Mihaela Ursa, Indisciplina ficțiunii: Viața de după carte a literaturii, Cluj-Napoca: Casa Cărții de Știință, 2022, 312 p.

Abstract

In an increasingly apocalyptic climate in which the death of literature is loudly proclaimed, Mihaela Ursa refuses a nostalgic and melancholic reflection on the decline of the culture of the book. Instead, she chooses to investigate the ways in which the current media landscape has shaped the reception of fiction and how these mutations can be used in order to “revive” the classics and literature in general for a new generation of digital natives. Therefore, although this book is focused on canonical texts, the author does not intend to discuss their canonicity or their aesthetic value, but the way in which they are reappropriated through their transmedial circulation. The introductory chapter starts with the important assertion that literature is no longer the privileged road towards accessing narratives. However, instead of either mourning or praising the end of the literature-centric era, the author proposes a more useful activity: reflecting on how this change may impact our relationship with fiction. Since cultural and artistic revolutions do not manifest themselves as a destruction of previous practices in their field, the new technologies and media that are developing very rapidly do not signify the end of the book as a material support or the end of literacy as an ability, but instead their mutation and integration in a new network of narrative media. After all, as Mihaela Ursa argues, transmediality has been a trait of artistic productions since the very beginning, the rise of literature being the phenomenon actually responsible for narrowing the narrative space to its strictly written manifestation.