An Aesthetics of Ambient Literature: Experience, Narrative, Design

Whittaker, Emma (2020) An Aesthetics of Ambient Literature: Experience, Narrative, Design. In: Ambient Literature. Palgrave, London. ISBN 978-3-030-41456-6 (In Press)

Abstract / Summary

This chapter presents an aesthetics of ambient literature. Its embodied, narratological underpinning draws on John Dewey’s Art as Experience and the pragmatism and radical empiricism of William James. It examines the conditions under which an aesthetic experience may occur and the ways these conditions may be created, with the language of priming, by curating situations and supplementing perception. It goes onto look at the relationships between the mechanisms of participant interaction, the narrative structure and the function of an experiential story world. ‘An Aesthetics of Ambient Literature’ applies four tenets of aesthetic experience – structure, rhythm and dynamism, participation and balance and unity – to works that fall within the frame of ambient literature, including The Cartographer’s Confession (2017).

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