Literatura a digitální kultura
Literature and digital culture

Do we need digital literary studies?

Summary/Abstract: The theoretical basis for this study is the literary system model put forward by Siegfried J. Schmidt. Based on his fourfold roles of action (production, distribution, reception and processing of phenomena considered to be literary), the author initially explores the main differences between the predigital and digital/postdigital-era literary systems. The substantial differences in the literary systems in both these eras include the fact that the boundaries between system segments became porous during the digital revolution, and a clear process began whereby the individual roles of action converged and the institutional aspect within the literary system was eliminated. Moreover the author focuses on a characterization of the three main processes associated with the transition of literature from the pre-digital to the post-digital era: 1) expansion of the literary system; 2) destabilization of text; 3) vernacularization of literary culture. He concludes with a question over how to methodologically deal with the radically expanded literary system and the flood of text involved. He considers the application of the concept of distant reading and usage of the tools of the digital humanities and digital literary studies (i.e. quantification analyses, statistical methods and close corpus linguistics methods) to be of relevance.

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