Adaptation has long been used as a way of making literature more accessible and easier to study at different school levels. Film adaptations of novels in particular are shown by teachers, often as a way into the medium of literature, to which young people are less and less exposed in this era of digital media. However, the use of adaptations in teaching situations is not based on any theoretical model, and thus not systematic. Film adaptations are usually used in improvised and instinctive manners, without clear objectives. Even as such, they offer obvious possibilities, such as an easier way to visualizing literary aspects, and sometimes a more convenient way to approach a literary work, since seeing a film takes less time than reading a book and since young people are much more used to the medium of film. There are however also downfalls. The most obvious one is overlooking the specificity of the medium of literature, which is completely built on written language, and consequently an exaggerated focus on aspects of literature that are less connected to language, such as plot, setting or characters. Comparing rather superficial differences between the source medium and the target medium is rarely enlightening, and leads often to judging the fidelity value of the film adaptation, something that has been more or less discarded in adaptation theory already from George Bluestone’s pioneering book from 1957 Novels into Films (see also Stam 2000, Hutcheon 2006, etc.). But most importantly, what is usually overlooked is the possibility of highlighting specific literary devices by comparing them to their use in adaptations. The most interesting such devices are narrative techniques, since narration is a common feature for both literature and films. In this paper, I take a closer look at how adaptations can be used in teaching situations exactly in order to highlight literary specificity. On the basis of my own teaching situations at university level, I show how devices such as narrative voice or description can be studied using film adaptations, or rather using an intermedial approach, according to the definition of the concept by Swedish scholar Lars Elleström. Indeed, adaptation has to do with much more than only the two media of literature and film, and being conscious about that improves both the student’s understanding and his or her joy of reading. Thus, in the case of description, even cases where paintings have been discussed in the teaching situations, or rather “ekphrases”, are analyzed.

Ekphrasis has been a concept that has been at the core of theoretical controversies during centuries. This might seem expected, since it had a dichotomous nature already from the start, in ancient Roman rhetorics. Indeed, its definition as “a speech that brings the subject matter vividly before the eyes” (Webb 2009) points to the existence of two different fields that are brought together: the speech and a subject described through that speech. Scholars throughout the centuries have insisted on the complex relation between the two different fields, but even the theoretical discourse has been repleted with by different dichotomies. Thus, for instance, from the beginning, the dichotomy absentia-presentia was all important, since the object described was not supposed to be physically present for the listener. Later on, when ekphrasis became rather a literary figure, the dichotomy words-images became central, when Leo Spitzer (1955) defined it as “the poetic description of a pictorial or sculptural work of art”. Subsequent scholars used other dichotomies, such as “notional” vs. “actual” ekphrasis according to John Hollander (1995), real vs. fictitious text according to Claus Clüver (1998), “media representation” vs. “transmediation” as in intermediality theory (Lars Elleström 2014), human subject or nonhuman object (Bill Brown 2016), or even subject vs. object or mind vs. matter in general, as in new materialist approaches. This lecture will problematize some of these dichotomies, as well as some classifications, on the basis of an empirical experiment, being thus itself at the junction of a dichotomy: theory vs. empiricism. The aim is however not to resolve the existing dichotomies enumerated above, but rather to show how the friction between opposites can form such an innovative and time-enduring device as ekphrasis has proven to be.

In this article, the concept of the “narrator” is presented and put to a test, especially in its necessary connection to a linguistic sphere. On the basis of a theoretical discussion of narration as a transmedial phenomenon, that is a phenomenon existing in various media, the article will try to show that the narrator too is a transmedial device, whose existence is not necessarily related to language it its strictest linguistic meaning. The narrator is rather a mental construction in the process of communication at the basis of certain media types. Admittedly, its origin as a theoretical concept in the field of modern narratology is mainly the novel as epitomized by the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Indeed, in no other specific media product has the narrator had such a prominent role as in these novels, which have been used by narratologists for the development of most of the existing concepts in the field. However, the fact that a device is prominent in a certain media type should not restrict its use to that media type alone. On the contrary, its applicability to other media is especially interesting to study. This is what will be done in this article, starting with a general theoretical discussion of the concept of “narrator” and continuing with an overview of the possibility of the existence of the narrator in both literature and other media types, both language-based and not.

