Abstract

This essay focusses on functional analysis as a hitherto neglected part of intermediality studies. To begin with, the concept of ‘function’, some methodological difficulties concerning all Funktionsgeschichte and some ways of dealing with them are discussed. The main focus, however, is on an illustration of intermedial functional analysis in the field of twentieth-century musicalized fiction in English. After outlining some general connotations and hence functional potentials which music as fiction’s ‘Other’ has acquired in the course of history, the following functional dimensions are highlighted and related to the cultural and in particular aesthetic contexts of modernism and postmodernism: the musicalization of fiction a) as an expression and a reinforcement of the will to experimental transgressions of established (aesthetic) boundaries; b) as a means of following the (post-)modernist tendency towards self-referentiality and self-reflexivity; 
c) as a response to the (modernist) concern with a resensualization of art and with a-rational states of consciousness; d) as a response to the (post-)modernist feeling of an increased complexity and fragmentation of existence; and e) as a response to the (post-)modernist distrust of traditional, mimetic storytelling. To conclude, the problem of attributing specific functions of intermediality to historical contexts such as modernism and postmodernism is dealt with, and perspectives of future research are mentioned.


Abstract

[Repetition and similarity are related phenomena of a nearly ubiquitous nature. They can be found both in the natural world and in man-made artifacts, including media, which renders them essentially transmedial phenomena. The essay focuses on their potential to create extra meaning in works of literature, but also illustrates this potential with some examples from other arts (music and architecture in particular). After some general theoretical and typological reflections on semiotic repetition/similarities in the context of other forms of repetition and similarity, conditions under which these phenomena will most likely be perceived in the arts and literature are discussed. Special attention is given to the device of ‘foregrounding’ and the awareness of (verbal) art itself as a cognitive frame which tends to raise expectations of meaning in all parts of a given work or text even if this text was originally only a pragmatic, perhaps even banal, utterance. In addition, forms and functions of repetitions and similarities are illustrated with various literary examples, including texts by Shakespeare, Charles Dickens and P.B. Shelley. The conclusion highlights the special relationship between repetition/similarity and meaningful de-automatization in literature and other arts.] 


Abstract

[This first essay of the author’s explorations of intermedial relations between literature and music (which was expanded and revised in his book The Musicalization of Fiction, 1999) discusses the metaphor, derived from Huxley’s novel, Point Counter Point, of a ‘musicalization of fiction’ and comes to a balanced result: while fiction can never really turn into music, the metaphor may in some cases nevertheless be justified. This is the case where, in certain short stories and novels, it fulfils the heuristic function of pointing to a form of intermedial reference to music which imitates musical sound effects and/or structures as far as possible in the medium of (printed) language. The essay offers some criteria for a justified use of the metaphor and tests them in two contrastive examples: Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, where the term ‘musicalized fiction’ is inappropriate, and the Sirens chapter of Joyce’s Ulysses, where the metaphor is more meaningful.]


Abstract

[Focusing on the scholarly discussion of intermedial phenomena, the essay discusses a general problem of interdisciplinarity, namely how to ensure communication between individual disciplines with reference to their various objects of research. Simply accepting the status quo, i. e. terminological pluralism, from the perspective of monomedial research is, in this context, as unwelcome as discarding scholarly terminological precision or limiting discussion to commonsensical notions. Among the three possible alternatives to these problematical options, the essay favours the following: rather than resorting to neologisms (since their fate is notoriously uncertain) transfer from areas in which given phenomena have extensively been researched is advisable, be it in the form of ‘importing’ terminology from one discipline to another or, preferably, by adapting discipline-specific terminology to broader uses in other disciplines. The problems occurring in such attempts at a terminological transfer are illustrated by means of two contrasting examples, both stemming from literary studies dealing with fiction (in principle, other disciplines could have been used as well) and by asking the following questions: can a) the narratological concept of ‘narrative situation’ (Erzählsituation) as described by F.K. Stanzel and b) the notion of ‘metareference’ (as in ‘metafiction’) be transferred to pictures and hence be integrated into the discourse of art history? While in the former case, in spite of some analogies between fiction and pictures, the answer is negative (since pictures are not necessarily narrative in the first place and can hardly represent narrators as transmitters of represented worlds), the latter case is more promising: literary subforms of metafiction can, with some adaptations, be found in pictures, and compounds using ‘meta-’ can meaningfully be used in order to denote media-specific phenomena and even genres. Three criteria should, however, be applicable as a precondition of a terminological transfer from a source to a target discipline: a) the existence of analogies in the media at hand to a degree that warrants a common terminology; b) in the source discipline, a sufficiently clear description of the phenomenon in question as well as of the term to be transferred; and c) a sufficient heuristic benefit of the transfer itself. In conclusion, some areas are mentioned in which a common terminology for different arts and media could yield interesting results, and moreover some problems of interdisciplinarity are addressed which today’s tendency towards ever-increasing specialization in study programmmes and research courses have created.]

