Wolfgang Hallet

32 A Methodology of Intermediality in
Literary Studies
Abstract: This contribution to the handbook seeks to systematize and explain the
various categories that are available for an intermedial analysis of a given literary
text and, in terms of a methodology, provide appropriate questions for intermedial
investigations. In particular, these encompass the recognition and identification of
different types of intermedial relations between a given literary text and other media
and the systemic levels at which intermedial relations can be observed and described.
With regard to literary analysis and interpretation, two major parts of this contribu-
tion are concerned with the possible functions of intermedial reference, both within
the literary text itself (close reading) and in the wider context in which a literary text
is situated or to which it refers as a cultural or historical context (wide reading).

Key Terms: Multimodality, intra- and extratextual functions of intermediality, gen-

re-specific intermediality, semiotic modes, metafiction

1 Challenges of a Methodology of Intermediality

This handbook of intermediality is proof of the vast variety and broad scope of inter-
relations between literary texts and other medial forms of all kinds, and of the count-
less number of ways in which media can be represented in literary texts. Further-
more, in connection with the representation of other media, ‘literature’ is in itself a
very general term that encompasses a large variety of texts and genres that can be
expected to incorporate other media in very specific ways. Also, ‘literature’ is unspe-
cific in terms of content and form, a distinction that has to be made whenever the
effect of another medium in or on a literary text has to be described. Last but not least,
the range of media that can be referenced or represented in a literary text may range
from a TV set and a film camera to a newspaper article or a pop song and its composer,
to name but a very few instances of intermediality.
Methodologically, a first basic distinction that needs to be made concerns the
sensual and empirical (unmediated) presence of at least one other medium as an inte-
gral part of a work of literature or art on the one hand (‘overt intermediality’ in Wolf’s
terminology, cf. Wolf 1999, 37–44, ‘multimodality’ in social semiotic approaches; ↗34
Non-verbal Semiotic Modes and Media in the Multimodal Novel), and the transforma-
tion of another medium into a literary verbal text on the other (‘covert intermediality’
in Wolf’s terminology). The most obvious examples of what in Wolf’s terminology is
606 Wolfgang Hallet

defined as overt intermediality would be the opera or the film as a combination of lan-
guage, music, sound etc. As a rule, such conventionalized forms of the co-presence of
different media in one work of art constitute literary or aesthetic genres of their own
with a very specific and conventionalized interrelation between the different media
and have therefore also been termed ‘plurimediality’ (as in the case of the theater
play; cf. Pfister 2001, 24–29), or the ‘multimodality’ of film (cf. Bateman and Schmidt
2012, 75–98) or of novels (‘the multimodal novel,’ cf. Hallet 2014).
Generally speaking it can be contended that the study of plurimedial and mul-
timodal literary works requires and actually has generated genre-specific conceptu-
alizations and methodologies to the extent that new disciplines like theater, film or
game studies have emerged which specialize in the study of these generic types of
medial co-presence. Even if, in terms of the discipline, plurimedial or multimodal
works of literature are investigated in literary studies, the languages and modes of
signification may be so specific that, as in the case of the comic strip or the graphic
novel, it may be difficult to grasp them merely within the framework of intermediality.
The comic strip, for instance, challenges such culturally established and convention-
alized medial boundaries as that between the word and the image (cf. Rippl 2005,
31–35), since comics and graphic novels have developed a multisemiotic language of
their own which encompasses, e.g., sound words or the very important device of the
gutter, both of which are neither word nor image. In the case of the gutter it is even an
empty, non-representational space between the panels which is nevertheless signifi-
cant and meaningful (↗22 Comics and Graphic Novels).
For all of these reasons, it is obvious that a single methodology of intermedial
analysis can probably not do justice to all of these forms of medial interrelations. This
is why the methodological proposals in this article are limited to the representation,
thematization or imitation in or by literary works that are word-based and in which
the written and printed word is the medial form of representation (i.e. ‘covert inter-
mediality’ in Wolf’s terminology). Even then, because of the contingency and open-
ness of the field, the attempt to draft a methodology of intermedial relations faces a
number of challenges at different levels, the reflection upon which is itself part of any
methodological approach.
Another basic and important distinction that has to be made concerns the way
and the extent to which intermedial references are transparent to or concealed from
the reader. In the first case, the reference to a single artifact or medium will be visible
at the surface of the text by naming, mentioning, thematizing or referencing a non-lit-
erary piece of art or another medium explicitly. By contrast, an implicit reference to
another medium or art form leaves it more or less to the reader to recognize or detect
the medium of reference since its interconnectedness to other media is not thema-
tized or addressed directly in the text. Therefore, this indirect kind of intermediality
requires a certain amount of expertise or research in the field of medial reference
(cf. Wolf 1999, 71–92). For instance, a reader who is not familiar with jazz music
will understand that Toni Morrison’s novel Jazz thematizes this musical art form by
 32 A Methodology of Intermediality in Literary Studies 607

