Literature at the Expanded Field: Intermediality at the Crossroads of Literary Theory and Comparative Literature

This article, which the authors see as a ‘position paper’, addresses a twofold issue. On the one hand, it tries to offer an overview, terminological as well as theoretical, of the changes that have modified the field of comparative literature since the emergence of visual culture within the study of literature, from the institutional appearance of word and image studies in the 1980s till the actual tendencies toward digital and transmedial studies. On the other hand, focusing on the current success of the notion of ‘transmedia storytelling’, it elaborates on the conceptual distinction between narrative and storytelling, while also discussing in a more general mode the place of literature in contemporary digital writing.