Abstract

[After a brief justification and clarification of the term ‘intermediality’ (rather than ‘intertextuality’, which is a term referring to ‘intramedial contacts’) the essay, partly inspired by Irina Rajewsky’s research in the field, presents a typology of basic intermedial forms, which is an expansion of my more narrow ‘intracompositional’ conception of ‘intermediality’ as detailed in essay no. 9. The typology, besides comprising the two intracompositional forms of plurimediality and (explicit and implicit) intermedial reference, now also incorporates ‘extracompositional’ forms, in particular intermedial transposition and transmediality (medially non-specific phenomena occurring in more than one medium without implying a given medial source; a form which Rajewsky, however, does not consider to belong to ‘intermediality’). The essay then addresses the relevance of intermediality as a helpful notion for literary studies and illustrates this relevance with various examples including Peter Ackroyd’s novel, English Music. In conclusion, further perspectives on intermedial research are adumbrated.] 


Abstract

One of the most intriguing – as well as neglected – areas of musical self-reference is instrumental ‘metamusic’: that is, music which, similar to, for example, metafiction, metapainting or metafilm, draws attention to its status as an artefact and/or (acoustic) medium. The neglect of this aspect in research is easy to understand, for instrumental music has well-known difficulties not only with (hetero-)reference but also, and a fortiori, with explicit metareference, since it is unable to make overtly metareferential statements. Yet, this does not necessarily entail that instrumental music cannot at least covertly foreground its status as music and thus testify to a potential for implicit metareference.


In the first part of this essay, the concept of ‘metareference’ as a special case of ‘self-reference’ is explained, and its principal forms (which are derived from metafiction) are presented. The main part opens with general reflections on the potential, but also the limits, of instrumental music to produce these forms and, where applicable, to mark metareference. This is followed by a discussion of forms and functions of ‘metamusic’ in some examples, in particular Mozart’s sextet, Ein musikalischer Spaß (K 522).


The overall aim of this contribution is to highlight yet another aspect under which (instrumental) music can be shown to possess transmedial features which have traditionally been attributed to other media. The transmedial perspective on ‘words and music’ adopted in this essay reveals that, in spite of appearances and obvious restrictions, music can in fact be aligned with other media, and in particular with verbal media, even in the field of metareference.


Abstract

[One of the consequences of the increasing importance of interdisciplinarity (which is a precondition for intermediality studies) is the appearance of terms and concepts in individual disciplines which have been ‘imported’ from other disciplines and have originally also been applied to other phenomena. It is the main aim of the present essay to discuss the chances and problems of such terminological and conceptual ‘imports’ and ‘exports’. The main example chosen here is the originally narratological concept of ‘metalepsis’, which designates paradoxical transgressions between (onto-)logical levels or ‘worlds’ (the essay thus is also a contribution to metalepsis research and aims at expanding the relevance of this concept). After a clarification of the conditions under which terminological and conceptual exports/imports make sense, the notion ‘metalepsis’ is clarified, and its transmedial and transgeneric nature is subsequently illustrated with reference to fields beyond fictional narratives, namely comics, and (non-narrative examples from) the visual arts. The conclusion answers the question of why exporting concepts such as ‘metalepsis’ to fields outside narratology matters. It must be stressed that the export(ability) of a narratological concept such as metalepsis into other domains highlighted here is only one possible example which may be complemented by others, including meaningful ‘imports’ from other domains into narratology.]


Abstract

[This essay is yet another contribution to an inter- or trans-medial perspective on narrativity along the lines set by my essay no. 14, “Das Problem der Narrativität” (2002), and forms the music-centred counterpart to the above essay no. 15, which was centred on the visual arts. It purports to show that, contrary to what one may intuit, it makes sense to align even instrumental music from outside the field of programme music with the potentially narrative media, although this can only be done under certain conditions (which are listed in section 3 of the essay) and with substantial restrictions. Using frame theory and prototype semantics, the first main part of the essay (section 2) describes essentials of a transmedial (that is, media-neutral) conceptualization of narrativity and narrative, before applying these concepts to instrumental music. This is done with due consideration of the obstacles which music presents to narrativity. Yet the fact that, in some cases, music can go beyond self-reference and point to phenomena outside its medium along with the temporal structure of music as an “audible ideogram of experience” (Orlov) and other features permit one to classify instrumental music at least as a narrative-inducing medium, although the stories thereby adumbrated (i. e. performed rather than ‘told’) will always remain remarkably vague.] 


Abstract

[The essay applies the concept of ‘dominance’, which is of general cultural-historical importance, to the notion of intermediality in three respects: a) with reference to typological forms of intermediality as viewed from a systematic point of view; b) with reference to the same typological forms, considered from a functional historical perspective; and c) with reference to academic discourses and research. A) It is argued that among the four principal forms of intermediality, intermedial transposition and intermedial reference necessarily imply the dominance of one of the media involved, while in the other two forms (transmediality and plurimediality) this is only an optional possibility. B) Historical examples of the dominance of the verbal medium ‘book’ in the form of the Bible in the Christian Middle Ages as well as of the opera in the 18th century and of the novel in the 19th century are given, and it is argued that since the second half of the 20th century film has assumed the leading role. C) In some academic contexts, intermediality studies have been used in order to broaden the perspective on literature (which the author still considers the dominant medium in philological studies) while in other contexts, e. g. by the leader of the Montreal-based Centre de recherche sur l’intermédialité, Silvestra Mariniello, intermediality research has been instrumentalized for the demise of the alleged dominance of literature, a polemic stance which the author criticizes as problematic and counter-productive for intermediality studies at large.]