Contemporary textual aesthetics

Contemporary Textual Aesthetics examines various contemporary authorial enterprises and editorial initiatives which invite us to carefully consider ways in which texts are being fashioned. Authors and editors give birth to original types of texts and books: innovative, unconventional or experimental novels, collaborative illustrated books, collective artist's books, hybrid or multimodal artefacts, and performative, multimedia book-objects. The essays in this volume explore a variety of texts as well as their frontiers and thresholds, and propose redefinitions of the book beyond the boundaries of the traditional codex format and its inherent material ink-and-paper limits and constraints. They offer a variety of examples of contemporary textual practices, and ground-breaking, thought-provoking book projects from many cultural perspectives and artistic backgrounds: France, Canada, Finland, the Netherlands, Great Britain and the United States of America.

Book Practices & Textual Itineraries is a series of peer-reviewed book-length publications devoted to the study of book history and textual scholarship. It traces evolutions in the production, transmission and reception of books and texts over time and across cultural and disciplinary boundaries. It likewise examines new practices that are developing in response to the acceleration of textual production and exchange provoked by electronic media, and considers their significance for the editing and interpretation of literary works. Published at the Université de Lorraine, with an international editorial advisory board, the series aims to facilitate dialogue on book history and textual scholarship between scholars from France, Europe and the English-speaking world.