Dialogues of the Media: Intermedial Reflexivity in Contemporary Literature and Film

Prof. Dr. Isabelle Stauffer

Project duration: 02/2020 to 09/2025

Planned publication: anthology, monograph

In contemporary literature and film, intermedial references reflecting on their own mediality and that of other media are widespread. This increased reflection is not only based on a postmodern desire to play, but also on a precarious situation: the book industry is in a deep crisis and the movie theater closings have only been intensified by the Corona pandemic. In the face of strong media competition from the Internet and digital television, the two older and equally threatened media, literature and motion pictures, are increasingly reflecting on their potentials and limits in a reciprocal dialogue.

Contemporary novels such as Christian Kracht's Imperium or Die Toten, Benjamin Stein's Replay or Thomas von Steinäcker's Geister make reference to the medium of film, and post-2000 films such as Finding Forrester, Stranger Than Fiction or Atonement refer metafictionally to the medium of literature, thus opening up intermedial spaces of reflection between literature and film. The project investigates the forms and functions of this frequent intermedial reflexivity between literature and film in the face of the digital revolution. Of particular interest are also the medial strategies of presentation and the narrative functions of letters in film. Overall, the attempts at incorporation, demarcation, and repositioning of the various media that accompany these dialogizing references will be examined.