# Introduction: Iconizing of Literature, Art, Humanities, and Science. Intermediality and Value in Popular Culture

Paula Wojcik, Sophie Picard, Hannes Höfer

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Paula Wojcik, Sophie Picard, Hannes Höfer. Introduction: Iconizing of Literature, Art, Humanities, and Science. Intermediality and Value in Popular Culture. Iconizing of Literature, Art, Humanities, and Science, Palgrave Macmillan, pp.1-16, 2025, 978-3-031-62312-7. 10.1007/978-3-031-62312-7_1.halshs-05466082

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# Introduction: Iconizing of Literature, Art, Humanities, and Science—Intermediality and Value in Popular Culture

Paula Wojcik, Sophie Picard, and Hannes Höfer

Why do people wear shirts with the Shakespearian quotation “to be or not be?” or a portrait of philosopher Slavoj Žižek? How does popular and mass media adaptation and appropriation influence theoretical or literary concepts like ‘deconstruction’ or the ‘Kafkaesque’? Why are Lolita, Don Quixote, and Einstein ubiquitous and yet Tonio Kröger, Leopold Bloom, and Leó Szilárd are not? What does the presence of characters, quotations, motifs, and concepts in popular culture and daily life reveal about their cultural value?

This presence also raises some theoretical and methodological questions concerning the representation, perception, usage, and reception of literature, art, humanities, and science. Our book’s main objective is to hone in on their widespread, decontextualized—and, thus, often schematized—forms of appearance. Against the background of media-oriented, interdisciplinary, and praxeological approaches, it explores the forms and processes of intermedia

P. Wojcik (✉)

Department of European and Comparative Literature and Language Studies,
University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria

e-mail: paula.wojcik@univie.ac.at

S. Picard

UR 4236 ECHANGES, Aix Marseille University, Aix-en-Provence, France

e-mail: sophie.picard@univ-amu.fr

H. Höfer

Goethe Society in Weimar, Weimar, Germany

e-mail: hannes.hoefer@goethe-gesellschaft.de
circulation and cultural valuation. By focusing on practices, actors, socio-
historical, and cultural conditions, we discuss the functions of literature, art,
humanities, and science in different settings of everyday life: media and fash-
ion, national and transnational cultures, esoteric expert's discourses and exo-
teric popular use. Provided by scholars of theology, musicology, history, fine
arts, linguistics, as well as film, literary, media, and cultural studies the analyses
link discussions on popular and mass media adaptation and appropriation with
cultural valuation, canonization and academic debates. This approach opens up
an area of tension between the profane and culturally-sacred in a unique way,
as it exposes some underlying transgressive dynamics: processes of intermedia
circulation, interdisciplinary mediation, and floating between cultural and
social milieus. These dynamics constitute a specific form of appearance known
as 'cultural icons'.

CUTURAL ICONS

The concept of ‘cultural icon’ refers to phenomena which have a value for a
specific audience, created by a (re-)productive inter- and transmedial condensa-
tion of meaning (Kemp 2011). We use ‘icon’ as it is commonly used in cultural
studies, which is, in turn adopted from art theory, based on the works of the
grand masters of ‘iconology’ Aby Warburg (2010) and Erwin Panofsky (1939).
These disciplinary roots cast a shadow on the current discussion in so far as
cultural studies are still driven by the idea that icons are mandatorily bound to
a visual presence (Haustein 2008; Leypoldt and Engler 2010; Kemp 2011;
Ghosh 2011; Parker 2012; Colombi et al. 2016). This understanding does not
consider that cultural icons are collectively-shared mental concepts that can
manifest themselves as material or visual (images, persons, etc.) and non-mate-
rial or non-visual (names, quotations, places, melodies, etc.) artefacts and enti-
ties. Icons are mental constructs that compress a society’s cultural imagination.
There is no reason that condensation and representation of meaning should be
limited to pictorial representations, as a short quotation or piece of music can
perform the same function.

