Liberature: what's in the name?

“Almost always a form appears earlier than the critical name for it,” claims Fowler based on the evidence of his decades-long study of empirical genres. He adds that “[t]he absence of a genre label is of course no argument against the genre's existence; after all architectural orders themselves went unnamed for more than 1500 years” (2003: 187). As I have described, first came book-bound works, then came the name liberature, “cepted” from a critical reflection on writing and reading. The idea, originating in a fusion of LITERATURE and BOOK, was tentatively framed in terms of genre. My argument has been that it is both conceivable and helpful to think about it in this way since genre is one of the fundamental means by which we organise knowledge about literature. Carolyn Miller notes that “our ‘stock of knowledge’ is based upon types” and explains that a new category may emerge and be accepted as,

For the pragmatic scholar, the ultimate test of genre viability is its use. This generates a web-like structure of associations that simultaneously delineates the semantic field of the concept. As regards liberature, even those who are skeptical about its generic dimension admit that it is a handy term, and use it. They apply it in analyses of actual works, acknowledging that it does tell us something theoretically important about literary discourse. First of all, they agree that it highlights the multimodality and multimediality of literature. Secondly, they acknowledge that it foregounds the book as a spatial means of organising literary discourse – a semantically charged, non-transparent interface. Of course, these features have always been present in literature.