The Potential for Aesthetic Experience in a Literary App

Abstract

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.

In-Between. Intermedial understanding and analysis of children’s literature

“…Rhedin 1992, Druker 2008, White 2011, Bjørlo 2018) and has received renewed accentuation in recent years due to the many possibilities that come with digitalization (Henkel 2017, Kurwinkel 2018 and three anthologies edited by Tønnessen 2014, Kümmerling-Meibauer &Surmatz 2011, andWeinkauf, Dettmar, Möbius &Tomkowiak 2014). Nordic Journal of ChildLit Aesthetics excels at having an extensive collection of articles thematizing intermedial conditions related to digital literature for children and children's reading of this literature (Schwebs 2014, Turrión 2014, Al-Yaqout & Nikolajeva 2015, Henkel 2015, Søyland & Gulliksen 2019, Guanio-Uluru 2019and Hagen 2019. In light of the pronounced presence of intermedial conditions in the literature for children and young adults, it is, however, remarkable that this approach is rarely applied throughout as a strategy of analysis and, when applied, then only on a limited text corpus.…”

Rhythm in literary apps

“…Literary apps gained popularity as a textual medium around 2010 – the time that tablets became ubiquitous, presenting a relatively new field of research with theoretical and analytical perspectives yet to be explored and developed, particularly in terms of rhythm. Literary apps, as digitally-mediated, multimodal texts that have different textual features from printed picture books, present new literary and aesthetic experiences (Hagen, 2020); hence, there is a growing body of research in literary genres that are supported by mobile digital applications (Frederico, 2017; Zhao and Unsworth, 2017). Literary apps may be seen as a subcategory of digital literature, defined as literature produced by authors who utilize digital technology in the production, distribution, and reception processes (Rustad, 2012: 11).…”