<p>What is the relation of image and word, of sentences and pictures? What kind of message does this combination produce when juxtaposed on a single material plane? And how do we read its “infinite” relation? These are the questions at the center of this inquiry. My main interest concerns the exact nature of the relation between photographic images and textual elements of poetic language when these are juxtaposed in what I call Phototext poetry.</p><p>The thesis calls into question the conventional reading habits of the conjunction of photographs and texts, and seeks to understand the more complex connections intrinsic to the relation image/word and its material and perceptual play in poetic works. Does a text always “anchor” the multiple meanings of an image, as Roland Barthes argues? What if the alterations of an image could “anchor” certain fractions of a poetic, polysemantic textual construct? Is a photograph indifferent to the visual, material permutations of texts that certain contemporary poetic practices produce?</p><p>I discuss phototextual works and collaborations of various kinds, from Molin fontän [“Molin’s fountain”] (1866) over classic surrealist poetry to language-oriented writing. This last interest also shows (with ambiguity) in the thesis’ two close readings: 23:23 (2006) by Swedish poet Marie Silkeberg and The Tango (2001) by American poet Leslie Scalapino. Throughout the study, I also put these in relation to other works of various, and related, kinds, such as artists’ books, concrete poetry, and phototexts in 20th century art.</p><p>My theoretization of phototext poetry focuses on questions of function. My perspective on the phototextual meeting in poetry is therefore concerned, not with taxonomy, but with local, contingent definitions. That is not to say, however, that certain things cannot be attributed to its particular, juxtaposed form. An “unthinkable space” (Michel Foucault), the relation between verbal and visual derives its dynamics from the different ways it actually makes itself “thinkable” and, furthermore, is materially represented. From Craig Dworkin’s conception of illegibility, Jacques Ranciere’s term phrase-image, and Roland Barthes’s obtuse meaning, I try to weave a network of connections concerning the reader’s relation to the photo/text conjunction. My argument that a certain phrase can cooperate with a certain part of an image, that a photo can “anchor” a specific meaning in a polysemantic text, and that the typographical appearance of a text may well have a plastic quality, also suggests a reading that focuses on systems of verbivisual parts and contingent intermedial meetings rather than the stable relation of a determining text and a determined image. In sum, I argue that the relation of photographs and texts must always be approached as a local problem.</p><p>My second argument is that the phototext is a self-reflexive form – it investigates itself, as it were. When a photograph and a (poetic) text are juxtaposed, they try to define their own media characteristics. In short, they often investigate the premises for phototextual documentation, communication, and aesthetics. The phototextual form therefore shares a photographic trait, as a “process of rendering observation self-conscious” (John Berger).</p><p>I also trace the supplementariness and discursiveness of the relation between image and word, and investigate how it affects our reading of this “disjunctive conjunction”. The text and the image run through each other, both inside and among us, as Rancière would have it. This, in turn, produces a contemporary approach to aesthetics (as a term and philosophical tradition) in this thesis, which involves the practice as much as the aesthetic perception of the phototextual combination. However, I also see as necessary to negotiate with the ways in which the image-word relation has been theorized since the early eighteenth century, as well as with earlier, even ancient, conceptions.</p><p>In short, the aim of this thesis is to conceptualize the relation of photographs and texts in phototext poetry, not by destroying the dualistic positions of the visual and the verbal, but rather by re-negotiating them: by approaching them as located inside as well as between these two media, image and text. The relation of photographs and poetic text, I therefore suggest, performs its work “inside” language, at the same time opening up towards the “infinity of language” (Barthes).</p>

