La lecture augmentée, entre l’écran et la page : à partir de 1984 d’Éric Plamondon et Pourquoi Bologne d’Alain Farah
Taking as a starting point Éric Plamondon’s 1984 trilogy and Alain Farah’s Pourquoi Bologne, both in their published form, this master’s dissertation is dedicated to grasp the changes that occur in the act of reading in an age where the ubiquitous digital tools are challenging the way we produce and receive content. The thesis takes form around the premise that literature, even that which is published and read in a print form, cannot be considered excluded from these considerations, whose ramifications extend far beyond the use of computer and screens. With the strong belief that these changes need to be seen as a continuity rather than a fracture, the act of reading will be considered here as a practice and, by refusing it’s essentialisation, will serve as a stepping-stone to revisit certain canonical theories and understand these modulations that affect the reader’s “digital literacy”, that affects the reading patterns even when a text does not present itself in a digital form. Through various interpretive trails across Plamondon and Farah’s novels, the first chapter draws the outline of a “connective reading” that is highly influenced by the omnipresence of the network. The second chapter, by revisiting Umberto Eco’s theories, maintains that these changes affect the reader’s competence, which is re-examined in light of the informational accessibly inherent at the digital era and the epistemological shifts that accessibility implies. The third and final chapter offers different reading trails through Plamondon and Farah’s novels that alternate between the book page and the computer screen, in which the boundaries between literature and information are challenged. In the relationships that develop between reading practices and the use of digital tools emerges a certain interpretational way that is described here as “augmented reading”, concept that implies that the reader is taking actions toward the text and, through this course, questions, doubts, challenges and takes position. A reader, in short, that is not just actualizing content, but who performs it.
Alain Farah Éric Plamondon Reading theories Digital culture Augmented reading Reading trails Contemporary literature