Table Of ContentDescription in Literature
and Other Media
S i (Sim)
tudieS in ntermediality
2
Executive Editor:
Walter Bernhart, Graz
Series Editors:
Lawrence Kramer, New York
Hans Lund, Lund
Ansgar Nünning, Gießen
Werner Wolf, Graz
The book series STUDIES IN INTERMEDIALITY (SIM), launched in
2006, is devoted to scholarly research in the field of Intermedia Studies
and, thus, in the broadest sense, addresses all phenomena involving
more than one communicative medium. More specifically, it concerns
itself with the wide range of relationships established among the various
media and investigates how concepts, of a more general character, find
diversified manifestations and reflections in the different media. The
book series is related to, and part of, the activities of the Intermediality
Programme of the Humanities Faculty at the Karl-Franzens-Universität
Graz/Austria.
STUDIES IN INTERMEDIALITY (SIM) publishes, generally on an annual
basis, theme-oriented volumes, documenting and critically assessing
the scope, theory, methodology, and the disciplinary and institutional
dimensions and prospects of Intermedia Studies on an international
scale: conference proceedings, university lecture series, collections of
scholarly essays, and, occasionally, monographs on pertinent individual
topics reflecting more general issues.
Description
in Literature and Other Media
Edited by
Werner Wolf and Walter Bernhart
Amsterdam - New York, NY 2007
Cover Illustration:
Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre. Boulevard du Temple, Paris (c. 1838).
Daguerreotype (12,9 x 16,3 cm). Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, Munich
The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “ISO
9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents -
Requirements for permanence”.
ISBN: 978-90-420-2310-9
©Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam – New York, NY 2007
Printed in The Netherlands
Contents
Preface .............................................................................................. vii
Introduction
Werner Wolf
Description as a Transmedial Mode of Representation: General
Features and Possibilities of Realization in Painting, Fiction and
Music .................................................................................................. 1
Description in Literature and Related (Partly) Verbal Media
Ansgar Nünning
Towards a Typology, Poetics and History of Description
in Fiction.............................................................................................91
Walter Bernhart
Functions of Description in Poetry ................................................. 129
Arno Heller
Description in American Nature Writing ....................................... 153
Doris Mader
The Descriptive in Audio-/Radioliterature – a ‘Blind Date’? ........ 179
Klaus Rieser
For Your Eyes Only: Some Thoughts on the Descriptive
in Film ............................................................................................. 215
Description in Visual Media
Johann Konrad Eberlein
Dürer’s Apocalypse as the Origin of the Western System
of Graphic Reproduction: A Contribution to the History of
Descriptive Techniques in the Visual Arts ..................................... 239
Götz Pochat
“Spiritualia sub metaphoris corporalium”? Description in the
Visual Arts ...................................................................................... 265
Susanne Knaller
Descriptive Images: Authenticity and Illusion in Early and
Contemporary Photography ............................................................ 289
Description in Music
Michael Walter
Musical Sunrises: A Case Study of the Descriptive Potential
of Instrumental Music ..................................................................... 319
Notes on Contributors ..................................................................... 337
Preface
Intermediality studies in a broad sense, besides dealing with artefacts
that involve more than one medium, are also concerned with phenom-
ena that can be observed in several media and/or arts. This ‘trans-
medial’ perspective opens a rich mine of medial comparisons both
from a systematic and a historical perspective.
The present volume, the second in the series Studies in Intermediality,
continues this transmedial approach which already informed the first
volume, dedicated to Framing in Literature and Other Media (2006).
This time the transmedial phenomenon under scrutiny is description.
Description has traditionally been discussed as a monomedial and in-
deed monogeneric phenomenon from a decidedly monodisciplinary
perspective. It is a curious fact that even within literary studies, and
more precisely within narratology, description has received much less
attention than, for instance, narrativity. Indeed, in a recent introduc-
tion to narratology, Monika Fludernik’s Einführung in die Erzählthe-
orie (2006), this lack of critical attention concerning description was
again mentioned and further research in the field registered as an
important desideratum. The scholarly neglect of description is all the
more surprising in comparison to, e. g., much-researched narrativity,
as description also constitutes a major ‘semiotic macro-mode’ or
‘macro-frame’ which by far transcends the boundaries of narrative
texts, or even of literature in general.
One aim of the present volume is to contribute to filling this con-
spicuous research lacuna and to generally rekindle critical attention to
description as a major phenomenon which is in fact relevant not only
to novels and short stories but also, for instance, to lyric poetry, film,
the visual arts, and arguably even to music. The introductory essay in
this volume therefore offers a detailed theoretical discussion of de-
scription, which is from the very start conceived of as a transmedial
phenomenon applicable to more media than merely literature. The en-
suing contributions are dedicated to individual media both from a
theoretical and historical point of view.
The volume originated from a cycle of lectures held at the University
of Graz in the summer term of 2005 as a part of the Intermediality
Programme of the university’s Humanities Faculty and presents a se-
lection from the lectures given.
viii
The publication of this book would not have been possibly without
‘pooling’ the expertise of scholars from various fields, and it is there-
fore the editors’ principal duty to thank the contributors to the afore-
mentioned lecture series for their efforts. I would like to voice my
thanks also on behalf of co-editor Walter Bernhart, who gave invalu-
able support to the enterprise both in matters of organization and of
scholarly content. In addition, I would like to thank Ingrid Hable for
her valuable work in preparing the manuscript in the first phase of the
editing process, as well as Katharina Bantleon for taking over Ingrid
Hable’s task in the decisive later phase in such an expert and enthu-
siastic way.
Graz, July 2007 Werner Wolf
Introduction
