English Language and Literature Commons^™

Immersion Vs. Engaged Interactivity In The Autobiography Of Jane Eyre’S Storyworld; Or What We Can Learn From Paratextual Traces, Kate Faber Oestreich

English

This paper uses The Autobiography of Jane Eyre (Nessa Aref and Alysson Hall’s 2013–2014 transmedia adaptation of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, hereafter AoJE) to explore the impact of characters’ social media accounts on user interactivity and immersion. AoJE employs the powers of social media to create a modernized and fully-fledged storyworld, yet the users’ overall experience is undermined by the very strategies meant to facilitate engaged interactivity. When social media posts become sites where users not only actively seek additional content but also ‘read’ traces of other users’ interactions with the content, those traces function as paratextual commentary, creating dialogic …