Haptic Interfaces in Electronic Literature

The Digital Midas Touch

Series: 

Author:
Diogo Marques
What happens when reading depends on swiping, tapping, or pressing glass? Haptic Interfaces in Electronic Literature: The Digital Midas Touch explores how digital literature turns ordinary gestures into part of the literary experience itself. Examining works by Serge Bouchardon and other authors, the book shows how touch unsettles transparency while exposing the limits of control. Blending accessible theory with engaging examples, it offers the first comprehensive account of haptics in digital poetics. Essential for researchers, students, and anyone curious about the future of reading, it reveals why touch is central to our literary and cultural experience today.
Copyright Year:
2026
E-Book (PDF)
Availability:
Published
ISBN:
978-90-04-75658-8
Publication:
01 Jun 2026
Hardback
Availability:
Published
ISBN:
978-90-04-75641-0
Publication:
02 Jul 2026
Cover Haptic Interfaces in Electronic Literature

Prices from (excl. shipping):

€133.99€127.00 excl. VAT
Add to Cart
Diogo Marques is a researcher at the Centre for Digital Culture and Innovation (CODA), University of Porto, and a member of the Institute for Comparative Literature Margarida Losa (ILCML). His work focuses on electronic literature, experimental digital poetics, and the materialities of reading and writing in digital media.
Foreword: What Does It Mean to Touch a Screen
 Manuel Portela
Acknowledgements: Before the Spiral
List of Figures

1 A Bird’s Eye View
 1 Leaps and Take-Offs
 2 A Digital Midas Touch
 3 Situating the Haptic: Historical and Theoretical Context
  3.1 Haptic Visuality vs. Haptic Touch
3.1.1 Haptic Visuality
3.1.2 Haptic Touch
  3.2 Singularity and Multiplicity
  3.3 Tangibility and Virtuality
  3.4 Signification and Affect
 4 Figuring the Haptic: Form, Method and Chapter Overview

2 Reading Surfaces: Transparency and Opacity in the Glass Age
 1 A Dream of Transparency vs. a Desire for Opacity
 2 Screen and Skin
  2.1 To Surf the Surface of an Interface
  2.2 Foldings
  2.3 Thresholds
  2.4 Tactile and Textile
 3 Leaving Poetic Fingerprints
 4 Through the Touching Glass
  4.1 Welcome to the Glass Age
  4.2 A Stratification of Surfaces
  4.3 Behind the Surface Gloss

3 Hands That See: Tactile Mediation and the Aesthetics of Intangible Tangibility
 1 The Hand as Trope and Metonymy
 2 Humanualism and Haptocentrism
 3 Handwriting, Typewriter, Keyboard
 4 Putting One’s Fingers on Digits
 5 The Hand-Eye-Device Relationship

4 ‘Grasp All, Lose All’: Raising Awareness through Loss of Grasp in Seemingly Functional Interfaces
 1 Control/Grasp
 2 Proximity/Withdrawal
 3 Infections/Inflections
 4 Tradition/Innovation
 5 Effect/Affect
 6 Motion/Commotion

5 Ex-foliations: Notes toward a Phenomenology of Haptic Reading
 1 Ex-foliation I – Haptic Reading as Completeness of Body and Soul
 2 Ex-foliation II – Haptic Reading as Uttered Gesture
 3 Ex-foliation III – Haptic Reading as an Entropic Spiral
 4 Ex-foliation IV – Haptic Reading as Phantom Prosthesis
 5 Ex-foliation V – Haptic Reading as Totem and Taboo
  5.1 Nigredo, or the Art of (Un)Veiling
  5.2 Albedo, or the Science of Myth
  5.3 Citrinitas, or the Language of the Periphery
  5.4 Rubedo, or Code as Interface

Recursions: Afterimages

References
Index
Scholars, graduate and advanced undergraduate students in digital humanities ‒ particularly electronic literature ‒ media studies, philosophy of technology, and human–computer interaction, as well as academic libraries collecting in these fields.
  • Collapse
  • Expand

Manufacturer information:
Koninklijke Brill B.V. 
Plantijnstraat 2
2321 JC
Leiden / The Netherlands
productsafety@degruyterbrill.com