merely understanding its title, but it will be difficult for them to identify features of
the narrative discourse of this novel as an imitation of aesthetic and stylistic features
of this kind of music. Thus, a reader unfamiliar with jazz is bound to miss an impor-
tant aspect of this ‘musicalization of fiction’ (Wolf 1999).
With this distinction between explicit (direct) and implicit (indirect) intermedial-
ity in mind, a more systematic methodology of the analysis of intermedial relations
revolves around the following more detailed questions:
– Genre-specific intermediality: One of the central questions is in what way the rep-
resentation of or reference to other media is specific to the literary genre or type of
text in which it occurs. For instance, in a narrative text, e.g. in a short story or in
a novel, a piece of music can be mentioned by one of the characters or by the nar-
rator and will, in that sense, be a more or less important part of the storyworld.
It may contribute to equipping a character with certain features or experiences
or illustrate and contextualize the world in which the story is set. In a poem, a
certain kind of music may provide the pattern or set the tone or pace and thus
add a musical dimension to the language and sound that the poem expresses and
conveys. In a theater play, the audience may witness a scene in which one of the
characters sits down at a piano and plays a very elegiac passage from a famous
suite. As against that sensual experience of music on the stage, it can only be rep-
resented in verbal form in the play-script. Whereas on the stage music constitutes
a rather independent aesthetic form of expression that is directly communicated
to and experienced by the audience, a novel or a poem can only evoke music in
imaginary form in the act of reading.
From such generic specifications of intermediality it becomes obvious that the
functions and effects of intermediality depend, at least to a good extent, on the
very specific ways in which a literary genre shapes and gives life to the world (or a
slice thereof) that it creates, represents and communicates. In any case, an inter-
medial analysis will have to focus on the way in which the occurrence of another
medium is connected with the genre-specific constituents and dimensions of the
literary text, e.g. the characters and the story of a piece of narrative fiction, the
voice and rhythm of a poem, the characters or the dramatic development of a
scene in a play (cf. section 3).
– Types of representation of media in a literary text: As demonstrated in this hand-
book, the ways in which other media occur or are represented in literary texts
are so manifold that it is difficult to systematize them. For some types of rep-
resentation like ‘illumination’ or ‘ekphrasis,’ reliable theoretical concepts have
been developed. Others remain rather open and unsystematized. For instance,
‘visualization’ indicates that visual images and practices play an important role
in a given literary text, but the term does not denote the specific way in which
visual images occur or are referenced, nor does it specify the type of visual image
which the term ‘visualization’ addresses. After all, a picture on the wall can, e.g.,
be mentioned in passing as part of the setting; it can be described in neat detail in
608 Wolfgang Hallet

an ekphrastic manner; it can be a central plot-driving object; it can even be repre-

sentative of a whole aesthetics and be essential for a critique of cultural practices
and values. In any case, an intermedial methodology will have to systematize and
categorize the most important forms of representation that media can take on in
literary texts, and a systematic analysis of a given literary text has to describe
them in neat detail.
– The imitation of media by a literary text: One of the important distinctions that
needs to be made concerns the type of representation or reference, since a
medium can either be represented or mentioned or thematized explicitly in
the literary text, or the text as a whole can represent or imitate in verbal form
the specific structure or the aesthetics of another art form and its specific way
of arranging and structuring signs aesthetically (cf. Wolf’s distinction between
‘telling’ and ‘showing,’ 1999, 44–46; Rajewsky 2002, 78–117). For the novel and
other forms of prose fiction this implies that the effects of intermedial relations
on both story and discourse have to be identified and analyzed. If the level of dis-
course is affected, the literary work as a whole is ‘musicalized’ or ‘visualized.’ In
that case the literary text mimics the macro-structure of the referenced medium
and adopts its compositional principles or aesthetic structure. The literary text
then transforms the art form of, e.g., a symphony into an overall (verbal) literary
form, or the narrative discourse may imitate or display the polyphony and call-
and-response principle of the jazz genre, as in Morrison’s novel on the rise of the
African American community and culture in the first decades of the twentieth
century. In cases like these, the other medium is “perceptibly re-presented ‘in’
fiction in the mode of imitation.” (Wolf 1999, 71) Although the effect on the dis-
course level is the main focus, the literary text may and, as a matter of fact, often
will also thematize the referenced medium, incorporate it in the story and thus
address it explicitly.
– Types of media represented or referenced: As established concepts like ‘ekphra-
sis’ or ‘illustration’ show, there is a long tradition of intertwining text and visual
images in literary history (cf. Rippl 2005). However, the regular arrival of new
visual and other media in the course of the last two centuries and of digital
media in the present has naturally led to a multiplication of the kinds of media
to which literary texts can be related. Therefore, one of the major concerns of
intermedial analysis is the identification of the types of media that the literary
text addresses (cf. Wolf 1999, 37–38). Since all of these media must be regarded
as sign systems that are based on specific symbolic languages, the affordance
of these other semiotic modes of expression, representation and communication
(like, e.g., the cartographic map or the film) must in itself be investigated in order
to determine what their specific cultural or communicative value is and why they
arouse interest in the sphere of literature. Intermedial analysis therefore entails
a comparative approach through which the effect of these other semiotic modes
on or their ‘translation’ into a literary text can be apprehended (cf. the example of
 32 A Methodology of Intermediality in Literary Studies 609