This dissertation examines landscape as a concept for analysis and interpretation in film studies by considering the New Hollywood cinema in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Contextualized within the contested notion of nationhood at the time as well as the concern among filmmakers to probe the properties, practices and traditions of American cinema, this was also a period when landscape underwent widespread redefinition as a field of artistic and academic practice. From the outset an aesthetic and pictorial concept, landscape is understood as consisting of a number of interacting ideas and systems of representation which are addressed in terms of intermedial relations. Not something to be encountered or discovered and fixed on canvas or film, landscape involves an ongoing process of construction, appropriation and transformation. Departing from a discussion of the historical role landscape has played in cultural practices of self-representation and self-definition, this study is concerned with how it can be turned against itself and used as a point of departure for adversary and antagonistic views of national myths and media. The organization is roughly chronological, based around a series of reconsiderations of key films, mainly focusing on road movies and genre-revisionist work of the period. Rather than a repository of stable identities and values, each chapter shows how landscape can be advanced in a process of reflecting on attempts to impose meaning, order and linearity. Taken together, Out of Site argues that an engagement with the surfaces and depths of landscape enables new perspectives on the interrelations between the highbrow and the popular, aesthetics and ideology. Bringing attention to how story patterns and audience expectations are displaced, landscape is examined for the questions it raises regarding representational and narrative strategies, the formation of identity and memory, and our own habits of reading.

The dissertation deals with two different subjects: on the one hand the interrelations of narrative prose fiction and narrative fiction film, on the other hand fictional narration and intermediality as such. The first part discusses the concepts of medium and intermediality, and presents some general theoretical models. Of special importance is the three level structure of fictional representations: sign vehicle, meaning and fictional content. The second part focuses on the qualities of the sign vehicle, and on different kinds of meaning and fictional content. The sign vehicle of language and literature is digital, and consists of replicas of types. The film medium is analogue, the cinematic sign is a copy. The conventionality of literary fictions is primary, i. e. literary meaning depends on the conventions of language. The conventionality of film narratives is secondary, mediated by non-conventional meaning. The second part also deals with specific, general, generic, concrete and abstract meaning, and discusses the concepts of metaphor, symbol and expression. Part three focuses on iconic and index relations, i. e. relations of similarity and contiguity, of the fictional representation. Cinematic narratives are characterized by primary iconicity, i. e. all meaning and fictional content are dependent on the iconic relation between the poles of the representation. The iconicity of prose fiction is, by contrast, secondary, mediated by conventional sign relations. Also abductive and performative, fictional and non-fictional indexical signs, and different kinds of implications and lacunas are discussed. Part four deals with the concepts of fictionality and narrative perspective, such as the fictional stance, the narrator and focalization. Four different notions of fictionality are scrutinized and brought together, and narrative perspective is described and analyzed in terms of two different game fictions: epic games and perceptual games. Depending on the semiotic resources, the possibilities and limits of prose fiction and fiction film described in the first three parts of the dissertation, fictional games are shown to be more or less rich and realistic.