In addition to art history, the concept of the icon also plays a central role in
semiotics. In the theories of Peirce and Jakobson, icons are signs, which estab-
lish their relationship with the signified through similarity (Peirce 2012;
Jakobson 1964a, 1964b). However, Umberto Eco criticizes this idea for being
blurry and universalistic at the same time (Eco 1991, 256–57). According to
him, similarity can never be defined absolutely, but is always based on
historically-variant cultural agreements: “Iconicity is neither an individual phe-
nomenon nor an exclusively semiotic phenomenon. It is a collection of phe-
nomena bundled together under a general-purpose label (just as the word
‘plague’ probably referred to a number of different diseases in the Middle
Ages)” (Eco 1991, 287). We follow Eco in the respect that iconicity cannot be
explained in an exclusively-semiotic way. To examine the full impact of cultural
icons, we also need to open up the concept for non-visual phenomena and locate them within a larger cultural and historical framework.

To understand the impact of cultural icons we need to shed some light on the origin of the concept. Cultural icons are a secular variant of the formerly-religious eikón or īkón (Kemp 2011, 340) that serve to negotiate or exhibit the self-image of social or cultural groups. Analogies between the sacred and the profane icons are manifold. Both are mental formations which are accessible through their ‘representatives’ or ‘substitutes’: the Virgin Mary and popstars Lady Gaga and Madonna transcend their human presence and are culturally-valued concepts of ‘Mary’, ‘Lady Gaga’, and ‘Madonna’ (respectively) that we engage with as pictures, prayers, songs, or stories/anecdotes evolving around them. Both the sacred and the profane are community-building as they can represent the identity of a lifestyle milieu, a (sub-)culture, or an entire nation. “An icon generates strong responses; people identify with it, or against it” (Dennis R. Hall and Susan Grove Hall (2006, xvii) write in *American Cultural Icons*. If people identify “against it” the self-image can be criticized or even attacked by destroying or desecrating the icon—a practice known as iconoclasm.

Within popular culture and daily life, cultural icons are pivotal to (re-) creating, communicating, and disseminating cultural meaning, and value. If human, they are moral authorities (Gandhi, Mother Teresa), cultural heroes (Abraham Lincoln, Pocahontas; see Leypoldt and Engler 2010), *grands hommes* (Napoleon Bonaparte, Voltaire), or role models (Sappho, Virginia Woolf). If non-human, they represent a society's achievements (double-helix), or help to express someone's beliefs or feelings of belonging (LGBTQI+ pride flag). Icons can perform these functions only because they are widespread in different media and thus well-known and immediately recognizable. Reciprocally, this presence within the media and culture increases the icon's visibility, ensuring ongoing attention through transformation and constant (re-)use. Thus, literature, art, humanities, and science—widely considered high-brow, elitist, or hermetic expert's culture—become popular.<fnref n="1" />

From what has been said so far, the following questions guide the analysis of cultural icons in this volume: How do icons of literature, art, humanities, and science become iconic? Are they iconic in general, or only for a specific audience or social group, class, or milieu? How are they represented in different media? How is the reciprocal influence between the media representation and the materiality of the medium determined? What do they mean, and do they change their meaning when moving through different audiences, media, or cultures? The case studies in this compilation follow up these questions by consulting theories and methods from trans- and intermedia (including

<footnote n="1">¹For our purposes, we define popularity after John Fiske (2007) as (1) a broad impact (and the associated transgression of the original areas of application) and (2) an appropriation (and, therefore, a use that resists genuinely work-centered approaches and radically interprets the phenomena in light of lifetime and experience horizons). Both dimensions are essential to describe the emergence, persistence, and transformation of cultural icons.</footnote>
transfiction) studies as well as praxeology. They acknowledge the reciprocal, reaffirming influence between the media-oriented processes and aesthetics as well as the individual and collective actor's practices and intentions.

To demonstrate how the concept of cultural icons provides understanding of the dynamics between different media and practices, we suggest two transversal perspectives that mirror recent developments in communication, social, media, cultural, and literary studies. The first focuses on the intermedia structures in the emergence and dissemination of icons. The second, on processes of value creation: appropriation, (re-)production, and negotiation of icons on behalf of individual actors, audiences, social groups, milieus, or markets.