music and literature in Wolf 1999, 14–33). It is obvious that, as a consequence, a

certain degree of multidisciplinary expertise in the ‘language’ of the non-literary
medium, e.g. in musical or art history, is an indispensible pre-condition of every
intermedial approach.
As the large variety of chapters in this handbook suggests, there is a whole chro-
nology of ever new media that attracted the interest of literary authors and their
works, among them, above all, the popular media of the photograph, radio, film
(cf. Brosch 2011) and TV. In contemporary literature it is the digital media, elec-
tronic communication and the Internet that attract increasing attention in novels
and other literary works (cf. Nünning and Rupp 2011; Hallet 2011a; Hallet 2011b;
Basseler et al. 2013). Therefore, the broad range of media that can occur in liter-
ary texts also opens up a whole field of interrelated disciplines, from art history
to film studies and information technology studies, to mention just a few. This
regular response of literature to the cultural rise of new media also points to one
of the cultural functions (or, in Zapf’s terms, the ecology, cf. Zapf 2002, 2005) of
literature as a medium of cultural reflection and a critique of media of commu-
nication and representation, the role of media in people’s lives, social and com-
municative practices connected with them and the various ways in which media
shape the world.
Since in most cases a literary text does not allude or refer to just one medium,
but to a large variety and different sorts of media, the type of medium that a lit-
erary text addresses, incorporates or imitates is also relevant with regard to the
more general and overarching characterization of types of intermedial relations
by which a literary text is dominated. Concepts like ‘musicalization’ (cf. Wolf
1999; ↗also the chapters on music in Part II) or ‘visualization’ therefore refer to
the predominance of a certain medium in a literary text or of its aesthetic form.
However, such an overall characterization of a literary work does not imply that
other media are not represented or referenced in a given literary text (cf. Wolf
1999, 38).

The following sections will elaborate on the foci of intermedial analysis as outlined
above in more detail, delineating strategies of analyzing the roles and functions of
intermedial references in literary texts by distinguishing different levels or objects of
investigation for heuristic reasons. Paul Auster’s novel Moon Palace (1989) and Toni
Morrison’s Jazz (1993) will serve as sample texts to illustrate assumptions and pro-
posals where appropriate. A comprehensive intermedial analysis that does justice to
the aesthetic complexity and coherence of a literary text will, of course, have to syn-
thesize these different foci of analysis and integrate them in a holistic interpretation.
The following section describes different levels of intermedial reference; sections 3
and 4 attempt to systematize intratextual and extratextual effects and functions of
intermediality.
610 Wolfgang Hallet

