ABSTRACT

What is experimental literature? How has experimentation affected the course of literary history, and how is it shaping literary expression today? Literary experiment has always been diverse and challenging, but never more so than in our age of digital media and social networking, when the very category of the literary is coming under intense pressure. How will literature reconfigure itself in the future?

The Routledge Companion to Experimental Literature maps this expansive and multifaceted field, with essays on:

  • the history of literary experiment from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present
  • the impact of new media on literature, including multimodal literature, digital fiction and code poetry
  • the development of experimental genres from graphic narratives and found poetry through to gaming and interactive fiction
  • experimental movements from Futurism and Surrealism to Postmodernism, Avant-Pop and Flarf.

Shedding new light on often critically neglected terrain, the contributors introduce this vibrant area, define its current state, and offer exciting new perspectives on its future.

This volume is the ideal introduction for those approaching the study of experimental literature for the first time or looking to further their knowledge.

chapter 1|18 pages

Introduction

part I|260 pages

The Historical Avant-Gardes

chapter 3|12 pages

The Poetics of Animism

Realism and the fantastic in expressionist literature and film

chapter 5|13 pages

The Literary Absurd

chapter 8|14 pages

Lettrism and Situationism

chapter 9|13 pages

Oulipo and Proceduralism

chapter 10|13 pages

Metafiction

chapter 11|13 pages

Postmodernism and Experiment

chapter 12|14 pages

Sexing the Text

Women's avant-garde writing in the twentieth century

chapter 13|14 pages

Experiments in Black

African-American avant-garde poetics

chapter 14|17 pages

The Limits of Hybridity

Language and innovation in Anglophone postcolonial poetry

chapter 15|13 pages

Avant-Pop

chapter 16|12 pages

Post-Postmodernism

chapter 17|14 pages

Globalization and Transnationalism

chapter 18|15 pages

Altermodernist Fiction

chapter 19|14 pages

Manifestos and Ars Poetica

chapter 20|12 pages

Post-criticism

Conceptual takes

part II|188 pages

Experiment now

chapter 22|12 pages

Concrete poetry and prose

chapter 24|15 pages

Words in visual art

chapter 25|13 pages

Hoax-poetry and inauthenticity

chapter 27|12 pages

Impossible worlds

chapter 28|13 pages

Experimental life writing

chapter 29|14 pages

“Rotting time”

Genre fiction and the avant-garde

chapter 30|13 pages

Graphic narrative

chapter 33|15 pages

Interactive fiction

part III|61 pages

Experiment now

chapter 34|14 pages

Digital fiction

Networked narratives

chapter 36|15 pages

Computer gaming

chapter 37|16 pages

Virtual autobiography

Autographies, interfaces, and avatars