## INTERMEDIALITY OF CULTURAL ICONS

Literature, art, humanities, and science become iconic by constant (re-)usage of elements such as characters, quotations, motifs, or concepts within different media. According to Henry Jenkins (2006, 2) we can imagine this as a “constant flow of content.” Thus, our approach within this book is strongly informed by media—and especially inter- and transmedia theory. The term ‘media’ is not unambiguous and easy to define. Following Marie-Laure Ryan (2014, 26), media belong to different categories: “channels of mass communication” (i.e. newspapers, television, internet), “specific applications of digital technology” (i.e. computer games and memes), “art forms” (i.e. literature, music, painting, film), and “the material substance out of which messages are made or in which signs are presented” (i.e. fashion, life style products, and the human body). In our interdisciplinary setting, however, the following categorization might prove more helpful: some of the media in which icons occur are narrative-based (e.g. literature, movies, series, computer games, commercials), others are mainly visual (e.g. fine arts or lifestyle products like fashion), while others include both visual and auditory elements (e.g. durable and visible notations and ephemeral orchestra, radio, or spoken word). Another group may be classified as genuinely multimedial (or multimodal), because they combine pictures and words (e.g. printed advertisement or memes). As they can be represented in any (or all) of the categories, icons are trans-medial.

Transmediality brings us to the first decisive criterion for iconicity: *iteration*. Characters, quotations, or concepts are iconic when they (1) appear in different media, and (2) when each representation is a reference to others. For example, literary characters or quotations can appear in film, series, or computer games—which in turn can spread in primarily-visual non-narrative media formats like memes or advertisement, and become recognizable to a broader audience (Stephens and Grossman 2015). An analysis of icons operates within an area of tension between the transmedia character of the icon and its media-specific representations which is best described by adopting Marsha Kinder and Tara McPherson’s (2014) catchphrase “transmedia frictions.” These frictions are inevitable as some of the case studies in our volume indicate, when expert discourse claims an interpretive authority that is consistently undermined by popular representations (see Münch and Wojcik in this volume).
At the same time media representations can serve as *multipliers* which strengthen and determine presence. Movies fulfill this function, as Stanley Kubrick's *Lolita* and Miloš Forman's *Amadeus* prove (see Stemberger and Bomnüter in this volume). Both had a lasting effect on the popular image of Nabokov's heroine and the Viennese composer. But there are, of course, other multipliers that reach back to a pre-mass-media era. Icons such as Homer or Goethe (see Syrovy and Löck in this volume) became famous and revered because of songs, paintings, busts, theater, and opera performances. These multipliers usually emphasize certain features, which can become so-called "key identifiers" (Kemp 2011, 3) of the icon. Once solidified, just a few notes, a dress, or a gesture can instantly invoke the icon in any medium. Those practices of fragmentation and (as Stemberger describes in this volume) "metonymical extensions" can be observed in the aforementioned 1962 Kubrick film adaptation: the red glasses that Lolita wears became a lifestyle product that can (still) be purchased all over the world. The fragmentated element of a fictional movie became an object of marketing strategies (Pearson 2015), developed a life on its own and now reaches out of the fictional or imaginative realm into the real world.

Writers and artists also appropriate and combine these key identifiers with other new and unexpected elements. Edgar Allan Poe's character, schematized to his characteristic eyebrows and moustache, can appear in a comic book or a video game (see Wojcik in this volume). Even if only rudimentarily marked a fictional character can remain recognizable in a setting that is neither medially nor narratively related to the novel or the film adaptation it stems from—a common practice that has been described as transfictionality (Ryan 2008; Saint-Gelais 2010; Bech Albertsen 2019). Metonymic extensions of icons also can provide a link between two or more narratives to mark them as parts of a bigger narrative universe—these so-called transmedia storyworlds are not only an artistic strategy but also a strong marketing tool (Jenkins 2007, 2009).

