This analysis of the literary app The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore is theoretically grounded in Wolfgang Iser's theories of aesthetic response and multimodal social semiotics. The first part of the analysis shows how aesthetic meaning comes to the fore in different modes and in the interplay between them. The second part deals with the interactivity of the app and shows how the reader's interaction with the tablet may influence the wandering viewpoint (Iser, 1984) and let it take different paths, transforming the reader into a real-time participant in the story. The article argues that touch interaction may enrich aesthetic experiences by evoking feelings in the reader, and that interactive tasks can prolong aesthetic experiences. In addition, the performing of interactive tasks may underline certain aspects of the story.
This article addresses how rhythm may function in literary apps. The article has two aims: increasing the knowledge of how literary apps work as texts, by exploring their aspects of rhythm, and developing the understanding of the theoretical term of rhythm. The authors propose a rhythmanalysis in which two different types of rhythm – reading rhythm and narrative rhythm – are taken into account. The two types of rhythm may both occur at different structural levels in the text. This approach is applied to the analysis of rhythm in the popular literary app, Florence (Wong et al., 2018, Florence Tablet application software), drawing on concepts from multimodal social semiotics (Van Leeuwen, Introducing Social Semiotics, 2005), although leaning towards a more reception-oriented approach than the traditional text-oriented analysis in social semiotics. Literary apps are defined in this context as multimodal fictional narratives that can lead to an aesthetic experience for the reader (Iser, 1984, Der Akt des Lesens); however, non-narrative apps, such as poetry, may also be defined as literary apps. These apps may be read on a tablet or a smartphone. This article elucidates some of the many facets of rhythm related to the multimodal design of a literary app, which invites different forms of interactivity than the linear reading and page-turning of print-based picture books. The findings of the analysis show how rhythm not only contributes to the multimodal cohesional aspects of literary apps, but is fundamental to the meaning potential of the literary app.
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