Audiovisuality of Literature. Between the “Middle-Class Prose” and Elitism

Abstract

The category of audiovisuality of literature raises the question of the circulation of literature written under the influence of the media. It seems that literature resulting from hybridisation which introduces audiovisual solutions such as thematising audiovisuality, using audiovisual schemes and techniques in the construction of literary works, incorporating audiovisual code into the text, shaping the language of literary expression to resemble audiovisual language and creating genres and styles of literary expression related to audiovisuality is represented by popular now “prose of the centre”. At the same time, the constantly developing e-literature, which searches for its own language and which is closer to new-media phenomena than to audiovisuality, seems to be an expression of new elitism, close to the assumptions of modernist art. Intra-compositional audiovisuality, which does not violate the classical ontology of the text, favors the development of “the literature of the centre” whereas audiovisuality that introduces changes in the very structure of the text has more to do with to formal experiments, being part of the avant-garde nature of activities and bringing the reader closer to highly artistic phenomena, significantly narrowing the field of recipients.