The Concept "Transmediality", and an Example

Transmediality refers to the potential of concepts to "travel" across arts or media and is thus related to intermediality, although not all scholars consider it a variant of intermediality. This contributionargues that it makes sense to do so. Some of the benefits of this classification will be illustrated with respect to repetition in literature and music. Transmedial comparisons often show that some media or media-specific genres can realize a transmedial phenomenon better than others. This is also the case with repetition. It will be pointed out that, owing to the incompatibility between narrativity and large-scale, merely form-motivated repetition, the latter is more frequent in tendentially non-narrative media or genres and that the tendency towards, or avoidance of, such repetition can indicate the narrative potential of a given medium or genre. Besides being a contribution to inter- or transmediality studies, the essay is thus relevant to narratology.