Experimental literature is agenre of literature that is generally "difficult to define with any sort of precision."^[1] It experiments with the conventions of literature, including boundaries of genres and styles; for example, it can be written in the form of prose narratives or poetry, but the text may be set on the page in differing configurations than that of normal prose paragraphs or in the classical stanza form of verse.^[1] It may also incorporate art or photography. Furthermore, while experimental literature was traditionally handwritten, the digital age has seen an exponential use of writing experimental works withword processors.^[1]

The first text generally cited in this category isLaurence Sterne'sThe Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1759).^{[citation needed]} This text occurs so early in the standard history of the novel that one can't refer to its "breaking" conventions that had yet to solidify.^{[citation needed]} But in its mockery of narrative, and its willingness to use such graphic elements, such as an all-black page to mourn the death of a character, Sterne's novel is considered a fundamental text for many post-World War II authors. However, Sterne's work was not without detractors even in its time; for instance,Samuel Johnson is quoted inBoswell as saying "The merely odd does not last.Tristram Shandy did not last."Denis Diderot'sJacques the Fatalist and His Master, drew many elements fromTristam Shandy, a fact not concealed in the text, making it an early example of metafiction.

In the 1910s, artistic experimentation became a prominent force,^[2] and various European and American writers began experimenting with the given forms. Tendencies that formed during this period later became parts of themodernist movement.^{[citation needed]} TheCantos ofEzra Pound, the post-World War I work ofT. S. Eliot, prose and plays byGertrude Stein, were some of the most influential works of the time, thoughJames Joyce'sUlysses is generally considered^{[according to whom?]} the most essential work of the period. The novel not only influenced more experimental writers, such asVirginia Woolf, but also less experimental writers, such asErnest Hemingway.

The historical avant-garde movements also contributed to the development of experimental literature in the early and middle 20th century. In theDadaist movement, poetTristan Tzara employed newspaper clippings and experimental typography in his manifestoes. Thefuturist authorF.T. Marinetti espoused a theory of "words in freedom" across the page, exploding the boundaries of both conventional narrative and the layout of the book itself as shown in hissound poem "novel"Zang Tumb Tumb. The writers, poets, and artists associated with thesurrealist movement employed a range of unusual techniques to evoke mystical and dream-like states in their poems, novels, and prose works. Examples include the collaboratively written textsLes Champs Magnétiques (byAndré Breton andPhilippe Soupault) andSorrow for Sorrow, a "dream novel" produced under hypnosis byRobert Desnos.

By the end of the 1930s, the political situation in Europe had made Modernism appear to be an inadequate, aestheticized, even irresponsible response to the danger of worldwidefascism, and literary experimentalism faded from public view, kept alive through the 1940s only by isolated visionaries likeKenneth Patchen. In the 1950s, theBeat writers can be seen as a reaction against the hidebound quality of both the poetry and prose of its time, and such hovering, near-mystical works asJack Kerouac's novelVisions of Gerard represented a new formal approach to the standard narrative of that era. American novelists such asJohn Hawkes started publishing novels in the late 1940s that played with the conventions of narrative.

The spirit of the European avant-gardes would be carried through the post-war generation as well. The poetIsidore Isou formed theLettrist group, and produced manifestoes, poems, and films that explored the boundaries of the written and spoken word. TheOULIPO (in French,Ouvroir de littérature potentielle, or "Workshop of Potential Literature") brought together writers, artists, and mathematicians to explore innovative, combinatoric means of producing texts. Founded by the authorRaymond Queneau and mathematicianFrançois Le Lionnais, the group includedItalo Calvino andGeorges Perec. Queneau'sCent Mille Milliards de Poèmes uses the physical book itself to proliferate different sonnet combinations, while Perec's novelLife: A User's Manual is based on the Knight's Tour on a chessboard.

The BritishAngry Young Men of the 1950s rejected experimentalism,^[3] but the 1960s brought a brief return of the glory days of modernism, and a first grounding ofPost-modernism. Publicity owing to an obscenity trial againstWilliam S. Burroughs'Naked Lunch brought a wide awareness of and admiration for an extreme and uncensored freedom. Burroughs also pioneered a style known ascut-up, where newspapers or typed manuscripts were cut up and rearranged to achieve lines in the text. In the late 1960s, experimental movements became so prominent that even authors considered more conventional such asBernard Malamud andNorman Mailer exhibited experimental tendencies.Metafiction was an important tendency in this period, exemplified most elaborately in the works ofJohn Barth,Jonathan Bayliss, andJorge Luis Borges.^{[citation needed]} In 1967 Barth wrote the essayThe Literature of Exhaustion,^[2] which is sometimes considered a manifesto of postmodernism. A major touchstone of this era wasThomas Pynchon'sGravity's Rainbow, which eventually became a bestseller. Important authors in the short story form includedDonald Barthelme, and, in both short and long forms,Robert Coover andRonald Sukenick. While in 1968William H. Gass's novelWillie Masters Lonesome Wife added challenging dimensions to reading as some of the pages are inmirror writing where the text can only be read if a mirror is held in an angle against the page.

