Intermediality is quite a new field in academic research, and has usually not found a place of its own as a separate field in Academia. It is usually studied indirectly in esablished academic fields such as literary studies, film studies, arts, media studies, etc. In literary studies, it is usually the diachronic form of intermediality, or extracompositional intermediality according to other models, that is studied, that is the form which involves a change between two media, such as adaptation or ekphrasis. According to intermediality researchers, such as Werner Wolf, Lars Elleström, Irina Rajewsky, Jørgen Bruhn, etc., the diachronic form of intermediality is just one side of the coin, and the synchronic form, or intracompositional intermediality, should not be neglected. Synchronic intermediality, or rather intracompositional intermediality, is well explained in Werner Wolf’s model from an article in 2005, and can be exemplified by different forms of references or formal imitation between different media.

This paper will start by an overview of intermediality theory, as already mentioned above, before going over to the question of how intermediality can be approached in literature from a didactic point of view, especially at higher levels, that is upper secondary school or university. Both the diachronic and the synchronic forms of intermediality will be studied in a number of examples from literature.