2021: Literature within the intermedial perspective

Literature within the intermedial perspective

Invitation to another issue of the Czytanie Literatury. Łódzkie Studia Literaturoznawcze journal

We are living in an age of intermediality and heterogeneity of the field of artistic practices, in which any rigid boundaries between individual artistic domains have long disappeared. Today “in art anything can interact with anything else.” Therefore, if we intend to view literature as a phenomenon transcending the limitations of language, one which consists of a multitude of media, we need to initiate a perspective which can extract the complex, synthetic and yet hybrid nature of literary texts, and abandon the strictly literature-centred approach, which has guarded the aesthetics of a “pure work of art” for decades. That seems obvious in the age of visual culture as each medium holds its own complex and heterogeneous status. Yet it might be prudent to consider whether intermediality has not already been a feature of artistic projects for a long time, and whether one realises the hybrid nature of the medium of a literary text (including in its earlier than modern forms) that does not expose the medium’s previously unnoticed, omitted and marginalised aspects and meanings.

The term of intermediality, as Andrzej Hejmej noted, can mean different things: “for some it defines the nature of contemporary cultural communication and the fact of their existence within the media society (...), while others refer it – as a strictly profiled notion – to the aesthetics sometimes overtly referred to as intermedial aesthetics (...), and for others still it denotes all possible relationships and fusions of the arts which have occurred since antiquity.” Thus, without limiting the meaning of the notion and leaving the above classification open to various additions and revisions, we invite you to reflect on the topic of intermediality of literature in the modern world and in the epochs past (in the Old Polish epoch, and in the 18th and 19th centuries). We are particularly interested in the interpretative practice found within the area of (inter)mediality studies, which tests the ability to apply theoretical findings to the readings of specific literary texts which represent various periods, aesthetics, and styles. We are also interested in theoretical studies devoted to the phenomenon of literature’s intermediality considered in reference to various domains of art.

Please send your topic proposals and short abstracts by 31 Jan 2021. We shall wait for your final articles by 30 Apr 2021. We also encourage you to send in texts for the regular sections of our journal: articles, discussions, reviews, and interviews. Please send all your applications to one of the following addresses:

Krystyna Pietrych pietrych@op.pl

Anita Jarzyna anitajarzyna@gmail.com