Encountering unnatural E-literature: tracing interpretation and relationality across multimodal response and digital annotation

Abstract

ABSTRACT The emergence of e-literature – texts created on and for digital devices – has coincided with innovative, transgressive methods of storytelling. Pry, an iOS-based text, exemplifies e-literature’s potential to rethink traditional narrative conventions. Rather than depict the real-world as we experience it (i.e. mimesis), Pry features metaleptic elements (i.e. jarring transgressions across narrative levels) and unnatural temporality (i.e. nonlinear, contradictory jumps across time). This article traces how a graduate class of librarians and preservice teachers responded to Pry’s unnatural narratology through multimodal composition and annotation. Findings suggest that e-literature may demand more expansive repertoires of text interpretation and relationality.