Digital Modernism

Abstract

Abstract This book presents an alternate genealogy for born-digital, avant-garde literature by connecting it to high literary modernism. “Digital modernism” refers to the strategy of adapting the poetics of literary modernism into new media literature, and this pursuit is shared among a diverse group of digital works. Examining digital modernism provides an opportunity to consider the modernist roots of digital literature and to recognize how modernism is centrally about media. Reading between these historical periods and their medial formats also demands the renovation of close reading in order to approach born-digital literature and illuminates how close reading remains vital to digital culture. By showing how media studies has its origins in literary studies, this book suggests that media studies should be considered part of literary studies and literary criticism.