The possibilities for dissemination through intermedia networks grow if we consider digital participatory culture (Green and Jenkins 2011; Jenkins et al. 2018) provided by social media, internet forums, blogs, or fan fiction websites. Authored by scientists, experts and creatives who share their research and art, publishing houses, museums, galleries, opera houses, concert halls as well as individual users who exhibit their individual interests they make a significant contribution to the iconizing of literature, art, humanities, and science. This can be a museum's or an individual's Instagram post from the new Klimt exhibition which shows *The Kiss* or a selfie with *The Kiss*. This can also be a Twitter account that uses the icon of Sappho or Einstein, or a blog named "Schrödinger's Cat" (which really exists). Memes serve as multipliers which simultaneously stabilize and determine popularity and presence (Wiggins and Bowers 2015; Wiggins 2019). In addition, the sharing and expressing of (dis)approval in the digital world points to the (*re*)creation of cultural value—our second decisive criterion for iconic status.
CREATING THE VALUE OF CULTURAL ICONS

To comprehend the iconization of literature, art, humanities, and science in
popular culture we need to explore techniques, mechanisms, and systemic obli-
gations underlying the creation of cultural value in the different cultural fields.
More specifically, we need to consider identification with or against, and appro-
priation of icons that are visible within different cultural practices (e.g. fashion,
gaming, cooking, or decorating) as valuation practices. Literature, art, humani-
ties, and science become part of a lifestyle or everyday routine because we value
them high enough to integrate them into our own habits and world-view. This
is usually preceded by, or cooccurs with, the above-mentioned intermedia cir-
culation processes. For example, the aforementioned thought experiment
known as Schrödinger's Cat can be part of a breakfast routine because it is
printed on a coffee cup; it received a 'popularity boost' by the television series
*Big Bang Theory* presenting it as an important theoretical idea. Quotations are
collected and recorded with ink in notebooks or even on skin, spray painted as
graffiti on walls, and posted as funny memes. We preserve these quotations in
many ways because they are culturally valuable. At the same time, the preserva-
tion itself adds to the cultural value of the icon.

But, what do we do by using the coffee cup or getting tattooed? Bishnupriya Ghosh (2011, 3) defines an icon as a “mediator of a structure of feeling for an emergent collective”. A spontaneous and ephemeral action (such as sharing a meme), its identity-forming repetition (such as wearing Lolita-sunglasses), and permanent exhibition (such as a tattooed quotation) communicate an emotional attachment that has a habitus-forming potential. It does so because these actions do not simply refer to the given representation or ‘the original’, but to the whole world of performances and meanings that establish the iconicity. However, the ‘whole world’ does not mean that icons are universal or global; they are always linked to a specific audience and represent a particular ‘culture.’

Whereas mass-media-critical approaches, like those provided by Barthes (2010) or Link (1991) usually relate agency to abstract entities like ‘power’, ‘media’, or ‘society’, our compilation highlights the particularistic scope of icons and considers the individual and collective actors and agents. As the global condition is genuinely pluralistic and diverse, we need to identify and describe the actors in more depth and to acknowledge their cultural or social background and their individual agency.<fnref n="2" /> Against the background of sociological theories of identity-formation that point out that identities are dialectically formed in a negotiation between the individual and the society (Berger and Luckmann 1966) and by drawing from what has been summarized by the buzzterm ‘identity supermarkets’ (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 2015; Hitzler

<footnote n="2">²The diversity of actors distinguishes our idea of ‘iconicity’ from Richard Dawkins’ (2006) con-
cept of the ‘meme’. The idea of applying evolution, mutation, and natural selection to culture as
well as biology is animistic, as it does not take into account the fact that culture is made by and for
(usually human) actors.</footnote>
and Honer 2015; Reckwitz 2017) we need to acknowledge this particularity of icons.

