Metareference - a Transmedial Phenomenon

Metaphenomena are common not only in human thought and in human language as a primary medium but also in most arts and (secondary) media. However, research in this latter field has so far predominantly focussed on metatextuality in literature, in particular on what since 1970 has been discussed as `metafiction`. This monomedial focus has led to a highly differentiated - albeit neither uniform nor complete - conceptual `toolbox` for analysing metaphenomena in verbal texts and has permitted fruitful discussions of possible functions of metaphenomena in this field. Yet little effort has been made both within literary studies and from the perspective of other media to create bridges between these two areas in order to profit from this toolbox and its potential of analysis, functional and otherwise, for the larger context of the arts and media. The project aims to remedy this one-sidedness within the framework of a `transmedial` approach and generally to develop the study of metaphenomena in literature and other media. Drawing in addition on semiotics and a cognitive approach, it proposes - in a first step - to reconceptualize `metafiction`/`metatextuality` as a more widely applicable concept that avoids the ad hoc bricolage that has so far characterized large parts of literary research, namely as `metareference`, which actualizes a `secondary cognitive frame` in the recipient. On this broader basis, individual media shall, in a second step, be analyzed and compared to each other with respect to their metareferential `capacities`, in particular literature, the visual arts, film and music (where `metareference` is all but unknown in research and where consequently the innovative potential of the transmedial approach is particularly high). In a third step, the systematic results from this investigation shall be used in a case study for a cultural- historical investigation of contemporary, postmodernist culture, in which metareference has acquired an unprecedented importance. All in all, the project should prepare the ground for further studies with reference to other cultural-historical contexts and other media.

Strange as it may seem at first sight, widely differing works such as Cervantess novel Don Quixote, Shakespeares comedy A Midsummer Nights Dream, a number of paintings by Magritte, Woody Allens film The Purple Rose of Cairo and Mozarts instrumental sextet Ein musikalischer Spaß (A Musical Joke, K 522) all share one common feature: they sport a more or less conspicuous meta-dimension, i. e. they foreground and/or comment on their nature as medial artefacts and thus do not only where applicable refer to reality outside but to themselves in other words they are metareferential. Metareference is a particularly topical theme, which will be familiar, albeit mostly under the name metafiction, to literary scholars and students but may be less familiar to scholars coming from other disciplines. In fact, metareference has hitherto mostly been explored within literary studies, in particular within studies of contemporary, postmodernist novels, while similar phenomena in other genres, arts and media have received considerably less attention. The present FWF project aimed to remedy this lacuna in research by transcending the boundaries of individual media in the analysis of metareference and offering transmedial, media-comparative perspectives on this phenomenon both from a theoretical and a cultural-historical (functional) point of view.As far as the theoretical dimension of metareference is concerned, one of the main results of the project is the fact that a common descriptive language could indeed be found on the basis of established metafiction theory, which was adapted and expanded for the purpose of transmedial applicability. As a consequence, descriptions of metareferential forms could be achieved that were considerably preciser than those in use in the form of traditional, mono-medial terminology; at the same time analyses on this transmedial basis also revealed at times surprising analogies across media, as well as some media-specific differences. Another result in the field of cultural and medial history refers to the present and immediate past (extending over the past four to five decades): the analysis carried out under the auspices of transmedial metareference theory reveals what the project leader termed a metareferential turn in contemporary arts and media. In fact, in the recent past a surprising number of works and artefacts across media have engaged in metareferential self-exploration to a hitherto unparalleled extent, and in this context metareference almost seems to have become a standard procedure not only in high art but increasingly also in popular media such as feature film and comics. In the course of the project work various reasons for this remarkable cultural diagnosis were found, some of which are related to the increasing media-literacy of todays recipients while others could be linked to long-term evolutionary tendencies towards ever-growing sophistication in medial products.