https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5251-8384
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Frida Akmalia, Khoirul Faizin, Literary Simulation and the Digital Humanities: Reading, Editing, Writing. Manuel Portela, Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, 2025;, fqaf022, https://doi.org/10.1093/llc/fqaf022
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What if a book could evolve and change alongside its readers? Manuel Portela’s Literary Simulation and the Digital Humanities: Reading, Editing, Writing transforms this speculative question into a daring reality. By leveraging digital technology, Portela expands literature beyond static boundaries, transforming the acts of reading, editing, and writing into dynamic, interactive processes that invite active participation. This vision aligns seamlessly with the interests of readers of Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, offering a fresh perspective on the evolving nature of literary studies in the digital age.
At the heart of this work lies the LdoD Archive, an experimental digital environment inspired by Fernando Pessoa’s Book of Disquiet. Pessoa’s fragmented masterpiece serves as the ideal testing ground for Portela’s vision of a “living” literary ecosystem. The archive transcends the role of a mere repository of texts; it becomes a participatory platform where readers become editors, editors become writers, and writers reinvent the text itself. Each user interaction reshapes the archive, creating a constantly evolving landscape of textual possibilities and connections. This participatory dynamic speaks to the core of digital humanities, where collaboration and interactivity redefine the literary experience. Pessoa’s Book of Disquiet is particularly fitting for this experiment. An unfinished and modular collection of reflections, it resists linearity and closure, described by Pessoa himself as a “labyrinthine mirror.” Portela’s archive captures this essence, allowing users to navigate editorial interpretations, compare textual variations, and even create new editions. The LdoD Archive reflects Pessoa’s vision while amplifying it, inviting users to become co-creators in a “literary ecology” where meaning is constantly negotiated and redefined.