Although there are icons of universally-binding characters like Mahatma Gandhi or Mother Teresa, one should not underestimate the impact of secular worship by pointing only to those ‘global icons’ (Ghosh 2011; Haustein 2008). In the same way that Pocahontas, Mount Rushmore, or Joe Friday are only iconic in the USA (Hall and Hall 2006; Feldges 2008; Hölbling 2006; Leypoldt and Engler 2010), the iconicity of the Glagolitic script applies only to Croatian culture (see Tyran in this volume). The particularism is not only a matter of national cultures but also lifestyle or professional milieus. Consequently, the articles of this volume discuss diverse iconizing communities reaching from the unspecific and broad ‘popular culture’ to very specific and sometimes hermetic scientific and expert’s discourses. What a fandom wiki in popular culture is, that is an author’s society in the academic world. And just like the anime character of Lelouch Lamperouge can be considered to be iconic only within an anime fan community or LeBron James within a basketball fan community, the term ‘deconstruction’ (see Gernalzick in this volume), a Hans-Georg Gadamer quotation (see Höfer in this volume), or musical counterpoint (see Petersen in this volume) are iconic only within an academic and humanities-oriented milieu. Within these specific settings, the icon is an icon because it implies the idea of misuse in order to annoy the ‘devotees’. Making fun of Gadamer enrages different people than making fun of Lelouch Lamperouge orrevokes the meaning of詹姆斯·LeBron James.

This brings us back to the already-mentioned concept of iconoclasm. There is
no value without the potential of devaluation, no worship without the potential
of desecration; in short: no iconicity without iconoclasm. In today's popular
culture, iconoclasm can be about physically knocking statues off their pedestals—
but more likely, it is a symbolic matter. At the same time, iconoclasm constantly
confirms the icon's cultural value (Latour 2002). We can define iconoclasm as
the negotiation of status whenever and wherever an identity-forming iconic ele-
ment is appropriated across cultures. This also applies to irony, parody, or simply
distortion. In internet memes, for instance, a funny quotation may violate an
idolized painting, picture, or person, or vice versa a funny picture may dishonor
a meaningful quote (see Picard in this volume).

Processes of iconization and iconoclasm reveal insight into confrontations
within audiences or fandoms. These may include racist statements, as seen in
the protests against the 'iconoclasm' of actors-of-color starring as Hermione
and Ariel in recent film or theater adaptations of *Harry Potter* and Disney's
*Little Mermaid*. As their skin color is not defined in the novel series/fairy tale,
it is the media circulation of the filmic characters—visual repetition in films,
corresponding marketing and media discourse—that makes skin or hair color
key identifiers of the characters. In a broader imagological perspective, icons
may solidify racist, orientalist, anti-Semitic, or gender-related collective phan-
tasma (Mayer 2012; Barthes 2010; Link 1991). This volume critically reflects
on this stereotyping potential and follows up on questions such as: Which
audience tries to adapt a specific cultural phenomenon? For what purpose? Which audience fights a specific adaptation, and why? What does this reveal about the audience itself and the corresponding cultural space? By foregrounding these concerns, our focus shifts from the static outcome—the representation—to the dynamic, process-oriented creation of iconic presence through repetition, seriality, fragmentation, and (at the same time) metonymic expansion of single elements, their reframing, recontextualization, and semantical enrichment.

As we have seen, practices of valuation are closely connected to the medium in which the icon occurs. The intermedia circulation of icons enhances status or selfICONIZATION as a postmodern version of the renaissance *paragone*—the challenge of the arts. By integrating iconic elements from literature, art, and science, media often depreciated as entertainment or commerce (such as computer games, pop music, film genres, or advertisements) claim a higher quality or status for themselves and their products. A commercial that uses a Shakespearean quotation, an aria from a famous opera, or a biblical symbol insinuates that the products are part of a world in which masterpieces of art and the highest moral values set the standard (see Großmann and Cottin in this volume).

