Linkterature: From Word to Web Or: Literature in the Internet - Internet as Literature - Literature as Internet - Internet in Literature

Abstract

This paper offers a perspective on the Internet and literature interface, with a special focus on the issue of intertextuality, in an attempt to delimit those issues specific to networked literature, as against digital or hypertextual literature. I will focus on literature as a family of medium-conditioned discursive practices, and examine the consequences of digital networks for a redefinition of these practices. These consequences will be approached from four viewpoints: a perspective on the Internet as literature, and of literature as an Internet: together with an examination of literature in the Internet, and of the Internet in literature. Among the topics addressed will be issues of interactivity, the blogosphere, postmodernist fiction, and the cyborganization of social communication.