The Cambridge Companion to Literature in a Digital Age

This book explores the way that digital forms and methods are reconfiguring the foundational concepts of literary studies.

Literature has experienced two great medium shifts: from orality to writing, and from writing to printing. Today we are experiencing a third, from printed to digital forms. This book explores the way that this latest shift is reconfiguring the foundational concepts of literary studies: the canon, periodization, authorship, narrative, and beyond.Literature has experienced two great medium shifts, each with profound implications for its forms, genres, and cultures: that from orality to writing, and that from writing to printing. Today we are experiencing a third shift, from printed to digital forms. As with the previous shifts, this transformation is reconfiguring literature and literary culture. The Cambridge Companion to Literature in the Digital Age is organized around the question of what is at stake for literary studies in this latest transition. Rather than dividing its chapters by methodology or approach, this volume proceeds by exploring the major categories of literary investigation that are coming under pressure in the digital age: concepts such as the canon, periodization, authorship, and narrative. With chapters written by leading experts in all facets of literary studies, this book shows why all those who read, study, and teach literature today ought to attend to the digital.