LITERATURE, THE PRESS AND THE INTERNET: AUTHORS, READERS AND THE DESIRE FOR INVISIBLE MEDIATION

In this text I examine recent changes in how literature is being produced and circulated in Brazil. These shifts can be related, among other factors, to the growing use of the internet as a way of divulging literary works and to the expansion of national literary life and narrative space. My examination sets out from Silviano Santiago’s analysis of the ‘deliteraturization’ movement in his historical account of the written press. Taking an opposite tack to this writer and critic, though, I look to explore the diverse forms of ‘serialization’ and ‘literaturization’ found among contemporary media such as the internet and television. As I aim to show, the migration of newspaper serials and literary works to web sites, blogs and social networks poses diverse questions and challenges to the critic, including the emergence of new figures of author and reader, accompanied by different forms of mediating and legitimizing literary works. These changes are also essential to understanding the profile of the new generation of literary supplements circulating in Brazil today.