Poetics and E-literature

Abstract

The author attempts to outline the research prospects of e-poetics. This discipline, not much over twenty years old, deals with the study of literary texts which are created with the use of digital technologies. Intermediality and interactiveness are the characteristic features of hypertextual works available on the Internet and on digital carriers. The trait which distinguishes such texts from literature is that computers are the essential tool necessary for their creation, existence and reading. What consequences arise from such a change of the medium for literature, its structure, the process of communication with the reader and the interpretative possibilities? How is it possible to describe the relations between the old and the new forms of a literary text? Finally, why is it important to introduce research on e-literature into academic education? The author makes an attempt to provide answers to these, as well as many other questions, following the paths of the development of e-literature and the state of research on it both in Poland and abroad (mainly in the USA).