Interfiguralitätsstrategien: Fontanes realistische Melusine als transfiktionales Phänomen

Abstract Realistic conceptions of genuinely fantastic literary or mythical characters, such as Theodor Fontane’s Melusine, represent what Umberto Eco refers to as “floating individuals.” These characters are transfictional as they are highly decontextualized from their narrative origin and thus a challenge for intertextuality and intermedia studies: the name implies a relationship with another text or medium but the representation does not offer any information about the relationship’s quality. To examine the range of (re-)presentation strategies and to shed some light on the transfictional background of the character as it is represented in Theodor Fontane’s novel Der Stechlin, I borrow ‘interfigurality’ as an umbrella term from Wolfgang G. Müller. Fontane’s myth-reflexive intermedia strategies come fully to the fore in contrast with the unknown novel Lady Melusine by Eufemia von Ballestrem on the one hand and in comparison with contemporary art on the other. The localization within an intermedia network reveals that the practice of the literary re-production of realistic characters as a “work on myth” (Blumenberg) is reflexive and critical or affirmative towards popular usage such as branding, labeling, or namedropping.