2 Systemic Levels of Intermediality

As has been proposed and described in intermediality theories, one of the fundamen-
tal distinctions concerns the systemic level at which other media are addressed in the
literary text. In accordance with Wolf (1999, 46–50) and Rajewsky (2002, 59–77) and
drawing upon theories of intertextuality (cf. Broich and Pfister 1985; Plett 1991), for
methodological purposes it is useful to distinguish between the single artifact, the
genre and a semiotic system as three basic categories of representation, reference or
thematization:
– The literary text is related to and, in many cases, explicitly addresses a single (real
or fictitious) artifact, medial product or work of art (the single ‘text’ in terms of
intertextuality; cf. Rajewsky 2002, 149–157). In Paul Auster’s novel Moon Palace,
for instance, one of the key passages in the novel is a meticulous description of
the autodiegetic narrator’s meditative study of one of the numerous Moonlight
paintings by the American painter Ralph Blakelock in the Brooklyn Museum, ren-
dered in an ekphrastic manner (Auster 1989, 137–139; ↗Part I: Text and Image,
section on Ekphrasis). Other kinds of ‘text’ or artifacts that can be referenced and
often immediately identified are, e.g., pieces of music, photographs, sculptures,
TV and feature films or websites. However, it is evident (cf. Rajewsky 2002, 149–
155) that a literary text’s relatedness to a single medial artifact always also implies
a reference to the respective semiotic system since intermedial reference always
raises (and often explicitly addresses) questions of medial, semiotic and aesthetic
similarity and difference. Using film as an example (cf. Rajewsky 2002, 151–155),
its thematization or imitation in the verbal literary text necessarily evokes the
contrast between visual and verbal representation or between the monosemiotic
verbal system of the literary text and the multisemiotic composition of the film.
Quite often, as in Moon Palace, the prominence of another single medial artifact
in a literary text points to its intratextual importance in terms of implications
that it has for the plot or story, for a character’s development or for an aesthetic
theme that the literary text unfolds. In Moon Palace, the narrator’s visit to the
museum, his aesthetic experience and his reflections on the painting play a key
role in the epistemology and the aesthetics that the novel offers (cf. Hallet 2008,
112–120). Furthermore, the novel imitates the aesthetic structure of the painting:
As in Blakelock’s image, where a full white moon is placed “in the middle of
the canvas – the precise mathematical centre” (Auster 1989, 137), the Brooklyn
Museum episode and the ekphrasis of the painting take ‘the precise mathemati-
cal centre’ of the novel (cf. Ickstadt 1998, 198).
– In many cases it is not the single ‘text’ (in the broad semiotic sense) that is involved
in the literary text, but a whole medial or aesthetic genre. Toni Morrison’s novel
Jazz is a case in point: The novel does not only address the musical genre in its
title, but it can as a whole be regarded as an intermedial ‘translation’ of the art of
jazz music into a literary narrative. The title of the novel recalls jazz as an impor-
 32 A Methodology of Intermediality in Literary Studies 611

tant art form that “is reckoned throughout the world as one of America’s most sig-
nificant cultural contributions, and it originated with African American artists.”
(Kubitschek 1998, 141) Responding to white cultural histories of the ‘Jazz Age,’
the novel tries to emphasize the African American roots of this new music which
“both makes the City what it is and owes its creation to the City.” (Kubitschek
1998, 157) From the first lines of the novel, when Lenox Avenue with all its famous
music halls, ballrooms and dance halls is mentioned, the Harlem jazz scene pro-
vides the topographical setting of the novel and serves as the medium of the char-
acters’ and various narrators’ reflections on the city and their attitudes.
However, jazz is more than “simply a musical background” (cf. Morrison 2004,
xix) and a theme. Morrison translates the musical technique of this art into a
compositional structure and a narrative technique: The very first paragraph of
the novel sets the tune and introduces the thematic leitmotif; subsequently, the
following parts are all stories of their own, narrative fragments or brief interludes
that all respond to, elaborate or vary it (cf. Lewis 2000, 271–277). Through the
“perpetual elaboration of this original melody” (Brown 2003, 182), the novel
unfolds the introductory thematic core and thus imitates a complex jazz piece.
All subsequent stories rendered by different narrative voices can be regarded as
improvising solos, but they also interact with each other and the central motif
and constitute a continuous polylogue (cf. Lewis 2000). By transforming the dia-
logic musical ‘call and response’ pattern in which “a leader issues a call, group
members respond, and the leader then issues a new call modified or directed by
the responses” (Kubitschek 1998, 184), the reader experiences the most salient
aesthetic feature of jazz music in semiotically translated form and becomes part
of its audience. In Jazz, the ‘musicalization of fiction’ (cf. Wolf 1999) brings this
musical art form to life and rewrites its history from an African American point
of view.
– A literary text may also refer to, thematize or comment upon a whole aesthetic
or medial semiotic system, i.e. a whole class of artefacts based on the same kind
of signifiers. According to S. J. Schmidt (2003, 2008), the term ‘media’ used in
this sense encompasses these semiotic signs as instruments of communication,
the specific technology employed by a medium, its social-systemic institution-
alization, including production conditions and distribution strategies, and the
medial designs that are available in a system (cf. also Neumann and Zierold 2010;
Rajewsky 2002, 69–149). In the case of film, ‘Hollywood’ in a literary text would
be such a systemic intermedial reference, since it evokes a certain kind of film (a
genre), whole classes of agents (producers, directors, actors etc.) and institutions
like studios, film companies and cinemas and, of course, the medial and tech-
nological design and production of moving images. In Moon Palace, the rise of
the film industry and its institutions is represented by one of the ‘new’ cinema
halls, a theater that “was one of those gaudy dream palaces built during the Great
Depression.” (Auster 1989, 52)
612 Wolfgang Hallet

On the systemic-aesthetic level, by referring to The Hudson River School as a

mainstream painting movement or to the famous TV broadcast of the first man
on the moon, Moon Palace also thematizes and reflects upon the role of popular
visual mass media, the way they affect people’s ways of seeing and looking at the
world and how they may constitute a whole way of life. The wide scope of these
considerations of visuality and sight in the novel establishes intermediality as a
metacultural dimension of the novel since it also situates all of the other media
and semiotic systems in American culture, both diachronically and synchroni-
cally. Therefore, the novel as a whole can be read as a representation of and a
reflection upon the systemic character of intermedial relations and the role of
various media in a given cultural context.

