Across the Boundaries of Signs and Media: On Transgeneric Qualities of Selected Contemporary Fiction

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.26485/ZRL/2020/63.2/4

Keywords:

genre, media, novel, semiotics, multimodality, multimedia, Night Film, Pessl

Abstract

The following article construes the novel as a genre and explores how the innovations of utilizing multiple semiotic resources and media platforms are transforming it these days. With Marisha Pessl’s Night Film (2013) as the primary example I look into the properties of the multimodal and multimedia novel with a view to presenting various ways of transgressing the parameters of the traditional (monomodal and mono-medial) novel. Drawing from L. Elleström’s theory of “modalities of media” I seek to go to the depth of the semiotic and semantic mechanisms of Night Film and argue how the integration of the verbal and the visual renders a new reading experience. Also, on the basis of J.P. Bolter and R. Grusin’s idea of hypermedia I claim that the multiplication of sign systems and media aims at enhancing the ontological illusion.

References

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Published

2020-11-26

How to Cite

Lutostański, B. (2020). Across the Boundaries of Signs and Media: On Transgeneric Qualities of Selected Contemporary Fiction. Zagadnienia Rodzajów Literackich The Problems of Literary Genres, 63(2), 57–70. https://doi.org/10.26485/ZRL/2020/63.2/4