This PhD thesis follows U of Exeter’s PGR Handbook, MLA Citation Guide, and Oxford grammars. I acknowledge certain minor issues (as the prescriptive rules of standard English do not often make the text read ‘English enough’ to native speakers) and possible typos and apologise if that causes any inconvenience or impedes the reading.
I also have to acknowledge that in this study, while aiming to serve as a mediator between different traditions and widen the critical vocabulary used for a reading and analysis of modernist novels, I adopt key terms and definitions as established by the (post-)Soviet formalist/Bakhtinian philological tradition:
‘Text’ (Lat. “textus”) is seen as a “woven fabric, web, texture, structure, construction of a literary work” (Oxford). As a medium text has the unique feature of documenting by describing, referring to, adapting, rewriting, and recycling: such a quality can be referred to as ‘parodying’ (Bakhtin, “Dialogic Imagination” 5, 7), mimesis, or “interpretation of reality through literary representation or ‘imitation’” (Auerbach and Said 554).
‘Medium’ (Lat. “medium” – centre, intermediary) is “a means or channel of communication or expression” (Oxford), a communicative tool (Elleström, “Media Transformation” 2) that has various form of representation, for example, a novel, a book, words, a printing press.
‘Allusion’ (Lat. “allusio” – game) is an “implied, indirect, or passing reference” (Oxford). When medialised, allusions often have critical functionality and “a serious thematic relevance” (Crews, “Forster” 79). Allusions are opposed to traditional literary concepts of symbols, metaphors, allegory, and simile (Fordoński, “Shaping” 26).
‘Binary’ (Lat. “binarium” – pair) is seen as “an opposition or contrast between two concepts” (Oxford). Binaries often reflect the ‘basic myth’ (primary myth, creation myth) shared by ancient mythologies: a male thunder-controlling deity slaying the crawling serpent, which supports the traditional upwards–downwards, sky–ground, god–demon, male–female and other oppositions (Ivanov and Toporov 267).
‘Fabula’ (Lat. – story) is a unique story that may have multiple ‘sujets’ (Fr. – subject), that is, recycled versions (see Liveley).
‘Experimental’ (Lat. “experimentalis” – based on experience) is used in the meaning of “of or relating to experience” of a specific person, their observations (Oxford).
‘Intermediality’ (Lat. “inter medius” – intermediate) is a specific relations among different media products and generic relations between various media forms, as well as the study of these constellations (Elleström, “Adaptation” 510).
‘Literary Modernism’ is seen as an “influential artistic-cultural phenomenon” that may be considered “a movement, a period, a genre, a style or an ideology” (Poplawski vii). It is volatile, radically innovative “in artistic form, style, content and method,” revolutionary dynamic (ix). Whilst it proclaims the rejection of conventions and arts of two previous centuries, ideologically, it continues them through the link of impressionism, imaginism, symbolism, futurism, etc. (ix). By contrast, “another major nexus of modernism” is the “profound concern with themes of alienation, fragmentation, and the loss of shared values and meanings” resulting in search for alternative “systems of belief in myth, mysticism, and primitivism – or in art itself” (ix).
‘Male Modernism’ is seen as a reflection of the crisis of masculinity of the European artists and its impact on their works (see Izenberg). This thesis does not look into this matter per se, but it contributes to this topic indirectly, by looking into the oeuvres of four male writers.
‘Modernist mythology’ takes various forms: apocalypse, spirituality, ‘dark god,’ reverse theodicy, secular hope, political theology, visionary mysticism, abstraction, hymns and epiphanies, mythopoeia, grail quests, esotericism and pantheism, theosophy, enchanted time, etc. (Hobson and Radford).
I have provided the key definitions using the wording from the Oxford Dictionary in a meaning that is closest to Bakhtin, which may seem as a divergence from the primary Anglophone definitions. For example, ‘allusion,’ a key term of this study, is used in a specific meaning (as an essential, purposeful, meaningful link); I sought compromises, though: Crews’s definition I have chosen in support of this study is not typically English, while in Bakhtin’s terminology what I speak of should have been called ‘reminiscence’ instead – a critical category designating sub- or semi-conscious textual echo, opposite to what is defined in English as a mere memory or recollection. Likewise, there is a significant terminological difference between ‘fabula’ and ‘sujet’ that is usually reversed to the conventional meanings of ‘story’ and ‘plot’ in English. Most importantly, Kristeva’s ‘intertextuality’ derives from Bakhtin’s ‘dialogism,’ a bidirectional co-operation that possesses significance for the text, and hence differs from a traditional Anglophone perception of intertextuality as anything inter-textual. As an outcome of the terminological discrepancy, I systematically and deliberately retain the formalist distinctions: the ‘Bakhtinian’ vocabulary illuminates textual phenomena that are usually subsumed by the Anglophone criticism into broader, less specific terms. The situating of this thesis within the post-Soviet and partially German lineage of the literary theory with supplementing by ideas from the Anglophone scholarship, specifically Coleridge’s input on an intermedium, seeks to introduce a new approach, vision, and methodology regarding intermedial connections and relations in the literature in English.
The thesis can be referenced as follows:
Isagulov, Mykyta. ‘Only connect’: Myth, Media, and Modernity. A Study of (Inter)Medialised Allusions and Binaries of E. M. Forster, D. H. Lawrence, James Joyce, and Samuel Beckett. U of Exeter, 2025. PhD thesis.
Thesis at U of Exeter repository.
Intermediality Poetics | Поэтика интермедиальности 