Some later well-known experimental writers of the 1970s and 1980s wereItalo Calvino,Michael Ondaatje, andJulio Cortázar. Calvino's most famous books areIf on a winter's night a traveler, where some chapters depict the reader preparing to read a book titledIf on a winter's night a traveler while others form the narrative andInvisible Cities, whereMarco Polo explains his travels toKubla Khan although they are merely accounts of the very city in which they are chatting.^[4] Ondaatje'sThe Collected Works of Billy the Kid uses a scrapbook style to tell its story while Cortázar'sHopscotch can be read with the chapters in any order.

ArgentineJulio Cortázar and the naturalized Brazilian writerClarice Lispector, bothLatin American writers who have created masterpieces in experimental literature of 20th and 21st century, mixing dreamscapes, journalism, and fiction; regional classics written in Spanish include the Mexican novel "Pedro Paramo" byJuan Rulfo, the Colombian family epic "One Hundred Years of Solitude" byGabriel García Márquez, the Peruvian political history "The War of the End of the World" byMario Vargas Llosa, the Puerto RicanSpanglish dramatic dialogue "Yo-Yo Boing!" byGiannina Braschi, and the Cuban revolutionary novel "Paradiso" byJosé Lezama Lima.^[5] Also in Latin America, Ecuadorian writerPablo Palacio published his experimental novellaDébora in October 1927. Some of the techniques he employed in the book includestream of consciousness andmetafiction.^[6]

Contemporary American authorsDavid Foster Wallace,Giannina Braschi, andRick Moody, combine some of the experimental form-play of the 1960s writers with a more emotionally deflating, irony, and a greater tendency towards accessibility and humor. Wallace'sInfinite Jest is apost-postmodern maximalist work describing life at a tennis academy and a rehab facility; digressions often become plotlines, and the book features over 100 pages of footnotes. Other writers likeNicholson Baker were noted for their minimalism in novels such asThe Mezzanine, about a man who rides an escalator for 140 pages. American authorMark Danielewski combined elements of a horror novel with formal academic writing and typographic experimentation in his novelHouse of Leaves.

In the early 21st century, many examples of experimental literature reflect the emergence ofcomputers and other digital technologies,^[7] some of them actually using the medium on which they are reflecting, such asPatricia Lockwood's 2021internet novelNo One Is Talking About This, which was mostly composed on aniPhone. Terena Elizabeth Bell's 2022 short story "#CoronaLife" (fromTell Me What You See) is written as seen from the main character's phone, usingemoji andemoticon, moveablegifs,^[8] hyperlinks,^[9] andmemes,^[10] as well as depictingemail,text,^[10][9]Twitter posts,^[9] missed call notifications,^[10] and other media commonly viewed on smartphones. Such writing has been variously referred toelectronic literature,hypertext, andcodework. Some have focused on a exploring the plaurality narrative storylines like the American writerPenelope Trunk (writing as Adrienne Eisen) inSix Sex Scenes. Others have focused on exploring the plurality of narrative point of views, like the Uruguayan American writerJorge Majfud inLa reina de América andLa ciudad de la luna.In a different vein, Greek authorDimitris Lyacos suppresses the urge of taxonomizing the text by creating multi-genre narratives, a process he likens toJohn Keats'negative capability.^[11] InZ213: Exit he combines, in a kind of a modern-day palimpsest, the diary entries of two narrators in a heavily fragmented text, interspersed with excerpts from the biblical Exodus, to recount a journey along which the distinct realities of inner self and outside world gradually merge.

• Bäckström, Per.Vårt brokigas ochellericke! Om experimentell poesi (Our Gaudy Andornot!. On Experimental Poetry), Lund: Ellerström, 2010.
• Coonrod Martínez, Elizabeth (2004). "The Latin American Innovative Novel of the 1920s: A Comparative Reassessment". In McClennen, Sophia A.; Fitz, Earl E. (eds.).Comparative Cultural Studies and Latin America. Indiana, United States:Purdue University Press. pp. 34–55.ISBN 978-1-55753-358-6.
• Experimental Writing, A Writer's Guide and Anthology. Lawrence Lenhart (Author), William Cordeiro (Author). Bloomsbury 2024.