Electronic Literature

Electronic literature, often abbreviated as "e-lit", is a form of literature created and experienced in digital or electronic formats. E-lit challenges traditional literary conventions and expands creative possibilities, fostering cultural enrichment and encouraging critical thinking about the intersection of technology and literature.  

Research in this node will include Digital Narrative in the Context of Literary History, considering how digital genres relate to and extend the literary tradition, Epistemology and Typology, developing and defining critical vocabularies, Research Infrastructure, examining how collectively developed research platforms, databases, and archives are shaping the new literary field, and Discourse Networks, studying how the circulation of knowledge via global networks is both enabling new genres and shaping their reception.

Library and archival systems, critical editions, and glossaries have been developed over centuries to support traditional humanities research, but they do not accommodate complex digital works. The ELMCIP Electronic Literature Knowledge Base, the world’s largest research database in the field of electronic literature, hosted by CDN, provides a strong foundation for information about creative and critical works and authors, events, and actors in field. But the field requires a better conceptual apparatus: a well-articulated shared critical vocabulary upon which further research innovation can be built. So, a Living Glossary of Electronic Literary Terms is under development.

Refining this shared vocabulary and research infrastructure within a new Digital Narrative Database will provide a basis for cross-comparative analysis of other forms of digital narrative.