Temporality and literary reading: the case of Pedro Barbosa’s combinatorial poetry in the Electronic Literature Collection 3

Abstract

The combinatorial poetry of Pedro Barbosa, a Portuguese author and international pioneer of digital literature, constitutes a paradigmatic—and, we might add, canonical—example of computer-generated literature. This article examines the issue of literary reading in a digital environment, taking Pedro Barbosa’s poetry as an example and, more specifically, the way in which it is presented on the interface developed for the third volume of the Electronic Literature Collection. The issue of reading computer-generated poetry, using Pedro Barbosa’s work as an example, is discussed from the specific perspective of temporality, highlighting the different reading strategies produced by dynamic texts, on the one hand, and how these differ from non-dynamic texts, on the other. Finally, pedagogical applications of combinatorial poetry are proposed, discussing teaching strategies and didactical applications.