The Physical, the Digital and the Hybrid in Narrative Storyworlds

A Preliminary Framework

Résumé

The article addresses the ontological complexity of the represented world in contemporary narratives depicting digital realities. Drawing on MarieLaure Ryan’s typology, it proposes a new perspective on the construction of the storyworld, at the centre of which lies the complex relation between material and digital spaces. The first part of the article offers a brief overview of the evolution of the concept of “digital space” and of the changing spatial imaginary in the early representations of digital worlds in cyberpunk fiction. Next, it presents the typology of place experience in the digital era formulated by Juncheng Dai and Fangyu Liu. The main part of the article proposes a new theoretical framework, based on the model developed by Dai and Liu. The proposed framework makes it possible to reconstruct the complex ontological structures of contemporary narratives, in which the physical, the digital, and the hybrid coexist in different and dynamic configurations.