Rocznik Komparatystyczny

Liberature is a concept operating in literary studies only recently. One of the Latin meanings of the word liber relates to the book not only as a carrier of a text, but also as a material object involved in the transmission of literature. This article is an attempt to organize the issue of liberature in today’s literary reflection. Its aim is to develop a typology of different artistic and literary forms connected with the flow of liberature, but also to offer a broad perspective on the phenomenon in historical terms. Within the typology several cases can be distinguished, namely realization of text, which emphasizes in particular the visual elements (pictures, drawings etc.), spatial dimension, materiality (liberature versus art books), artistic and literary collages, books in boxes, text installation, and finally the songs included in the e-liberature. The examples discussed in the article prove that the idea of the proximity of literature and art, put forward by the Greek poet Simonides of Ceos, confirmed later by Horace, has been always accompanied by authors and is also continued today.