Introduction

The experiential aspects of reading, in traditional print and in new electronic forms, have fascinating implications for our understanding of the role of the senses in the process of understanding a text. Hazel Smith's analysis of new media writing such as "text movies" explores further implications for reading and sense; these new forms may induce heightened sensation, but without cognitive, emotional identification. For example, in Coverley's (2001) Afterimage, a broken narrative of memories of a lost father points towards emotional identification but is interrupted by strategies that emphasise a flux of sensations. Smith concludes that in the future, sensation in literature may find "new directions beyond the page and even beyond the screen". The essays in this volume partake a little of the spirit of the art they study, in offering detailed and often subtle readings of literature according to the sensations they represent, incite, or evoke in us.