Cybertext Poetics: The Critical Landscape of New Media Literary Theory

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Equally interested in what is and what could be, Cybertext Poetics combines ludology and cybertext theory to solve persistent problems and introduce paradigm changes in the fields of literary theory, narratology, game studies, and digital media. The book first integrates theories of print and digital literature within a more comprehensive theory capable of coming to terms with the ever-widening media varieties of literary expression, and then expands narratology far beyond its current confines resulting in multiple new possibilities for both interactive and non-interactive narratives. By focusing on a cultural mode of expression that is formally, cognitively, affectively, socially, aesthetically, ethically and rhetorically different from narratives and stories, Cybertext Poetics constructs a ludological basis for comparative game studies, shows the importance of game studies to the understanding of digital media, and argues for a plurality of transmedial ecologies.

Reviews

Cybertext Poetics confirms Markku Eskelinen to be a meticulous scholar, sensitive to the nuances of games and literature, yet never afraid to pick any fight that needs to be fought. --Jesper Juul, New York University Game Center, author of Half-Real
Confidently, relentlessly, radically, Markku Eskelinen re-tunes the critical apparatus for this new century, when the glimmering possibilities of dynamic textuality have passed from dream-vision to everyday experience. This is a momentous study, both for its crucial extension of cybertext theory, and its deep, careful affiliation with formalist aesthetics, a project it both revives and vitally revises. Rare is the critic who will match Eskelinen's combination of erudition, honesty, and sublime perverseness, his insistence on making us see clearly the world we are after making. Though one sometimes feels this writer would never choose to be part of a canon that would have him, this book deserves a place very near the center of any serious consideration of literature, narrative, and new media. --Stuart Moulthrop, Professor of English, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, USA, and founding board member of the Electronic Literature Organization
Markku Eskelinen has built a great critical monument devoted to the text as a whole and its theoretical study ranging stunningly across literary theory, ludology, ergodism, new media studies and transmediality. His deep knowledge of the subjects that are object of his sharp attention, his intelligence and intellectual brightness, his provocative style and the will to understand and explain how textuality works make Eskelinen the foremost scholar in the field. With connections to all literary media and transtextual relations between them, Cybertext Poetics is a major work of cultural criticism that reminds us of the power of literature. --Laura Borrs, Associate Professor, Comparative Literature and Literary Theory, University of Barcelona, Spain; and Director of the Hermeneia Research Group
Cybertext Poetics is an extraordinarily ambitious work whose argument successfully challenges the explanatory power of current literary theories for digital practices. The two major contributions of Cybertext Poetics are (1) its revision and expansion of narratological categories, and (2) its close examination of the configurative nature of game-like procedures in cybertexts. Narratological and ludological theories are productively combined in ways that advance our thinking about literature and about games in the new media age. -- Manuel Portela * Digital Humanities Quarterly *

Author Bio

Markku Eskelinen is an independent scholar, experimental author, and according to The Review of Contemporary Fiction "easily the most iconoclastic figure on the Finnish literary scene." He is also one of the founding editors of Game Studies, the international journal of computer game research, and the series of Cybertext Yearbooks.