New Approaches to Transcodification: Literature, Arts, and Media

This collection aims to renew our perspective on adaptation and intermedial processes by thinking of them in terms of codes rather than media. As a result, the notion of transcodification emerges as a crucial tool in order to study the circulation of semiotic and aesthetic resources across disciplines, knowledge systems, and cultures. Defined as the transfer of meaning-making potential from one semiotic domain to another, transcodification both includes and transcends intermediality, thus dramatically expanding the scope and research potential of adaptation and intermedial studies. The essays collected here apply this framework to an incredibly wide variety of objects and issues, from the relationship between art and historiography to the visual culture of finance, from contemporary approaches to ekphrasis to the hidden labor of screenwriters, from modern surveillance to digital comics, from fansubbing to the reception of the classical world in the digital age, from medieval theater to the role of videogames in the “war on terror”. By fostering dialogue between radically different disciplines, the book offers a unique approach to the study of semiotic interrelations across the most diverse aspects of human culture.