This observation aligns well with Pierre Bourdieu's ([1979] 2010) idea of the cultural capital. However, we cannot agree with the underlying idea of a hierarchy that establishes itself exclusively in the trickle-down movement from the so-called upper to the lower classes and consequently the associated media, fashion, and goods. This idea is informed by Georg Simmel (1905) and has been modified by concepts that identify not only trickle across (King and Ring 1980) but also trickle up movements (Field 1970). They are quite obvious, when the label Balenciaga adopts the Ikea bag “Frakta” and sells it for $2000, or when a film director uses aesthetics that are typical for popular media to set the stage for an iconic piece of literature or biography (i.e. *Romeo+Juliet* by Baz Luhrman or *Amadeus* by Miloš Forman, see Bomnüter in this volume). It is the adaptation to new materials or aesthetics that ensures the cultural mobility of icons across geographical and social spaces. This, in turn, cannot be overestimated for the economic circuit that transforms icons into everyday commodities and makes them appear in changing materials, in this way contributing to the aestheticization of the living world. The cultural icon which obeys the economic commandment of growth is ‘same same but different’. Media and goods echo iconicity as they make cultural value palpable.

Aside from the cultural hierarchy, valuation practices also depend on the specific material condition of the media. This condition includes space or time ‘limits’; therefore selection, reduction, shortening, fragmentation, transformation, and metonymic extension are the central processes of iconizing—in past and present. Card games that strengthened the popularity of iconic writers around 1900 were subject to an internal numerical logic: there always had to be four writers in a group (see Hölter in this volume). Admiration of a certain painting tradition, for instance, meets its spatial limits when it is transported
into the individual living room. Huge 19th-century salon paintings (with several figures and detailed landscapes) were produced for aristocratic households; when they became popular among the bourgeois, they needed to be 'modified' in order to fit into their living rooms. However, even when fragmented into smaller elements, the painting can be reused to express admiration or participate in symbolic capital—and eventually become iconic itself (see Fritz in this volume).

In the academic and cultural world, symbolic cultural value manifests itself in the institution of the canon. In literary and cultural studies, the value of cultural artefacts is often linked to problems of canon formation, and is consequently considered to be made by and for elitists and 'old white men'. Simone Winko's and Gabriele Rippl's works show that operations of selection and valuation are not fundamentally intentional and normative, but are based on emergent 'invisible-hand' processes (Rippl and Winko 2013; Winko 2002; Wojcik et al. 2019). Nevertheless, the canon as an institution keeps being normative as, in the end, it provides selections of works, authors, or concepts that 'should' be known (reading lists, art or literature histories, compendiums). Thus, in today's societies, the canon remains an ideal of what literature, or even culture, is, or should be. Read or not, accepted or not, even as a subject of 'canon wars'—the institution of the canon inscribes an emphasized cultural status into the implemented works, which is an atavism of the sacral canonical institution. Canonic status can operate as a catalyst for iconizing processes, but just as likely it works the other way around. For example, Stanisław Lem's writings have become so iconic for the science fiction genre that they are included in literary studies canon. Thus, canonicity does not thoroughly explain iconicity, and iconicity does not fully explain canonicity.

In an internationally comparative perspective a big part of what is considered to be a cultural icon in the English-speaking world is a “lieux de mémoire” or “Erinnerungsort” in the French- respective German-speaking worlds. This points to the status of cultural icons as part of the collective memory of nations or other ‘imagined communities’ (Anderson 2006). The compilations about ‘realms of memory’—published in different countries after Pierre Nora’s seminal *Lieux de mémoire* (2002–2004)—present examples of places, artworks, concepts, or figures with a nearly-sacred national (François and Schulze 2008; Hebel 2003; Kammen 1991) or transnational (Hahn et al. 2012–2015; den Boer et al. 2012) status. Research points to the importance of a ‘(trans-)media turn’ of memory studies (Erll 2004; Erll and Rigney 2009) and with the attention Michael Rothberg’s (2009) concept of a ‘multidirectional memory’ (as an epiphenomenon of decolonization) has received, it is time to highlight the sociocultural microstructure of cultural memory agency and, thus, move away from the solely national focus.

Analyzing the multi-layered processes of cultural adaptation, (re-)production, inter- and transmedia dissemination, and the connection between media and daily life through the lens of cultural icons provides an access to the study of culture that is focused on specific phenomena and their transgressive and
transversal connectedness. This compilation examines iconizing practices as an entanglement of intermedia adaptation and valuation in three sections along the disciplines of 1. literature, 2. art, and 3. humanities and science.

