Interface Instead of Convention. Embodied Letters and Media Transformations of the Epistolary Novel
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.12775/LC.2024.005Keywords
epistolary novel, digital epistolary novel, chat stories, Nick Bantock, Emily ShortAbstract
The article maps modern forms of the epistolary novel and focuses mainly on print and digital examples that reinvigorate the epistolary genre by exploring the materiality of the interface of the story (the letters themselves). The author discusses modern examples of the epistolary novel in the context of textual materialism and describes them as a letter-bound genre, at the same time looking at them through the lenses of the canonical theoretical work on the epistolary novel by Stefania Skwarczyńska (Teoria listu). The main case studies discussed in the paper are a liberary epistolary novel and its digital remediation (Griffin & Sabine series by Nick Bantock and The Ceremony of Innocents), epistolary artist book sensitive to the heat of readers’ bodies (To You by Yiota Demetriou and Toma Abby), epistolary IF by Emily Short (First Draft of the Revolution), digital biography in letters (HayleyWorld by Lisa Gee) and chat stories published on Suspects, The Flower Letters project by Hannie and Michael Clark as well as apocryphal epistolary reeditions of the literary canon curated by Barbara Heller.
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