The rise of digital media has transformed how we engage with literature, reshaped our engagement with litera-ture, and how we access and experience literary works. In the present media ecology, the verbally expressed human experience we refer to as literature is no longer confined to text and printed books. Intermediality offers a valuable framework for unpacking the evolving dynamics of literature in the contemporary media landscape. This paper draws attention to the various intermedial relationships of literature, and highlights the interplay between technical devices that give access to texts, images, and sounds that are formed by conventions and contexts. Lars Elleström’s theoretical framework of media types and media modalities (2010; 2021) offers a set of flexible and precise concepts to examine these diverse and multi-layered relationships. The analysis of the digital artwork Evolution by the Swedish poet Johannes Heldén demonstrates how Elleström’s media modalities enable a fine-grained analysis of intermedial relationships and a stable frame for comparisons across media borders. The framework not only enhances our comprehension of intermedial relationships in artistic media but also empowers humanist scholars to address the complex convergence of modes and media in a digitized society.
Ej belagd 20240403