Writing the history of Intermedial Studies through the Digital Humanities

Abstract

In spite of their broad spectrum of objects and research questions, little attention has so far been paid to the history of Intermedial Studies, and to their “prehistory” in Interart Studies: as the authors of one of the most recent introductory handbooks on the subject observe, “the long history of interart and thus intermedial studies does not exist yet” (Bruhn, J., & Schirrmacher, B., eds., 2022: 25). In fact, for about twenty years, the few reports on the history of Intermedial Studies have been reduced to periodization sketches, which, as such, constitute the indispensable first step of any historical research, but certainly cannot exhaust it (Clüver, C., 1993/2009: 497-502; Clüver, C., 2007; Maggi, M., 2020; Bruhn, J., & Schirrmacher, B., 2022: 10-14). It is only in the last year, particularly with the recent publication of the Palgrave Handbook of Intermediality (Bruhn, J., López-Varela, A., & de Paiva Vieira, M., eds., 2023), that the first case studies on specific schools, scholars, and national traditions have appeared.

Among other issues, in my project A Genealogy of Intermedial Studies. The Italian Case, I address the application of Digital Humanities in writing the history of Intermedial Studies, with specific reference to the tools of recognition of visual and textual patterns and of social network analysis. In this paper I will thematise the epistemological and methodological issues underlying the application of Digital Humanities to the history of Intermedial Studies. I will also show how the Italian tradition in the field of Interart Studies, at the centre of the project, offers an ideal ground to experiment with digital mixed-media approaches aimed at the detection of recurrent patterns and relational networks between subjects. Finally, I will demonstrate, on the one hand, how the use of Digital Humanities can bridge the gap between the generality of the periodizations and the particularity of the case studies; on the other hand, how such use can illuminate the artistic and creative dimension of the iconotexts produced by scholars in their essays.