## LITERATURE

Focusing on literature through the lens of cultural iconicity provides insight into the popularity of literature in- and outside the literary field. Moreover, it highlights literature's international, transcultural, and transmedia entanglements in both former and contemporary culture. Besides this, the chapters in this section show that the popularity of literature is also due to literature's immense potential for becoming iconic. The poet-as-an icon is a trope of European culture that can be traced back to Homer and his iconization during the Renaissance, as Daniel Syrovy demonstrates in his chapter. Syrovy untangles the intricate reception of the ancient Greek poet before the 19th century and shows that in earlier epochs Homer became an icon of poetry work because his work was nearly unknown—not because everyone knew it. Moreover, Homer's iconicity casts its shadow on the continuing debates over whether Homer really did exist or not, which can be understood in terms of iconicity and iconoclasm in the field of philology. In her chapter Martina Stemberger portrays how the fictional characters Lolita and Oblomov became icons that have been adapted in other fiction, movies, stage plays—to the point where they have made their way into everyday language, fashion, food, etc. This transfictional, transmedial, and transcultural dissemination of both characters does not lead to a semantic simplification, but actually serves a better understanding of the novels they stem from.

The iconization of fictional characters or their authors is usually due to (re-)productive practices on behalf of literature readers. However, literature itself can negotiate the mechanisms of iconizing. This is the case in Thomas Mann's novel *Lotte in Weimar*, as Alexander Löck presents in his chapter. He emphasizes that Mann at the same time criticizes iconic representation as inferior to high art, and accepts it as an unavoidable form of perception. This chapter is followed by chapters that focus more specifically on the transmedia movement of literary texts. Irene Husser analyses references to Kafka in television series. Such allusions to avantgarde literature demonstrate that contemporary, advanced entertainment does not turn away from former high-brow culture, but instead uses it as a tradition to which it belongs itself. Achim Hölter reconstructs how the names and images of authors in 19th-century card games served both didactical and national cultural purposes. They influenced the notion of literature as the product of a few genius national heroes—which has been present in academic reconstruction of literary history and popular understanding of literature beyond the 19th century. Jérôme Cottin opens a treasure trove on the prolific popularity of the Bible in French and German advertisement from the last two decades. His examples prove the ongoing but secular iconicity of former religious tales and characters. Sophie Picard turns to
the popularity of online literary quotes (especially meme culture). Quoting literature in social networks contributes to the iconization of the authors or works from which the quotes are taken, but even more to the iconization of quoting as a literary practice. Even if they seem to be iconoclastic, memes are no attack against literature but gestures of self-irony that fit into the contemporary habits of social media communication. This example reveals that literature in today's popular culture is neither outdated nor hip. Instead, it is so universally iconic that it can be used for issues ranging from social media self-expression to literary debates about high art. This insight is also presented in Paula Wojcik's chapter which focuses on forms and functions of conceptual icons using the example of literature. The chapter discusses in particular the role of literary knowledge that is necessary to decode the manifold metonymic references to the conceptual icon "literature" which are used to comment on the veneration and iconization in literature and film.

## ARTS

In the history of art, there are countless examples of works that have become icons. The most famous is possibly the *Mona Lisa* (Kemp 2011, 141–165), which is internationally recognized as the epitome of artistic perfection and inspires pilgrimages from millions of visitors every year. Almost as famous is the ready made by Marcel Duchamp, who added a mustache to the portrait in 1919 and thus created, so to speak, the icon for iconoclasm in art history. Discussing the French rococo painter Jean-Antoine Watteau in this volume, Elisabeth Fritz shows that not only images, but also pictorial language, can become iconic. She reconstructs the intermedia processes since the 18th century that have led to the circulation of elements from the paintings group known as *fêtes galantes* across everyday cultural settings. She argues that parts of the paintings signify a particular form of social interaction—the *galeranie*— that they metonymically represent.