What is the relation of image and word, of sentences and pictures? What kind of message does this combination produce when juxtaposed on a single material plane? And how do we read its “infinite” relation? These are the questions at the center of this inquiry. My main interest concerns the exact nature of the relation between photographic images and textual elements of poetic language when these are juxtaposed in what I call Phototext poetry. The thesis calls into question the conventional reading habits of the conjunction of photographs and texts, and seeks to understand the more complex connections intrinsic to the relation image/word and its material and perceptual play in poetic works. Does a text always “anchor” the multiple meanings of an image, as Roland Barthes argues? What if the alterations of an image could “anchor” certain fractions of a poetic, polysemantic textual construct? Is a photograph indifferent to the visual, material permutations of texts that certain contemporary poetic practices produce? I discuss phototextual works and collaborations of various kinds, from Molin fontän [“Molin’s fountain”] (1866) over classic surrealist poetry to language-oriented writing. This last interest also shows (with ambiguity) in the thesis’ two close readings: 23:23 (2006) by Swedish poet Marie Silkeberg and The Tango (2001) by American poet Leslie Scalapino. Throughout the study, I also put these in relation to other works of various, and related, kinds, such as artists’ books, concrete poetry, and phototexts in 20th century art. My theoretization of phototext poetry focuses on questions of function. My perspective on the phototextual meeting in poetry is therefore concerned, not with taxonomy, but with local, contingent definitions. That is not to say, however, that certain things cannot be attributed to its particular, juxtaposed form. An “unthinkable space” (Michel Foucault), the relation between verbal and visual derives its dynamics from the different ways it actually makes itself “thinkable” and, furthermore, is materially represented. From Craig Dworkin’s conception of illegibility, Jacques Ranciere’s term phrase-image, and Roland Barthes’s obtuse meaning, I try to weave a network of connections concerning the reader’s relation to the photo/text conjunction. My argument that a certain phrase can cooperate with a certain part of an image, that a photo can “anchor” a specific meaning in a polysemantic text, and that the typographical appearance of a text may well have a plastic quality, also suggests a reading that focuses on systems of verbivisual parts and contingent intermedial meetings rather than the stable relation of a determining text and a determined image. In sum, I argue that the relation of photographs and texts must always be approached as a local problem. My second argument is that the phototext is a self-reflexive form – it investigates itself, as it were. When a photograph and a (poetic) text are juxtaposed, they try to define their own media characteristics. In short, they often investigate the premises for phototextual documentation, communication, and aesthetics. The phototextual form therefore shares a photographic trait, as a “process of rendering observation self-conscious” (John Berger). I also trace the supplementariness and discursiveness of the relation between image and word, and investigate how it affects our reading of this “disjunctive conjunction”. The text and the image run through each other, both inside and among us, as Rancière would have it. This, in turn, produces a contemporary approach to aesthetics (as a term and philosophical tradition) in this thesis, which involves the practice as much as the aesthetic perception of the phototextual combination. However, I also see as necessary to negotiate with the ways in which the image-word relation has been theorized since the early eighteenth century, as well as with earlier, even ancient, conceptions. In short, the aim of this thesis is to conceptualize the relation of photographs and texts in phototext poetry, not by destroying the dualistic positions of the visual and the verbal, but rather by re-negotiating them: by approaching them as located inside as well as between these two media, image and text. The relation of photographs and poetic text, I therefore suggest, performs its work “inside” language, at the same time opening up towards the “infinity of language” (Barthes).

This dissertation examines the coming of sound film in Sweden during the years 1928–1932, and the reception of mechanically recorded sounds both in the trade press and among audiences. The novelty of sound film opened up for a negotiation of the perception of sound and image, as it made visible the film medium’s technological construction, before this visibility was once more absorbed by the cinematic discourse. The conversion to sound film is considered from three perspectives -- technology, reception and practice -- as well as through the concept of intermediality, focussing how the audio-visual expression changed during this period. Chapter 1 “Image, Sound, Audience I: ‘Constructed’ sounds - the visibility of technology” deals with these issues prior to the conversion to sound, and the following intermediate years, until sound film had reached a certain equilibrium. Chapter 2 “Production – The Companies” deals with the production and the major Swedish sound companies. Particular attention is given to how formative music in their films transforms itself into a consistent use of non-diegetic music two years before this happened in Hollywood. Chapter 3 “Reception – The Cinemas” addresses the topic of the reception of the first sound films in Sweden during 1929. The argument is that the audience’s re-awakened awareness of the technology described in Chapter 1 was an active part in this process, and that their reactions led back into the advertising campaigns, making them participants in the cinematic event. Chapter 4 “Practice – The Musicians” continues this debate from a musician’s point of view. This chapter turns the focus upside down and looks at the arrival of sound film from a grass-roots perspective. While chapter 4 diverts somewhat in dwelling on issues that do not strictly deal with the conversion to sound, it serves to contextualise a technological invention that changed not only film production and reception, but also had very concrete social repercussions for those that created the sounds of music. Chapter 5 “Image, Sound, Audience II: ‘Authentic’ sounds - the disappearance of technology” dovetails with Chapter 1, addressing similar phenomena at a time when these had become fully integrated and the technology once more became invisible.