These systematic distinctions are mainly made for methodological and analytical
reasons since they facilitate the recognition and identification of the contribution of
the respective other medium and intermedial difference to the meaning of the literary
text in question. As against such a systematic approach, it is evident that the three
levels described above are always inextricably intertwined since a single medial arte-
fact always also evokes the features of the whole semiotic system in the reader, and
vice versa: Generic or systemic similarities and differences can hardly be imagined
without evoking single instances, i.e. a (prototypical) particular film, photograph or
piece of music in the reader that illustrates the genre or the system (e.g. a typical
‘Hollywood movie’).
In Moon Palace, the juxtaposition of the single artefact (the Moonlight painting
and its non-conformist painter Ralph Blakelock) and a whole school of mainstream
artists, the Hudson River School, foregrounds these different levels of intermedial
relations and abstraction and transforms them into an important element of the
novel’s plot and cultural-aesthetic reflection. In the same vein, one of the three pro-
tagonists, the narrator’s grandfather, is thus positioned in this historical field of the
art of painting (cf. Hallet 2008, 111–130) while simultaneously, more or less personi-
fied in the young narrator, cultural practices of looking and the semiotic art of seeing
are thematized and reflected upon (cf. Hallet 2008, 130–136).

3 Intratextual Functions of Intermediality

Intermedial references and representations affect many levels and dimensions of
the meaning of a literary text and its constitution by the reader. However, method-
ologically and in terms of a systematic analysis of intermedial phenomena and their
effects, it is advisable to distinguish between two basic functions of intermediality.
The first one, classified as the intratextual function, refers to the way intermediality
co-constitutes the text itself and its meaning by determining its basic constituents,
 32 A Methodology of Intermediality in Literary Studies 613

like a character or action. The second type refers to extratextual functions and effects
such as, e.g., meta-aesthetic or cultural reflections or critique. In order to identify
and assess the effects of intermediality in and on the literary text itself it is advisable
to study the constituents or elements of a given literary work. For instance, for the
drama the analysis of intermedial effects may concern the characters of the play (e.g.
their occupation with another art), the way another medium contributes to its plot
and action (e.g. the visit to an art museum), a specific space and place that is consti-
tuted and characterized (e.g. a music hall) or the thematization and negotiation of
another medium (e.g. a painting or a piece of music) in dialogic discourse.
In the following, these intratextual effects will be briefly illustrated by examining
some of the basic constituents of narrative genres:
– Plot and action: As has already been indicated, in Moon Palace some of the most
important elements of the plot and much of its action are directly connected to
works of art and other media. From the beginning, these other media feature
prominently in the novel. The visit to the Brooklyn Museum is a key episode in
the novel, and the tales of the narrator’s grandfather about his past as a painter
trigger the narrator’s adventurous journey to the American west in an attempt to
discover his grandfather’s cave paintings. In a sense, exploring other media and
the art of painting in particular, with its history, traditions and whole schools of
art, can be regarded as the main plot with repercussions on major parts of the
action and the story.
– Character and character development: Moon Palace as a whole can be regarded
as a story of initiation in which Marco Stanley Fogg, the young narrator, is intro-
duced to the art of looking, seeing and visual representation. Intermediality is
thus experienced by both the autodiegetic protagonist and the reader as a trans-
formative force that equips them with knowledge and abilities that they were for-
merly lacking and with new ways of looking at and understanding the world. Even
the neon signs of a Chinese restaurant named ‘Moon Palace’ can be regarded as
one such different medial text and system in which all of the autodiegetic narra-
tor’s experiences and reflections culminate. Thus, intermediality turns out to be
an important strategy, both for Fogg and for the narrative as a whole, that is able
to constitute and intersubjectively negotiate reality, relativizing and stabilizing
the arbitrariness of all signification. Even the ‘Moon Palace’ neon sign can be
regarded as a distinct medium, bearing the features of a higher order sign, the
meaning of which unfolds as the main character’s development and the novel as
a whole progress.
– Character constellation: Due to the features of a story of initiation that the novel
also bears, in Moon Palace the autodiegetic narrator’s development and trans-
formation is catalyzed by and directly connected with his encounter and friend-
ship with an old man who, due to his autobiographical experience and expertise,
takes on the role of a master and teacher, thus establishing a complementary
expert-novice or mentor-disciple relationship which finally materializes in the
614 Wolfgang Hallet

