Intermedial

The adjective intermedial derives from the term intermediate. The latter has been used since the late sixteenth century (OED) to describe something as being in the middle or in between. By contrast, intermedial/intermediality is a more recent term that has spread internationally in research since the 1980s and that generally (as the prefix inter- implies) describes interactions that—implicitly or explicitly—occur between different media. In this sense, the term intermediality transfers Julia Kristeva’s (1986) term intertextuality into a media-related context. Jürgen E. Müller speaks in this respect of “crossing borders between media and media disorder” (1996, 16). However, one problem in defining intermediality is that the media can be defined narrowly or broadly (Wolf 2005, 252). And this is coupled with the question of what constitutes a distinct medium in the first place. Werner Wolf’s answer relies on the underlying semiotic system: “Intermediality deals with media as conventionally distinct means of communicating cultural contents. Media in this sense are specified principally by the nature of their underlying semiotic systems… and only in the second place by technical or institutional channels” (2005, 252). Following this semiotic definition, intermedial phenomena in the broadest sense denote processes, couplings, interferences, and overlaps between at least two different media that traverse the boundaries between them (see Wolf 2005, 252; Rajewsky 2010, 51). Reflecting the fluid nature of intermedial exchange, related research takes place not just in the context of literary studies but also in film, media, music, theater, and art studies (see Kaye 2000; H. Jenkins 2006; Grishakova and Ryan 2010; Rippl 2015; Bruhn 2016). A literary perspective, however, foregrounds various processes of intermedial exchange in the field of children’s and youth literature.