The thesis explores the role of music in Günter Grass’s novels. In pointing out the vital role of intermediality for Grass’s narrative strategies, the thesis opens up for a new, intermedial perspective on his work. It shows how references to music are used to realise Grass’s poetological concept “paspresenture” – the simultaneous presence of past, present and future – as well as his constant strive towards concreteness. The study draws on theories of intermediality, with a special focus on the role of transmedial media characteristics. It develops a transmedial methodology for analysing intermedial references, stressing how the notion of “musicality” within the text is created by media characteristics shared by both music and literature. Intermedial references are conceived as highlighting structures that are inherent in literature. The textual analyses of The Tin Drum (1959), Too Far Afield (1995) and Crabwalk (2002) are divided into three steps. First, explicit musical references in the narratives are interpreted as indexes pointing towards transmedial structures relevant to this specific context. Second, the examination demonstrates the prominent role of transmedial characteristics such as repetitivity, contrast, simultaneity and performativity within the texts. Third and last, the function of musical reference is discussed: in all three narratives, the focus on transmedial structures supplies a more consistent interpretation of passages which otherwise prove difficult to decipher. In Grass’s fiction, issues appear not to be discussed but performatively reenacted and thus remind more of musical than literary development. What is more, music – as handled by Grass – does not appear absolute or transcendent; rather, its manipulative potential is always prominent. However, the way musical references are used to realise Grass’s poetological aims stresses the bodily presence of musical performance, thus making music appear as the performative realisation of time.

The field of video game studies has through later years shown a growing interest in game's spatialfeatures, along with their narrative implications. By introducing earlier findings of spatialmanifestations of dreams and psychological content in narrative works, with regards to their medialrepresentation into this discussion, I hope to conjoin video game research (better known asludology) with a line of psychoanalytic inquiry, which hitherto seems to have been left unexploredwithin media research.    While establishing a viewpoint through the interdisciplinary field of media research andpsychoanalysis, my intention is to broach a discussion on the possibilities of expanding itsviewpoints and theoretical frameworks unto the video game medium. In the present thesis I will forthis purpose center the discussion on the dreamlike Portal games, developed by Valve Corporation,which manages to enact a psychologically interesting narrative content largely through its spatialfeatures, as well as their game mechanics.    The psychoanalytic approach I intend to adopt for this study will, apart from taking mediaspecifications into account, also necessarily, following Gilles Deleuzes and Félix Guattaris focus onthe historical-political situation in their critique of earlier psychoanalytic inquiry, be directedtowards a societal context while addressing the individual works. I will thus, while analyzingspatial-psychological implications of works in different media, be regarding contemporary topics ofcultural phenomena and theories on human psychology as important factors for the forms ofexpression and thematic content, which contemporary cultural artifacts may take.    The term transmediality, which below will be discussed in appliance to psychoanalytic inquiry,refers in this thesis to the definition outlined by the literary scholar Irina Rajewsky, who situates itsemergence in an ongoing development in the field of the interconnected narratology and intermedialstudy, in which I hope to engage and contribute.

L’étude de « Tous les matins du monde», de Pascal Quignard, et ponctuellement, de « Terrasse à Rome», nous permettra d’examiner les relations entre cinéma et littérature d’un point de vue poétique et esthétique et d’approfondir l’approche intermédiale de la littérature. À l’aide de la théorie de la lecture d’Umberto Eco, nous montrerons comment l’encyclopédie filmique du lecteur peut le rendre réceptif à un effet-cinéma en littérature. Nous étudierons les indices implicites qui, ensemble, permettent de parler d’une esthétique filmique. Trois grands chapitres permettront d’étudier cela : vision, montage et univers sonore du texte. Cet angle d’approche devrait permettre de relire « Tous les matins du monde » suivant une perspective critique nouvelle, tout en approfondissant les recherches sur l’intermédialité. / The study of « Tous les matins du monde », of Pascal Quignard, and punctually, of « Terrasse à Rome », will allow us to examine the relationship between cinema and literature from a poetic, esthetical point of view and a deepen literature’s intermediary approach. Using Umberto Eco’s reading theory, we will observe how the reader’s film encyclopaedia may make him receptive to cinema-effect literature. We will study the implicit clues which, together, create the film esthetic. Vision, editing and sounding can be studied through three chapters. We hope that this perspective will allow the reading of « Tous les matins du monde » from a new critical perspective, while deepening the intermediality researches.

