Experimental Narratives: From The Novel to Digital Storytelling

This special issue of Comparative Critical Studies gathers a selection of contributions first presented at the international conference Experimental Narratives: From the Novel to Digital Storytelling, sponsored by the MHRA and co-organized by Jordana Blejmar, Godela Weiss-Sussex, Sam Merrill and myself. Held on 26 and 27 February 2015 at the Institute of Modern Languages Research, School of Advanced Study, University of London, the conference revolved around the topic of ‘narrative experimentalism’ across languages, including avant-garde and postmodern experiments with the novel form, graphic novels, electronic hypertext fiction, game literature, collaborative narratives, fan fiction and transmedia storytelling. By exploring the wide variety of narrative experiments from a comparative perspective across languages, the event aimed to investigate how the concept of ‘narrative experimentalism’ has evolved from printed fiction to digital storytelling in different cultural contexts. In particular, the comparative approach was used to understand how the notions of narrative, textuality, authors and readers have metamorphosed in the shift from print to digital; at the same time, it served to examine how contemporary digital writers/artists have dialogued with their national literary traditions and cultural backgrounds. The five articles included in this special issue offer a fresh perspective on various aspects of experimental literature and digital narratives, including Ronald Sukenick and Mark Amerika's performative theory of writing, the literary heritage of digital works in the Hispanic world, the interplay between experimental writing and popular culture in digital textuality, Twitter fiction, and narratives of self-representation through the users' selfies.