This volume examines how literature, art, the humanities, and science circulate across media and
material culture, generating new cultural value through practices such as fashion, gaming,
advertising, or home decoration. Drawing on the concept of the cultural iconunderstood as a
secularized successor to the religious eikonthe book investigates the widespread,
decontextualized, and often highly schematized appearances of artistic and intellectual figures in
popular culture: from Shakespeare quotes on T-shirts to operatic arias in commercials or the casual
name-dropping of scientists in television series. These intermedia presences, reinforced through
everyday practices, create forms of cultural resonance that are reproduced for both economic and
artistic purposes.
Grounded in media-oriented, interdisciplinary, and praxeological approaches, the volume explores
the processes by which cultural icons circulate, acquire value, and function within different everyday
contexts, including national and transnational cultures, expert discourses, and popular consumption.
Contributions from theology, musicology, history, fine arts, linguistics, and literary, film, media, and
cultural studies link debates on mass-media appropriation with questions of cultural valuation and
canon formation.
By addressing the theoretical and methodological challenges raised by the omnipresence of cultural
icons, the book offers a significant intervention in intermediality, cultural studies, iconography, and
contemporary semiotics, appealing both to academic readers and to a broader public.