Transécriture and Narrative Mediatics

Abstract

Adaptation, mediality, and intermediality: these are the issues engaged in our text. Our original aim was to demonstrate that, in moving from one medium to another, the "subject" of a story -we will return to the issue of what we mean by "subject" -would necessarily undergo a series of informing and deforming constraints linked to what might be called the new medium's intrinsic configuration, since each subject would be presumably endowed with its own configuration. This configuration, in our original conception, would be always already more or less compatible with a particular medium and would thus preprogram, as it were, any process of adaptation. Beginning from these early intuitions, we decided to develop a deeper reflection concerning adaptation, rewriting, transécriture, and trans-semioticization. The first question we confronted is at the very kernel of the whole problematic: is it possible for the story (fabula) to exist outside any and all media? Or, to put it differently, is it possible to imagine a story in a kind of original virgin state, prior to any mediatic incarnation?

The materiality of the intangible: Literary metaphor in multimodal texts

“…This material mapping (Hayles, 2001: 31) transfers to the reader of these texts, as ‘the reader’s physical as well as cognitive encounters with the text as much form the basis of the text as the words and links provided by the author’ (Nack, 2009: 15–16). Gaudreault and Marion argue that the text’s fabula 7 is manifest not only in the syuzhet’s text but also the structure of the syuzhet (2004: n.p. ); the materiality of the syuzhet’s medium not only informs but actually forms the text, ‘alter[ing] the conditions of reception’ (Ryan, 2009: 4).…”

Transmedial Narration

“…However, as a rule, a story, consisting of the essential temporal structure of a narrative, is more transmedial than the complete narrative, although probably never wholly transmedial (cf. rewarding discussions of this issue in Gaudreault and Marion 2004).…”

“…The following list of examples of media that have been investigated from a narratological perspective since the 1970s (especially highlighting early studies of the respective media types) demonstrates impressive breadth. Apart from numerous studies of narration in various forms of written literature, there have been studies on narration in spoken, everyday language (Labov 1972); comics (Hünig 1974;Abbott 1986); painting (Alpers 1976;Steiner 1988: 7-42;Wolf , 2004; literature and film ; comics and image sequences (Schnackertz 1980); written language, painting, and film (Goodman 1981); history writing (White 1981); painting and reliefs on ancient urns, walls, columns, and sarcophagi (Brilliant 1984); film music (Gorbman 1987); instrumental music Kramer 1991); drama (Richardson 1988); television news (Campbell and Reeves 1989); written and oral language in the legal system (Brooks and Gewirtz 1998); literature and history writing (Canary and Kozicki 1978;Cohn 1990); mural decoration in churches (Lavin 1990); written language in economics and the natural sciences (Nash 1990); music in general and opera (Abbate 1991;McClatchie 1997); advertisements (Stern 1994); spoken, everyday language and literature ; dance (Foster 1996); painting and photography ; maps, diagrams, and advertisements (Kress and van Leeuwen 1996: 45-78); family photographs (Hirsch 1997); hypertext (Hayles 2001); still images and moving images (Ribière and Baetens 2001); film and television programs (Thompson 2003); all kinds of artistic media (Gaudreault and Marion 2004); computer games (Neitzel 2005); radio broadcasts of sports events (Ryan 2006); literature, comics, film, radio play, and hypertext (Mahne 2007); visual diagrams (Ryan 2007); music, literature, an...…”

Opening

“…The following list of examples of media that have been investigated from a narratological perspective since the 1970s (especially highlighting early studies of the respective media types) demonstrates impressive breadth. Apart from numerous studies of narration in various forms of written literature, there have been studies on narration in spoken, everyday language (Labov 1972); comics (Hünig 1974;Abbott 1986); painting (Alpers 1976;Steiner 1988: 7-42;Wolf 2003Wolf , 2004; literature and film (Chatman 1978); comics and image sequences (Schnackertz 1980); written language, painting, and film (Goodman 1981); history writing (White 1981); painting and reliefs on ancient urns, walls, columns, and sarcophagi (Brilliant 1984); film music (Gorbman 1987); instrumental music (Newcomb 1987;Kramer 1991); drama (Richardson 1988); television news (Campbell and Reeves 1989); written and oral language in the legal system (Brooks and Gewirtz 1998); literature and history writing (Canary and Kozicki 1978;Cohn 1990); mural decoration in churches (Lavin 1990); written language in economics and the natural sciences (Nash 1990); music in general and opera (Abbate 1991;McClatchie 1997); advertisements (Stern 1994); spoken, everyday language and literature (Fludernik 1996); dance (Foster 1996); painting and photography (Kafalenos 1996); maps, diagrams, and advertisements (Kress and van Leeuwen 1996: 45-78); family photographs (Hirsch 1997); hypertext (Hayles 2001); still images and moving images (Ribière and Baetens 2001); film and television programs (Thompson 2003); all kinds of artistic media (Gaudreault and Marion 2004); computer games (Neitzel 2005)…”