Digital Poetry and the Transcendence of Print Poetrys Boundaries:Interactivity and the Reader

Research Paper (postgraduate) from the year 2018 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 16/20, language: English, abstract: In this monograph, I argue that English digital poetry has transcended the boundaries of print poetry through main interactivity. Thus, in chapter 1, I will present definitions of digital poetry and argue against their validity (Stefans, Jhave, Trimarco, Bohn, etc.); then I will present Funkhousers definition with the intention of demonstrating its accuracy. In chapter 2, I will argue that through interactivity, as a fundamental literary device and tool in digital literature as a whole, digital poetry is capable of transcending the boundaries of the print (juxtaposition, syntax, multipoeticality, etc, .). In chapter 3, I argue that the reader is less involved in the print medium than in digital medium wherein s/he is the primary force in the processes of editing, co-writing, choosing, and existing in the text. Thus, through these three chapters, I aim to prove that digital poetry has in fact transcended the boundaries of print poetry. One must note that the digital example in this paper cannot be printed; hence my use of only screenshots to make up for the inability to show them in their original, digital form.