This article makes an overview of the relation between narratology and intermediality asexemplified by Swedish intermediality scholar Lars Elleström’s approach. In a book from 2019, entitledTransmedial Narration. Narratives and Stories in Different Media, Elleström presents his approach to narra-tology and elaborates the concept of “transmedial narration” on the basis of his earlier theoretical model ofintermedial relations. The search for a concept of narration that should be as simple and flexible as possi-ble, in order for it to be applied to as many media types as possible, leads Elleström to the conclusion thatthe concepts stemming from classical narratology are not suitable in a transmedial context, since they aretoo media specific. Even if I support Elleström’s effort to open up narration to other media types, I find thatFrench scholar Gérard Genette’s detailed narratological model from 1972 can be used as the basic toolwhen analyzing works form other media than literature. This hypothesis is tested in the article in a numberof media types which are increasingly different from literature.

As a result of the COVID19 crisis in 2020, the courses of French at Linnaeus University in Sweden have moved from face-to-face context to Remote Learning online. The move has since then become permanent and the syllabus has changed accordingly, as it appears when comparing the syllabus of 2015 with the syllabus of 2022 (see references below). The challenges have been numerous, and the two years that have passed since the move can allow me to make a preliminary study of these challenges. The study will be mainly based on the gathered experience, concentrating on the module of fiction (7.5 credits, see references below), since I am currently, and was in 2015, the teacher of that module. The study will consist of detailed analyses of how the objectives, the content, the type of instruction, the examination and the course evaluation have been affected by the move from face-to-face to remote learning. The specific context of the course will be described in the introductory part, since it has a major importance for the study and its results. Indeed, an important premise has changed in these two years, namely that the number of students has increased significantly. While this is a positive outcome for the situation of French as a subject at Linnaeus University, it has a major impact on the comparison between the two situations, since it affects especially the type of instruction, beyond the simple change of context from face-to-face to remote learning. However, some preliminary conclusions can be drawn, and the investigation in itself is important in order to make improvements and to disseminate my experience.

In this article, the concept of the “narrator” is presented and put to a test, especially in its necessary connection to a linguistic sphere. On the basis of a theoretical discussion of narration as a transmedial phenomenon, that is a phenomenon existing in various media, the article will try to show that the narrator too is a transmedial device, whose existence is not necessarily related to language it its strictest linguistic meaning. The narrator is rather a mental construction in the process of communication at the basis of certain media types. Admittedly, its origin as a theoretical concept in the field of modern narratology is mainly the novel as epitomized by the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Indeed, in no other specific media product has the narrator had such a prominent role as in these novels, which have been used by narratologists for the development of most of the existing concepts in the field. However, the fact that a device is prominent in a certain media type should not restrict its use to that media type alone. On the contrary, its applicability to other media is especially interesting to study. This is what will be done in this article, starting with a general theoretical discussion of the concept of “narrator” and continuing with an overview of the possibility of the existence of the narrator in both literature and other media types, both language-based and not.

In Nick Hornby’s novel High Fidelity (1995), the life of the protagonist Rob revolves around records and popular music. Throughout Virginia Woolf’s novel To the Lighthouse (1927), the painter Lily Briscoe works on a portrait of her friend Mrs Ramsay. In James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922), Leopold Bloom’s thoughts, memories and associations are informed by newspaper headlines, snatches of songs, advertising slogans and poster headlines as he walks through the streets of Dublin.

In media types such as novels, paintings, films, computer games and news articles, we encounter characters, avatars or persons that interact with pictures, musical instruments, photos, computers, record players, newspapers or television sets or go to football games. Still, how do we know that the representation of media products or mediatypes means something? Or that references to familiar media types have a symbolic value? In this chapter, we will demonstrate how the representation of media can be analysed. We will focus on narrative literature, but the analytical method is applicable to film, computer games, photography and visual art as well. In the first part of the chapter, we will explore media that are represented inside the diegetic universe.  In the second part of the chapter, we will turn to novels whose narrative structure and style remind readers of other medial experiences, such as watching a movie, looking at an image or listening to music. The effect of structural media representation is to give the impression that the literary text imitates film, music or images. It changes the experience ofreading and draws attention to aspects of literature and language that we usuallypay less attention to.