(supposed) revelation of a genealogical, familial relation between Effing, the

grandfather, and Fogg, his grandson. Other important character constellations
in the novel are also defined through other arts or works of art: Uncle Victor, who
takes on the role of a foster father after the death of Fogg’s mother, is a clarinettist
in a mediocre “small combo that made the usual rounds of weddings, confirma-
tions, and graduation parties.” (Auster 1989, 5) As a matter of fact, Uncle Victor,
Fogg’s temporary caretaker, is mainly characterized as a culmination point of
various medial practices since he “could not go to the ballpark without consider-
ing some minor character in Shakespeare, and then, when he finally got home,
could not sit down with his book for more than twenty minutes without feeling
the urge to play the clarinet.” (Auster 1989, 5–6)
– Themes: The implicit or explicit reference to other media in a given work of lit-
erature always establishes or at least co-constitutes the thematic issues that it
addresses. These may be of minor importance for a novel as a whole, for instance
in the case of a painting which serves as a decorative element in a room. But even
then this raises questions of the particular meaning of that one painting and its
style in the context of the novel or its relevance for the characters and their way
of life. In other cases, the reference to another medium is of a programmatic kind
and therefore central to the meaning of a novel: In Morrison’s novel jazz music
serves to reconstruct and recall the emergence and rise of the African American
community and culture in the city of New York at the beginning of the twentieth
century. In Moon Palace, intermediality is the primary overall strategy that estab-
lishes individual and cultural signifying practices, the semiotic constitution of
meaning and visual culture as main themes of the novel (cf. Hallet 2008, 111–145).
– Narrative discourse: It is obvious that references to other media affect the nar-
rative discourse and the composition of a narrative in many ways. As in Moon
Palace, the structural effects may range from ekphrastic descriptions and epi-
sodic storytelling to consciousness narration and meta-semiotic or meta-medial
reflections. In Toni Morrison’s Jazz, the composition and narrative structure of
the novel as a whole can be regarded as ‘musical’ since it imitates the aesthetic
features of jazz music by employing, e.g., the principles of the interplay of solos
and polyphony or of the call-and-response technique.
– Metafiction: Although metafictional elements of novelistic discourse are, strictly
speaking, never exclusively intratextual, they can have a considerable impact
on both a narrative’s story and the discourse. At the story level, metafictional
comments may establish a self-reflexive dimension, e.g. at the level of characters,
their mental dispositions, their cognitive engagement or their consciousness. At
the level of discourse, metafictional comments establish a self-referential dimen-
sion in which the narrator and/or the narrative examine, question or critique the
narration itself, for instance in terms of the possibility to represent the non-fic-
tional experiential world, of the reliability of story-telling or of the acts of verbal
signification in which it engages.
 32 A Methodology of Intermediality in Literary Studies 615

The rather structuralist analytical approach suggested above can, of course, only be
transformed into the fruitful whole of an interpretation if the findings at the differ-
ent levels and for the various constituents are ultimately integrated with each other
and synthesized in the formulation of a holistic description and exploration of the
meaning of the novel as a whole. In particular, such a holistic interpretation will, of
course, have to integrate all of the findings on its intermedial relations with the large
amount of other aspects that need to be analyzed and interpreted.

4 Extratextual Functions of Intermediality

As demonstrated above in the case of metafiction, a strict division of intratextual
and extratextual functions and effects of intermediality is not really possible, and
it is only methodologically justified in terms of an analytical procedure. However, in
accordance with functional approaches to literature (cf. Fluck 1997; Zapf 2002, 2005;
cf. also the respective subchapters and case studies in Wolf 1999), investigations into
intermediality must, per definition, always account for the type of relation that is
established between the given work and the respective medial phenomena outside
the literary text and the various functions that can be assigned to them. As Werner
Wolf has shown, these extratextual functions all belong to the meta-level of aesthetic,
medial and cultural reflection or self-reflection (Wolf 1999, 48–50). Once again, all of
these levels are normally intrinsically interwoven, but for the purpose of a systematic
analysis it is useful to distinguish between the following functions:
– Meta-fictional functions: Meta-fictional reflections in literature are mainly of a
self-reflexive kind and encompass reflections or comments on “the discursive,
medial or fictional status” (Wolf 1999, 48) of a text and on how the verbal literary
text arranges signs and creates meaning through its specific aesthetic style. For
instance, one of the major concerns in Moon Palace is the narrator’s ability to
‘translate’ the material and visible world into verbal language since this is why he
has been appointed by Effing, the blind old man who turns out to be his grand-
father. The narrator’s ability to mediate the visible world to Effing culminates in
the death scene in which the narrator renders a meticulous description of the
death room. Using “the same methods I had developed during our walks” (Auster
1989, 219), Fogg opens up the world to his blind grandfather by translating his
perceptions into words: “By putting these things into words for him, I gave Effing
the chance to experience them again, as if merely to take one’s place in the world
of things was a good beyond all others.” (Auster 1989, 219) In that respect, the
novel stages the world-constituting and signifying power of the word on which it
itself relies, and thus evokes the reader’s reflections on the medial and mediating
quality of the verbal language in comparison to other, particularly visual media
that the novel addresses.
616 Wolfgang Hallet

