C2 Edited work
Intermediaalinen kirjallisuus (2022)

Piippo, L., & Kilpiö, J.-P. (Eds.). (2022). Intermediaalinen kirjallisuus. Jyväskylän yliopisto. Nykykulttuurin tutkimuskeskuksen julkaisuja, 132. http://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-951-39-9386-3

JYU authors or editors

Publication details

All authors or editors: Piippo, Laura; Kilpiö, Juha-Pekka

ISBN: 978-951-39-9386-3

Journal or series: Nykykulttuurin tutkimuskeskuksen julkaisuja

ISSN: 1457-6899

Publication year: 2022

Number in series: 132

Number of pages in the book: 274

Publisher: Jyväskylän yliopisto

Place of Publication: Jyväskylä

Publication country: Finland

Publication language: Finnish

Persistent website address: http://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-951-39-9386-3

Publication open access: Openly available

Publication channel open access: Open Access channel

Abstract

This research anthology discusses intermediality in literature. Its chapters examine literature and literary works in relation to other media, emphasizing experimental and formally innovative combinations. In principle, each article analyzes literature in relation to another conventionally distinct medium (literature and comics, literature and cinema, and so on). However, central intermedial phenomena such as ekphrasis, transmediality, and multimodality appear in various articles and are surveyed from multiple viewpoints. Likewise, several articles attend to the possibilities that different media afford to narrative. As a whole, the collection highlights the fact that literature is always technological in one way or another and that taking stock of this technological aspect yields new insights into reading and analysis. The introductory article by the editors, Laura Piippo and Juha-Pekka Kilpiö, provides an overview of the intermedial research field and its central concepts. It also considers other research orientations, such as new materialism and media archaeology, that the editors consider apt companions to intermedial research. Heta Marttinen analyzes the Finnish children’s book series Puluboi ja Poni (2012–), which is highly innovative and selfconscious in its multimodal graphic design, and the television series based on the books. Marttinen shows that children’s literature is highly attuned to the contemporary media landscape. The media that the child characters engage with do not diminish but rather stimulate the imaginative qualities of play and playfulness. Continuing on the combinations of word and image, Oskari Rantala reads the comic book series The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen by Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill, and the album Black Dossier (2007) in particular. He untangles the complex interplay of intertextual, intermedial, and multimodal elements in the series. Usually, the three have been studied separately, but Rantala makes a theoretical contribution in finding common ground for them all. The following two articles deal with ekphrasis. Jarkko Toikkanen develops what he terms the three-tier model of mediality and uses it to analyze the intermedial experience of horror. H. P. Lovecraft’s short story ”Pickman’s Model” (1927), with its evocation of otherworldly paintings, provides a test case for investigating how ekphrasis can create an experience of horror in the reader. Virpi Vairinen widens the scope of ekphrasis and brings it to bear on body art in her reading of Don DeLillo’s The Body Artist (2001), which includes an extensive description of a body art performance piece called ”Body Time” by the protagonist Lauren Hartke. Vairinen explores how performance and literature differ in their employment and representation of time, and the temporal experiences that the two generate. Although mediated by language, the performance piece is able to heighten the novel’s theme of grief and mourning. Mikko Keskinen turns to audio media and examines Heinrich Böll’s short story ”Murke’s Collected Silences” (1955) and three radio adaptations based on it, looking at and listening to the ways in which silence is presented in each. Keskinen’s close listening reveals that a pause does not mean the absence of content; on the contrary, silence brings the media technology itself to the fore. Juha-Pekka Kilpiö observes kinekphrasis – his term for the verbal representation of cinema – in Robert Coover’s A Night at the Movies (1987). Coover’s short stories prove intriguing in how they mix intermedial techniques as well as ontological levels of the storyworld. Employing Dick Higgins’s notion of intermedia, Juri Joensuu looks into ABC 123, an experimental short film by Eino Ruutsalo from 1967. An original and playful text film, ABC 123 is based on a wide array of found text, including Ruutsalo’s own typewritten poems. Still, it employs rapid montage to give it a specifically cinematic spin. The collage technique cuts across several media and splices together film and literature in Ruutsalo’s work. Finally, Hanna-Riikka Roine engages in a broader metatheoretical debate and suggests that literary theory in general and narratology in particular should reorient its focus when analyzing networked and programmable media. Compared to older media, three aspects of digital media warrant special attention: database, procedurality, and reciprocity. Roine argues that these three aspects have profound implications for our understanding of such central concepts as character and storyworld.

Keywords: literature; media; transmedia; multimodality; inter-art; digital culture; literary research; art research

Free keywords: intermediaalisuus

Contributing organizations

Ministry reporting: Yes

Reporting Year: 2022

JUFO rating: 1