Distances necessary for the celebration of contemporary electronic literature: an immersion in Anna Todd’s “After” saga

Abstract

The current article brings into the forefront an excerpt of a Doctoral Dissertation recently submitted to the field of literary studies. It is about the main findings of an immersion in the self-publishing on line platform Wattpad, a community that encompasses authorial works characterized by electronic elements. For that purpose, we dealt with the writings of Anna Todd, an American wattpader responsible for signing the books that make up the saga After, a great success in cyberspace and even beyond the virtual limits, since her works also appear in printed books as graphic novels and at the movie theaters. Having this premise as a starting point, we aimed at elucidating the context of her works as well as the particularities which characterize her creative process of textual construction. In this context, some relevant theoretical criticism by scholars who contribute to the intersection between Literature and Digital Culture such as Franco Moretti, Anne Jamison, Henry Jenkins, among others, were selected  in order to accomplish the intended goal. In general, we concluded that the detachment related to the selected object of analysis takes place when it is necessary for a meaningful understanding to the practice of electronic literature seen at the digital culture of  present time.