ABSTRACT
Seen from the perspective of an illustrious tradition of comparative thinking about the arts, the current theory of intermediality and its main terms, intermedial transposition and intermedial reference, seem rather modest and simplistic. Intermedial transposition consists of the “reconstruction” of a work of art in another medium. Formal intermedial transposition is the first step necessary to trigger the activation of the intermedial reference, the second important class of intermedial theory. The connections between the source and the target of the intermedial transposition may become very complex in virtue of the nature of media put in contact, conceptual versus a-conceptual, and the different temporalities they involve. Wolf cautioned that intermedial transposition may affect “formal devices” such as the transposition of a narrator into film or drama as a voice-over in film, or as a presenter character in epic drama. Transmediality is somehow seen outside the field of intermediality, because it is more of an approach rather than an intermedial phenomenon itself.
