Editing Roald Dahl's Classics: Changes in Literary Authorship and the Influence of the Digital Medium

Literary authorship has traditionally been conceptualised by the values of individuality, originality, ownership, and authority. In the digital era, we are experiencing new attitudes towards and ideas on authorship which show that these four values are being uprooted. Namely, big publishers are editing texts of deceased children’s book authors such as Roald Dahl. At the same time, the digital medium has become the dominant means of interaction and dissemination of text in society. This thesis aims to identify in which ways the digital medium is taking part in our changing conceptualisations of and attitudes towards literary authorship. To do so, this thesis follows a conceptual framework proposed by Kathleen Fitzpatrick. She theorises that the technological properties and our uses of a medium indirectly shape our conceptualisations of and attitudes towards text and concepts such as scholarly authorship. Therefore, the digital medium and print medium indirectly create different ideas...Show moreLiterary authorship has traditionally been conceptualised by the values of individuality, originality, ownership, and authority. In the digital era, we are experiencing new attitudes towards and ideas on authorship which show that these four values are being uprooted. Namely, big publishers are editing texts of deceased children’s book authors such as Roald Dahl. At the same time, the digital medium has become the dominant means of interaction and dissemination of text in society. This thesis aims to identify in which ways the digital medium is taking part in our changing conceptualisations of and attitudes towards literary authorship. To do so, this thesis follows a conceptual framework proposed by Kathleen Fitzpatrick. She theorises that the technological properties and our uses of a medium indirectly shape our conceptualisations of and attitudes towards text and concepts such as scholarly authorship. Therefore, the digital medium and print medium indirectly create different ideas on text and scholarly authorship. Additionally, she posits that this mechanism interplays with societal expectations and the practice of the publisher. Eventually, this thesis presents that literary authorship has changed on all four values by which we traditionally conceptualised authorship and this partly finds it origin with the digital medium and the digitisation of text. Namely, our use of the medium and digital text have indirectly altered our conceptualisations of and attitudes towards text and the practice of the literary author.Show less

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Editing Roald Dahl's Classics: Changes in Literary Authorship and the Influence of the Digital Medium