Incarnations of Material Textuality From Modernism to Liberature

Liberature â " coined from the Latin liber â " is simultaneously a movement in contemporary Polish literature, and a term referring to literary works that integrate text and material features of the book into an organic whole in accordance with the authorâ (TM)s design. The present volume collects essays inspired by this theoretical concept, first proposed by Polish poet Zenon Fajfer in 1999, but soon picked up and elaborated on by international scholars. As noted by the contributing authors, preceding Jessica Pressmanâ (TM)s idea of â oebookishnessâ and coinciding with N. Katherine Haylesâ (TM) fundamental writings, liberature appeared at the end of the 20th century, â oeas if to resume and systematize the intuitions and provocative statementsâ of writers concerned with the future of the book. It fits into a wider turn towards the recognition of the embodied nature of information in anthropology, literary, textual, media and AI studies. Yet its distinctness consists in the fact that it was suggested by a creative writer, and that it proposes to see the authorially-shaped materiality of writing in terms of a literary genre. The essays collected here present the modernist roots and inspirations of liberature, address the semantics of typography and the question of materiality of literary writing, and explore how the â oeabstract body of the printed book is transformed into an experience of embodiment.â The volume is completed with a reprint of Fajferâ (TM)s seminal essays with a view to making them more available to English-speaking readers.