Overview

Post-Postmodernist Fiction and the Rise of Digital Epitexts explores new dynamics created by the intersection of digital media and contemporary fiction, arguing that these synergies are part of the cultural context in which the post-postmodernist novel emerges. Virginia Pignagnoli introduces a rhetorical theory of paratexts meant to reshape traditional views of paratextuality, providing categories, functions, and properties able to accommodate new digital practices, such as those of digital epitexts (authors' social media posts and novels' websites, for example), that widen the space for authorial creation and narrative exchange beyond the print novel. Focusing on the effects digital epitexts have on audiences, Pignagnoli presents an analysis of contemporary novels-by Michael Chabon, Jennifer Egan, Catherine Lacey, Meg Wolitzer, and Dave Eggers-that display a post-postmodern sensitivity in dialogue with some of the ways digital epitexts are currently employed. Ultimately, in showing how twenty-first-century novels and digital epitexts are co-constitutive, Pignagnoli offers a vision of a new post-postmodernism interested in sincerity, relationality, and intersubjectivity.

Full Product Details

9780814258712

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Reviews

""Pignagnoli addresses an important facet of contemporary narratology--the changing role of paratextual information for the communicative model of narrative--providing rich and compelling examples of the evolving condition of author/reader communication duri ""The study of the paratext has become a typical feature of nearly any literary analysis, but as so many other aspects and dimensions of literary and rhetorical analysis, the digital turn has made it in need of a solid update. Pignagnoli's study of the dig ""Post-Postmodernist Fiction and the Rise of Digital Epitexts feels like a new tool to help with a tricky problem. ... Pignagnoli's work will be helpful in any classroom revolving around post-postmodern narratives, but it will also be helpful to any r ""A phenomenal contribution to the field of paratextuality."" --Souhardya Chatterjee and Ujjwal Jana, Digital Scholarship in the Humanities ""Pignagnoli's monograph fulfills a vital need of linking trends in the digital literary sphere with formal and thematic obsessions of today's literary fictions ... A valuable starting point for a future study."" - Torsa Ghosal, DIEGESIS

Author Information

Virginia Pignagnoli is Assistant Professor in the department of English and German Studies at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Her research has appeared in Narrative Works, Enthymema, and JAm It! Journal of American Studies in Italy.

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