Reading Digital Fiction

Reading Digital Fiction showcases medium- and platform-specific methods of reader response research by analysing and theorising five generations of digital fiction and their reading including hypertext fiction, hypermedia fiction, 3D-narrative video games, app fiction, and virtual reality.

Alice Bell is Professor of English language and literature at Sheffield Hallam University, UK. She researches digital fiction, narratology, stylistics, and empirical literary methods. Her publications include The Possible Worlds of Hypertext Fiction ( 2010), Digital Fiction and the Unnatural (co-authored with Astrid Ensslin, 2021), Possible Worlds Theory and Contemporary Narratology (co-edited with Marie-Laure Ryan, 2019), and Style and Reader Response (co-edited with Browse et al., John Benjamins Benjamins, 2021). Astrid Ensslin is Professor of Digital Cultures and Communication at the University of Regensburg, Germany, where she directs the Digital Area Studies Lab (DAS|LAB). Her research sits at the intersections between digital culture, critical media studies, narratology, sociolinguistics, digital humanities, and empirical audience research. Recent publications include The Routledge Companion to Literary Media (co-edited with Julia Round and Bronwen Thomas, 2023), Pre-web Digital Publishing and the Lore of Electronic Literature (2022), and Digital Fiction and the Unnatural (co-authored with Alice Bell, 2021).

Acknowledgements Chapter 1. Introduction: Digital Fiction, Empirical Research, and Medial Reading Chapter 2. Second-Person Narration in Ludic Hypermedia Fiction Chapter 3. Hyperlinks in Hypertext Fiction Chapter 4. Immersion in Literary Games Chapter 5. App-Fiction and the Ethics of Ontological Ambiguity Chapter 6. Orientation and Empathy in VR Fiction Chapter 7. Conclusion: Medially Reading Digital Fiction References Index