Le parcours d’Assia Djebar est frappé du sceau de la multidisciplinarité. L’écrivaine algérienne d’expression française a en effet toujours voué un intérêt particulier à la littérature, mais également aux arts. Son engouement pour ces derniers n’a pas été sans influencer son écriture. Ce fait est a priori remarquable au niveau des nombreuses références explicites (tant intertextuelles qu’interdiscursives) que ses récits font tour à tour au cinéma, à la peinture, à la musique, à la photographie et à la mosaïque. C’est à partir de ces renvois que nous posons l’hypothèse d’une relation aux arts mise à l’œuvre de manière plus implicite dans la prose de Djebar, c’est-à-dire susceptible de définir sa poétique. Il s’agira donc pour nous de mettre au jour des procédés d’écriture qui, dans le récit djebarien, sont aptes à créer ─ moyennant leur déplacement et leur transformation ─ des effets que des techniques en usage dans d’autres arts produisent habituellement. L’intermédialité permet d’envisager ce travail : là où l’intertextualité insiste surtout sur la question des textes ; l’interdiscursivité sur celle du discours ; et l’interartialité sur celle de l’esthétique caractéristique des productions artistiques, l’intermédialité rassemble ces préoccupations en ne négligeant pas de considérer la dimension technique inhérente aux phénomènes de signification, qui prête forme à leur matière sémiotique. / Multidiscipline has definitely marked the journey of Assia Djebar. The Algerian French writer has devoted interest in literature as well as the arts. Her infatuation with the arts hasn’t been without influence towards her writing. The fact is above all remarkable in the level of numerous explicit references, both intertextual and interdiscursive, that her stories have made their rounds in cinema, in art, in music, in photography and in mosaics. It is from these references that we hypothesize a relation to the arts, implemented in a more implicit style in Djebar’s prose, that is to say an openess to defining her poetics. Therefore, for us it is a matter of putting into place writing procedures, in the Djebarian style, which in return for their movements and changes, are capable of creating effects as well as techniques that will be used in other art forms that are generally produced. Intermediality allows us to envision this type of work. Whereas, intertextuality puts emphasis above all on texts, interdiscursivity on discourse, and interartiality on the esthetical characteristics of artistic productions ; intermediality gathers these concerns, without neglecting to consider the technical dimension inherent to the phenomena of meaning which lends shape to their semiotic subject matter.

Dans ce mémoire, nous étudions la représentation du corps dans Aveux non avenus de Claude Cahun. Évoquant dans un premier temps quelques grands axes de l’histoire de la réflexion sur le corps et de sa représentation en Occident depuis l’Antiquité, en fonction de leur fécondité pour l’analyse de l’oeuvre de Cahun, nous procédons dans un deuxième temps à une analyse de la représentation du corps dans les fragments de texte qui composent Aveux non avenus, en insistant d’une part sur le rapport ambivalent au corps qui y est exprimé et d’autre part sur la relation étroite qui lie le corps à la problématique identitaire, centrale dans tout l’oeuvre cahunien. Nous étudions ensuite la façon dont le corps est représenté, en nous intéressant à l’écriture particulière que déploie Cahun dans les Aveux ainsi qu’à la démarche intermédiale qu’elle met en place à travers la présence des photomontages au sein du texte. Nous souhaitons ainsi démontrer que la représentation du corps est indissociable d’une réflexion sur l’identité et que le caractère double de cette représentation à travers le texte et l’image complexifie cette réflexion sans lui enlever sa cohérence. / This master’s paper focuses on the representation of the body in Claude Cahun’s Aveux non avenus. First evoking some important aspects of the history of the reflection on the body and of its representation in the Occident since Antiquity, with regards to their relevance for our analysis of Cahun’s work, we then proceed to an analysis of the representation of the body in the textual fragments composing Aveux non avenus, insisting on the ambivalent relationship to the body they express, and on the close relationship between the body and the problematic of identity, central in Cahun’s work as a whole. We then move on to analyze how the body is represented, focusing on the particular type of writing that Cahun uses in the Aveux as well as the intermedial approach that she develops through the presence of the photomontages in the text. We wish to demonstrate that the representation of the body is closely linked to a reflection on identity, and that the dual nature of this representation through text and image complexifies this reflection without taking away any of its coherence.