COMPATIVE LITERATURE : FROM COMPARATIVE MEDIACULTURAL STUDIES TO TRANSMEDIAL NARATOLOGY

Abstract

The article is devoted to the review of the prospects of multidisciplinary media-cultural studies in modern comparative literature studies towards comparative cultural studies and transmedial naratology. Comparative cultural studies syncretically combine the concepts of comparative literary criticism with the study of culture in the aspect of media-cultural studies, not limited to literature, but also various arts, mass media, computer games, etc. Literature is understood only as one of the media among other media. This is a transdisciplinary turn in comparative literature studies. Comparative naratology, and later transmedial naratology, in turn, is seen as a new discipline on the verge of literary comparativism, intermedialism, and naratology. The typology of intermedial forms of naratology in the classifications of Werner Wolf, Marie-Laure Ryan, and Jan-Noël Thon is discussed. Modern studies of various medial forms of narratives, which may also be presented in cinema, painting, graphic arts, ballet, comic books, and other mediums, and the discovery of the intermedial properties of narratives, lead to a rethinking of the fact that all narratives have a purely linguistic nature. Modern naratology as a separate discipline tends to go beyond purely literary narrative and transfer the concept of narration to other types of arts. Intermediate methodologies have already entered into comparative literature studies and have been successfully used in the analysis of literary works. It is about syncretic theoretical and methodological synthesis of three branches of art studies — naratology, intermedialism and literary comparativism, cross-disciplinary narrative studies. The combination of narrative and intermedial approaches to literature is becoming one of the most urgent tendencies of modern both naratology and the theory and practice of intermediality.