La littérature au risque du numérique

Among all arts, literature is paradoxically the one that met the computerat an earliest stage, although this meeting has remained confidential for long. Today the marketing of the electronic book has got the dimension of a true cultural revolution which can be compared with the diffusion of printed works in the 16° century, the birth of the novel-serial in the popular press of the 19° century or, more recently, with the invention of the pocketbook. But to qualify the phenomenon, it is not enough to call upon a new change in the modes of distribution and consumption of the literature. The characteristics of the digital text – that it is necessary to distinguish from the digitized text – are at the origin of a blooming of new literary forms and of a radical renewal of the author-text-reader relationships. It is this upheaval of the field of the literary practice as well as of the literary theory that is explored here under the sign of cyberliterature. MOTS-CLÉS : littérature, cyberlittérature, livre, édition électronique, numérisation, texte, hypertexte, lecture, écriture, discours, culture.