In this paper I will try to outline how several contemporary multimodal novels make use of dynamic patterns, and to what purposes. To this end, I will employ, besides the multimodal novel notion, another extremely useful critical tool: the notion of liberature, a term coined by Polish author Zenon Fajfer, who discussed it over the years in an array of essays, collected in his thought-provoking 2010 volume Liberature, or Total Literature. However, when speaking about liberature, I will mostly draw on the recent, important, volume published by Katarzyna Bazarnik: Liberature – A Book-bound Genre (2016).

In her book, Bazarnik affirms that the notion of multimodal printed novel as used by Alison Gibbons has “a great deal in common with liberature” (Bazarnik 2016: 99), and she questions whether liberature and multimodal literature could be “merely two different terms that refer to the same category of texts” (98). She also stresses the affinities that these notions have with other recent terminologies: N. Katherine Hayles’ technotexts, Jessica Pressman's bookishness, Lori Emerson’s reading-writing interfaces, not to mention the seminal work of Espen Aarseth about cybertext and ergodic literature, or the surfiction promoted by the means of Raymond Federman, Ronald Sukenick, and Richard Kostelanetz. According to Bazarnik, “all these terms constitute a constellation of non-hierarchically related categories, differentiated by slight variations in their defining features” (101).

Although the two notions may be seen as mostly overlapping, a few slight variations in the defining features of liberature and multimodal literature do exist. Bazarnik states, for example, that liberature and the multimodal novel diverge in that liberature is limited to printed material forms, while multimodal literature isn’t; moreover, liberature is considered to be wider than the multimodal printed novel, as it also includes poetic texts. Finally, Gibbons considers the inclusion of images as essential in the multimodal novel, while Bazarnik doesn’t consider it a defining feature of liberature.

Despite these differences, the affinities between the two notions are indisputable, especially if we limit our analysis, as I do, to printed novels only: in this case, the notions of a multimodal printed novel and of a liberatic novel overlap almost entirely. In order to briefly outline my critical framework, I will point out how both the multimodal and the liberatic novel share three main formal features: the full textualisation of their own materiality; the call for an active reading; and the self-reflective dimension.