Liberature as world literature

Liberature, proposed by Polish poet Zenon Fajfer, is a multimodal literary genre in which text fuses with the material body of the book into a meaningful whole. Instances of liberatic works can be found in the past, but it was only conceptualized at the turn of the millennium because increasingly more authors exploit such poetics of bookishness. Drawing on David Damrosch’s threefold definition of world literature, liberature can be seen "not a set of canon of texts but a mode of reading: a form of detached engagement with worlds beyond our own place and time." This is exemplified by works published in the eponymous series, which also proves that liberature is world literature that “gains in translation.” Finally, Bazarnik and Fajfer’s "Oka-leczenie" and Mallarme's "Un Coup de Des" are discussed as "elliptical refraction of national literatures", demonstrating how liberature is transcultural in scope, and inspiration and influence have run in different directions.