Critics and writers have likewise made no shortage of attempts to define what literature is. Whether we consider J.-P. Sartre’s essay What Is Literature?, in which the author’s first question, “What is writing?”, brings us back to a text-centred and text-scripted conception of literature, or shorter quotations by various authors that often foreground the function of literature far more than the tools of its production and the media through which it is disseminated, saying where literature begins and ends seems a near-impossible challenge.

Nevertheless—and Le Littré’s fairly open definition is a particularly eloquent example in this respect—we may say, following J.-P. Balpe, that “whatever the case, every definition is based on a tautology: literature is what is considered literary [...]”, that “literature is what is accepted as such”, and that “every form is therefore acceptable in literature, and therefore digital literature is possible”.

This observation by J.-P. Balpe highlights a distinctive feature of literature, one that is also its strength: its ability to extend its sphere of influence into peripheral fields such as drawing, song and computing.

“whatever the case, every definition is based on a tautology: literature is what is considered literary [...]” — J.-P. Balpe

Digital literature, in turn, displays, like its parent literature, an all-encompassing aspect.

The sine qua non of digital literature is the inclusion of at least one branch of literature other than itself; moreover, that inclusion must be inseparable from the digital medium that brings it into being: clicking a button that makes a voice or music heard, an action with the mouse or keyboard that causes an image to appear... A work of digital literature, as we can see, not only has the potential to encompass oral and/or graphic literature, but also to offer great expressive possibilities to marginal forms of literature such as self-generative literature, kinetic literature or musical literature.

Clearly, digital literature is rich in possibilities and contributes to literature’s expansion into territories that have been little explored, if at all. But if it is possible to define a few major axes for literature, perhaps we can also consider defining some for digital literature.

Digital Literature versus Digital Literatures

Once digital literature is accepted as a branch of literature, its definition nevertheless remains complex because of its dual nature, literary and digital. Delimiting the field of digital literature will then legitimise the tracing of its lineage. However, even if there is indeed a consensus today about what digital literature is, digital literature in turn presents a branching structure capable of bringing a number of principal branches to light.

A Complex Definition

Defining and confining literature within precise boundaries is not merely difficult but impossible. This impossibility is inherent in the shifting and mobile nature of literature itself. Digital literature is likewise surrounded by a certain vagueness that stems partly—and only partly—from literature itself, and partly from the term “digital” that qualifies it.

First of all, the terminology is not fixed. Although the adjective “digital” predominates when referring to the branch of literature in question, this literature is also sometimes described as “electronic” or “computer-based”, terms that A. Bureaud considers “entirely equivalent”.

It is nevertheless possible to show that these adjectives also carry nuances: whereas “electronic” emphasises the electrical conduction of information, “computer-based” emphasises information processing and therefore its programmed nature; “digital”, meanwhile, emphasises the fact that this literature first exists, at the level of a computer’s memory, in the form of numbers.

It is nevertheless the qualifier “digital” that will be used, firstly because it is the term most commonly employed to refer to this literature, and secondly because it points to the literature’s primary numerical form without emphasising either its mode of transmission (electrical signals) or the computer program that generates it.

The qualifier “digital” can then refer to different ideas. While it may describe all “literary productions circulating in the form of physical books, provided that they maintain links with digital culture”, the adjective “digital” also refers to all digitised literature, whether or not it first existed in printed form.

In this case, critics generally agree on distinguishing between digitised literature: “literary works that could be read on a digital medium [...], that could possibly be printed, but would not lose their raison d’être if they were printed”, and digital literature: “works conceived and designed by and for the digital medium” which, because of their intrinsically multimodal character, inseparable from the digital medium for which—and sometimes by which—they were developed and created, would on the contrary lose all meaning if they were printed.

This distinction proposed by J. Clément is generally accepted. In English-language scholarship, N. K. Hayles distinguishes between digital-born literature and digitized literature.

“works conceived and designed by and for the digital medium” — J. Clément

Finally, the expression “digital literature” can be understood as a “cultural phenomenon”, and in this respect the meaning of “digital” does not correspond to the same reality as “electronic”. Whereas the adjective “electronic” refers to an electronic writing tool, the adjective “digital” is connected with the idea of “digital culture”, a culture that “produces new models for the production, dissemination and reception of knowledge”.

Indeed, on a blog or a page of Twitter literature, the traditional relationship between author and reader is called into question, and the consecration of the writer as an author through publication by a publishing house is weakened. In photo novels on Instagram or stories on Facebook, moving from the status of reader to that of author is within everyone’s reach in just a few clicks, without prior approval by an editorial committee.

What is also called into question by this “cultural phenomenon” is the focal point of the literary nature of the literary work, which precisely loses its text-centred character because of the multimodality of digital literature. Moreover, the text itself is no longer always presented as something fixed by print, but is often dynamic and dependent on an action by the reader-viewer, who thereby becomes a creator. From this point of view, digital literature is no longer merely a branch of literature but a profound transformation of literature that opens onto a new literary era.