new generic characteristics, new creators, with knowledge of both, technological mechanisms and literary resources, and a reader capable of interpreting and enjoying texts on the screen. Thirdly, literary theory has expressed new postulates with regard to the multiple authorship of digital texts, the disintegration of the textual meaning, the intertextuality and implications of the reader in the creation process and the interpretation of the texts. These three impacts imply, for some authors, the search of a new paradigm for the creation, reading, and interpretation of digital texts, which points to a new humanism.

The editors, Amelia Sanz and Dolores Romero are both lecturers at Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain. Dr. Sanz has developed theoretical reflections on key concepts of twentieth century critical theory, such as intertextuality, systemic approaches, interculturality and hypertextuality. She is coordinator of the research group "Literaturas Espanolas y Europeas del Texto al Hipertexto" (LEETHI) and director of the E-learning Programme at the Faculty of Arts of the Complutense University of Madrid. Dolores Romero has published the following books: Orientaciones en Literatura Comparada (1998), Una relectura del fin de siglo en el marco de la Literatura Comparada (1998), Naciones literarias (2006) and Seis siglos de poesia espanola escrita por mujeres (2006). She is Chair of the Research Committee on "Comparative Literature in the Digital Age" (CLDA) of the International Comparative Literature Association (ICLA) and the Vice-president of the International Commission on UNESCO-EOLSS "Comparative Literature in the Digital Age".