What is experimental literature? How has experimentation affected the course of literary history, and how is it shaping literary expression today? Literary experiment has always been diverse and challenging, but never more so than in our age of digital media and social networking, when the very category of the literary is coming under intense pressure. How will literature reconfigure itself in the future?

The Routledge Companion to Experimental Literature maps this expansive and multifaceted field, with essays on:

• the history of literary experiment from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present
• the impact of new media on literature, including multimodal literature, digital fiction and code poetry
• the development of experimental genres from graphic narratives and found poetry through to gaming and interactive fiction
• experimental movements from Futurism and Surrealism to Postmodernism, Avant-Pop and Flarf.

Shedding new light on often critically neglected terrain, the contributors introduce this vibrant area, define its current state, and offer exciting new perspectives on its future.

This volume is the ideal introduction for those approaching the study of experimental literature for the first time or looking to further their knowledge.

The Routledge Companion to Experimental Literature maps this expansive and multifaceted field, with essays on:



the history of literary experiment from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present
the impact of new media on literature, including multimodal literature, digital fiction and code poetry
the development of experimental genres from graphic narratives and found poetry through to gaming and interactive fiction
experimental movements from Futurism and Surrealism to Postmodernism, Avant-Pop and Flarf.


Shedding new light on often critically neglected terrain, the contributors introduce this vibrant area, define its current state, and offer exciting new perspectives on its future.

"The editors of The Routledge Companion to Experimental Literature ?have produced a marvellously wide-ranging, informative, lucid - and often highly original - discussion of experimental writing in the 20th and 21st centuries. From the historical avant-gardes to avant-pop, digital fiction and code poetry, this Companion will be an indispensable guide to new movements and to the intermedia post-generic verbal works that now people our literary landscape." Marjorie Perloff, Stanford University, USA "Experimental, avant-garde, innovative.... the recent history of such terms has been confusing because they seem to blur into synonyms, to share family resemblances rather than strict definitions, and to indicate distinctly different things for different disciplines and genres. With a series of short accessible entries by the go-to authorities in a number of fields, this collection sketches the range of critical work performed by labels that have proven as necessary as they are elusive." Craig Dworkin, The University of Utah, USA