– Meta-aesthetic and meta-medial functions: Meta-aesthetic and meta-medial (self-)

reflections refer to the specific features, qualities or affordances of the medium
that is referenced or explicitly addressed, often in comparison to or across other
media. In particular, such reflections and comments may refer to the way a par-
ticular sign system is able to engage in acts of signification or the ability to create
works of art to which a more general capacity and effect is attributed: In Moon
Palace, for instance, a crucial epistemological role in culture and in individual
lives is assigned to visual and literary art by Effing: “The true purpose of art was
not to create beautiful objects, he discovered. It was a method of understanding, a
way of penetrating the world and finding one’s place in it, and whatever aesthetic
qualities an individual canvas might have were almost an incidental by-product
of the effort to engage oneself in this struggle, to enter into the thick of things.”
(Auster 1989, 170)
– Meta-cultural functions: Often the two functions addressed above go hand in
hand with a more general reflection and critique of general cultural develop-
ments, processes and practices. Thus, by focussing on visual art and artifacts,
Moon Palace foregrounds the pivotal role that visual images have played and still
play in the creation of American myths and the establishment of cultural values.
Visual images, the novel contends, helped to transform native land into American
territories and conquer ‘the West,’ and thus contributed to the formation of col-
lective images of the West and the frontier.
Furthermore, the novel also (re-)assesses the role of modern visual media like
cinema and TV. In particular, it thematizes the way visual media prefigure indi-
vidual and cultural perceptions: Images of the desert and the canyons, of the
moon and outer space, of the wilderness and the city. Books and films quoted
and referenced in the novel, e.g., Around the World in Eighty Days, have helped to
establish the cultural notion of the frontier and of the further conquest of other
territories.
Toni Morrison’s novel can be regarded as a similarly advanced form of cultural cri-
tique since her intermedial reference to jazz questions the established histories of
the so-called Jazz Age as well as American mainstream encyclopaedic historiog-
raphy. Borrowing from the patterns of the musical tradition of jazz by employing
a fragmented and polyphonic narrative technique and by exploring the musical
culture of the time from within the period through the eyes and ears of the novel’s
characters, the composition of the novel is connected with the general claim that
fiction is the more adequate, more reliable way of writing history because it can
give a voice to the marginalized or eclipsed experiences of African Americans in
the metropolises of the first decades of the twentieth century and can thus re-con-
stitute their specific contribution to art and culture.

Of course, a systematic intermedial analysis of a given literary text and the respec-
tive issues of intermediality that need to be addressed depend on specific aesthetic,
 32 A Methodology of Intermediality in Literary Studies 617

structural and thematic features. Therefore, for any meticulous scrutiny of the explicit
or implicit intermedial relations of a literary text, the kind of questions and exami-
nations proposed in this methodological contribution can be regarded as minimum
requirements and starting points. Above all, findings resulting from an intermedial
analysis will have to be counterchecked by and integrated with all the other results of
literary analysis. This needs to be emphasized since the intermedial quality of a given
text is always just one among various other features and aspects that an interpreta-
tion of a given work must account for. The relevance and position of intermediality
can only be assessed in relation to all the other factors that contribute to the meaning
of a text and in light of a holistic, more comprehensive approach to literature.

5 Bibliography
5.1 Works Cited
Auster, Paul. Moon Palace. London and Boston: Faber & Faber, 1989.
Basseler, Michael, Ansgar Nünning, and Christine Schwanecke, eds. The Cultural Dynamics
of Generic Change in Contemporary Fiction: Theoretical Frameworks, Genres and Model
Interpretations. Trier: wvt, 2013.
Bateman, John A., and Karl-Heinrich Schmidt. Multimodal Film Analysis: How Films Mean. London
and New York: Routledge, 2012.
Broich, Ulrich, and Manfred Pfister, eds. Intertextualität: Formen, Funktionen, anglistische
Fallstudien. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1985.
Brosch, Renate, ed. Moving Images – Mobile Viewers: 20th Century Visuality. Berlin: LIT, 2011.
Brown, Caroline. “Jazz (1992).” The Toni Morrison Encyclopedia. Ed. Elizabeth Ann Beaulieu.
Westport and London: Greenwood Press, 2003. 181–191.
Fluck, Winfried. Das kulturelle Imaginäre: Funktionsgeschichte des amerikanischen Romans,
1700–1900. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1997.
Hallet, Wolfgang. “Jazz: Toni Morrison’s Novel and the Use of Cultural Studies in the Literary
Classroom.” Cultural Studies in the EFL Classroom. Ed. Werner Delanoy and Laurenz Volkmann.
Heidelberg: Winter, 2006. 269–291.
Hallet, Wolfgang. Paul Auster: Moon Palace. Stuttgart: Klett, 2008.
Hallet, Wolfgang. “Medialisierung von Genres am Beispiel des Blogs und des multimodalen
Romans: Von der Schrift-Kunst zum multimodalen Design.” Medialisierung des Erzählens
im englischsprachigen Roman der Gegenwart: Theoretischer Bezugsrahmen, Genres und
Modellinterpretationen. Ed. Ansgar Nünning and Jan Rupp. Trier: wvt, 2011a. 85–116.
Hallet, Wolfgang. “Visual Images of Space, Movement and Mobility in the Multimodal Novel.”
Moving Images – Mobile Viewers: 20th Century Visuality. Ed. Renate Brosch. Berlin: LIT Verlag,
2011b. 227–248.
Hallet, Wolfgang. “The Rise of the Multimodal Novel: Generic Change and Its Narratological
Implications.” Ed. Marie-Laure Ryan and Jan-Noël Thon. Storyworlds across Media: Towards a
Media-Conscious Narratology. Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 2014. 151–172.
Ickstadt, Heinz. Der amerikanische Roman im 20. Jahrhundert: Transformation des Mimetischen.
Darmstadt: WBG, 1998.
618 Wolfgang Hallet

