Ergodic literature

This article is about the literary neologism. For other uses, see Ergodic (disambiguation).

Ergodic literature is a term coined by Espen J. Aarseth in his 1997 book Cybertext—Perspectives on Ergodic Literature to describe literature in which nontrivial effort is required for the reader to traverse the text. The term is derived from the Greek words ergon, meaning "work", and hodos, meaning "path".[1] It is associated with the concept of cybertext and describes a cybertextual process that includes a semiotic sequence that the concepts of "reading" do not account for.[2]

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference Cybertext was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ Gendolla, Peter; Schäfer, Jörgen (2007). The Aesthetics of Net Literature: Writing, Reading and Playing in Programmable Media. Piscataway, NJ: Transaction Publishers. p. 71. ISBN 9783899424935.