The expression interactive literary narrative applies to a variety of works. In its diversity, theinteractive literary narrative raises questions on narratives, interactive architecture, multimedia aswell as on literature. It is because the interactive literary narrative is wrought by tensions that it hasthis questioning and maybe even revealing capacity. This tension is first and foremost that which lies between narrativity and interactivity and which investigates other connections or tensions :- with regards to the narrative, the tension between adherence and distance can be characterized by a play on fictionalization and reflexivity;- with regards to the interactive architecture, the tension between assistance and control roles canmanifest itself by a play on loss of grasp,- with regards to the multimedia, the tension between a text-based narrative and a multimedianarrative can be reached by work on text as a dynamic and polysemiotic object, and also thetheatralization of interactive objects endowed with behaviour,- with regards to its recognition as a literary work, the tension between horizon of expectations and aesthetic distance manifests itself by the aesthetics of the materiality of the text, the interface and the medium. Thus, the interactive literary narrative corresponds more to an experimental field than to a well defined autonomous genre.
Source: author's abstract