Kubitschek, Missy Dehn. Toni Morrison: A Critical Companion. Westport and London: Greenwood
Press, 1998.
Lewis, Barbara W. “The Function of Jazz in Toni Morrison’s Jazz.” Toni Morrison’s Fiction:
Contemporary Criticism. Ed. David L. Middleton. New York and London: Garland, 2000.
271–281.
Morrison, Toni. Jazz. 1992. London and Basingstoke: Picador, 1993.
Morrison, Toni. “Foreword.” Jazz. New York: Vintage International, 2004. xv–xix.
Neumann, Birgit and Martin Zierold. “Media as Ways of Worldmaking: Media-specific Structures
and Intermedial Dynamics.” Cultural Ways of Worldmaking: Media and Narratives. Ed. Vera
Nünning, Ansgar Nünning, and Birgit Neumann. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2010. 103–118.
Nünning, Ansgar and Jan Rupp, eds. Medialisierung des Erzählens im englischsprachigen Roman
der Gegenwart: Theoretischer Bezugsrahmen, Genres und Modellinterpretationen. Trier: wvt,
2011. 85–116.
Pfister, Manfred. Das Drama. Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 2001.
Plett, Heinrich F., ed. Intertextuality. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1991.
Rajewsky, Irina O. Intermedialität. Tübingen and Basel: Francke, 2002.
Rippl, Gabriele. Beschreibungs-Kunst: Zur intermedialen Poetik angloamerikanischer Ikontexte
(1880–2000). Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 2005.
Schmidt, Siegfried J. “Medienkulturwissenschaft.” Konzepte der Kulturwissenschaften: Theoretische
Grundlagen, Ansätze, Perspektiven. Ed. Ansgar Nünning and Vera Nünning. Stuttgart and
Weimar: Metzler, 2003. 351–369.
Schmidt, Siegfried J. “Der Medienkompaktbegriff.” Was ist ein Medium? Ed. Stefan Münker and
Alexander Roesler. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2008. 144–157.
Schwanecke, Christine. Intermedial Storytelling: Thematisation, Imitation and Incorporation of
Photography in English and American Fiction at the Turn of the 21st Century. Trier: wvt, 2012.
Wolf, Werner. The Musicalization of Fiction: A Study in the Theory and History of Intermediality.
Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 1999.
Zapf, Hubert. Literatur als kulturelle Ökologie: Zur kulturellen Funktion imaginativer Texte an
Beispielen des amerikanischen Romans. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2002.

5.2 Further Reading

Erll, Astrid. Prämediation – Remediation: Repräsentationen des indischen Aufstands in imperialen
und postkolonialen Medienkulturen (von 1857 bis zur Gegenwart). Trier: wvt, 2007.
Hallet, Wolfgang. “Intertextualität als methodisches Konzept einer kulturwissenschaftlichen
Literaturwissenschaft.” Kulturelles Wissen und Intertextualität: Theoriekonzeptionen und
Fallstudien zu Kontextualisierung von Literatur. Ed. Marion Gymnich, Birgit Neumann and
Ansgar Nünning. Trier: wvt, 2006. 53–70.
Hallet, Wolfgang. “Methoden kulturwissenschaftlicher Ansätze: Close Reading und Wide Reading.”
Methoden der literatur- und kulturwissenschaftlichen Textanalyse: Ansätze – Grundlagen –
Modellanalysen. Ed. Vera Nünning and Ansgar Nünning. Stuttgart and Weimar: Metzler, 2010.
293–315.