READING LITERATURE IN THE DIGITAL AGE: NEW FORMS OF INTERPRETATION AND LITERARY ENGAGEMENT
Keywords:
literature, digital humanities, reading, digital literacy, literary interpretation, online communitiesAbstract
Digital technology has transformed how readers encounter, discuss, and interpret literature. Electronic books, online archives, digital annotation systems, audiobooks, fan communities, and social reading platforms have expanded access to literary texts while creating new forms of participation. This article examines the relationship between literary reading and digital environments, focusing on accessibility, reader communities, annotation, multimodality, and changes in reading practices. The discussion does not assume that digital reading simply replaces print reading. Instead, digital and print environments provide different affordances that shape how readers navigate texts and interact with other readers. Digital platforms can make literary discussion more collaborative and visible, but they can also encourage fragmented attention and rapid forms of interpretation. The article argues that literary education can benefit from combining close reading with digital literacy, allowing students to move between detailed textual analysis and broader networks of cultural participation.
References
Hayles, N. K. (2012). How we think: Digital media and contemporary technogenesis. University of Chicago Press.
Manovich, L. (2001). The language of new media. MIT Press.
Moretti, F. (2005). Graphs, maps, trees: Abstract models for literary history. Verso.
Siemens, R., & Schreibman, S. (Eds.). (2008). A companion to digital literary studies. Blackwell.
Bolter, J. D. (2001). Writing space: Computers, hypertext, and the remediation of print (2nd ed.). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
