Grammalepsy: Essays on Digital Language Art

Collecting and recontextualizing writings from the last 20 years of John Cayley’s research-based practice of electronic literature, Grammalepsy introduces a theory of aesthetic linguistic practice developed specifically for the making and critical appreciation of language art in digital media. As he examines the cultural shift away from traditional print literature, Cayley coins the term ＂grammalepsy+? to refer to the process by which this grammatization occurs.

Framing his previous writings within the overall context of this theory, Cayley eschews the tendency of literary critics and writers to reduce aesthetic linguistic making-even when it has multimedia affordances-to ＂writing.+? Instead, Cayley argues that electronic literature and digital language allow aesthetic language makers to embrace a compositional practice inextricably involved with digital media, which cannot be reduced to print-dependent textuality. Interstitial notes between the essays will point to the nodes (URIs) of an archival network devoted to Cayley’s associated practice, housed and maintained by Brown University, USA.

John Cayley is Professor of Literary Arts at Brown University, USA. He has practiced as a poet, translator, publisher, and bookdealer, practices which have often intersected with his training in Chinese culture and language. In addition to his internationally recognized writing on networked and programmable media, he has written two printed books of poetic work, Ink Bamboo (1996) and Image Generation (2015).