Nima Gharesi Fard - University of Tehran

Literature is changing fundamentally once again in our times. With everything becoming electronic, literary production and consumption are also becoming digital. For one thing, they have become much more easily accessible, many even free. Yet, this process also means that literature is losing its physical body. This is one aspect in which literature seems to have reverted to its oral beginnings. But even then, it had an immediate source, the bard. With digitization, literature can become a structure without any tangible source. This can make electronic literature seem less authoritative. This means the loss of the aura of literature in the present time, and yet it can also free literature from some of its bonds. After the electronic revolution, works are more freely produced, distributed, and consumed. While this can be felicitous on the part of the consumer, it can mean a substantial economic loss for the creators. Electronic reproduction not only reduces the aura of the literary work, it also destroys the aura of the reader and that of the writer. As the prestige of reading decreases, less people bother to read, and this results in a further economic loss on the side of the author, as well as a lower rate of literacy and knowledge on the part of the general society, which can mean a regression in culture altogether. Nevertheless, the digital format opens up a whole new world for the creator to explore. With the aura, also disappear the limits. Furthermore, the environmental factors of moving from the paper print to digital publication should be considered. The main theme is that the world of the Internet is less limited to borders and government control. Since the aura of the writer is vanishing, those who aspire to this title will notice a decline in prestige, but this also means that they are free from the limits of respectable literature. The whole notion of literature is under reconstruction with the digital revolution. This can bring an onset of new forms and concepts that were previously taboo, or simply impossible to express in the medium of paper. Literature in the age of electronic reproduction loses its aura and brings about many unforeseen obstructions on the way of the aspiring writer, and yet becomes freer to roam uncharted lands and create works so new that they could not have been dreamt of in any other age.

Electronic literature, Walter Benjamin, Print Culture, Literary Economics, Digital Revolution