As mentioned earlier, icons and their representations are not limited to visual arts. The first four notes of Beethoven's *Fifth Symphony* are similarly recognizable and condense as much meaning as the *Mona Lisa*. In our volume several chapters demonstrate how musical icons are being disseminated and re-functionalized in different settings via multimedia. Udo Bomnüter looks at Mozart—considered the musical genius par excellence since the 19th century—and shows how Miloš Forman's film, *Amadeus* (1984), was perceived as a desacralization of the composer. However, this iconoclasm was accompanied by a re-iconization of Mozart, who, as ‘Amadeus’, now circulated in popular culture as a childlike and selfish genius. In her chapter, Stephanie Großmann analyzes the use and function of opera music in advertising. She shows the different forms opera references—whose status as a quasi-sacred, highly-cultural practice is always assumed—can take. At the same time, she points to the fact that deciphering the references to specific operas can sometimes counteract the message of the advertisements. In his musicological analysis of two late
piano pieces by Johannes Brahms, Birger Petersen looks at iconization processes within music history. He shows that a certain compositional style—the ‘counterpoint’—functions as an intertextual reference in Brahms’ works, which is of particular relevance for composers and musicians.

Finally, two chapters address icons and iconization processes in the field of more popular arts. Anna-Sophie Jürgens reconstructs how the concept of the clown robot has been condensed in literature, film, theater, and comics using the example of the Joker character. She shows that this popular icon is a kind of reversal of the notion of the human machine, ironizing our fascination with technological progress. Thomas Scholz discusses the multiplayer online game *World of Warcraft* and argues that the integration of iconic aesthetic, narrative, and interactive elements of the game serves an extradietic function. Through intermedial references to game-external genres and media, icons give players the possibility of reappropriating high- and pop-cultural content.

SCIENCE AND HUMANITIES

The iconization of science is most obvious when it comes to the scientists. The image of Einstein—with wild hair, playfully showing his tongue to the world—is an excellent example of an iconized image of a genius who does not care about society's conventions and manners. Scientists from film and literature are created according to this iconic prototype. However, science can become iconic in forms other than a person's image. Martin Kemp, for example, includes the double-helix and the equation $E=mc^2$ in his monograph. In this section the chapters elaborate on the emergence, forms, and functions of scientific icons and the problems and potentials of this cultural process.

In her chapter Nadja Gernalzick examines the iconization of the term ‘deconstruction’ against a deconstructive theoretical background. Using the example of Byung-Chul Han’s *Shanzhai: Deconstruction in Chinese*, she argues against a representational approach to a theory of icons—traditionally rooted in Western thinking tradition—and presents an actor-oriented understanding that emphasizes the (global) fluidity of meaning creation. Continuing the transnational perspective, Katharina Tyran presents the case study of the Glagolitic script. Tyran analyses how this archaic writing system—without a referential function that can only be read by a small academic circle—has been conventionalized as an autochthonous national heritage, and a special sign of Croatian cultural and national identity. In contrast to this particularistic case study from Croatia, Nikolai Münch and Paula Wojcik elaborate on the global icon of Dolly the sheep. Their chapter focuses on the question of how the interference of science, art, and religion produces a semantical and affective surplus of icons, and how this surplus feeds back on the work of scientists. Hannes Höfer’s chapter sheds light on iconization as an academic technique. Closely reading Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht’s treatise *Production of Presence* that is pro materiality and presence, and contra the implementation of meaning
(Gumbrecht’s definition of hermeneutics in a nutshell), Höfer carves out how differently US and German scholars position themselves by iconizing the term ‘hermeneutics’. While in the US-American context his iconoclasm has been largely unnoticed, in the German context (where humanities are still highly influenced by Hans-Georg Gadamer’s hermeneutics concept) the reactions of critics were harsh. Stefan Alker-Windbichler focuses on an institution of knowl-edge organization: the library. His chapter examines its iconizing in various media and the feedback of this process on the institution itself. His conclusion is clear: the fact that some libraries do not have bookshelves anymore—and are, instead, decorated with picture-wallpapers of bookshelves—indicates that the more iconic the ‘old fashioned’ way of knowledge organization becomes, the more it loses its function as a living part of the scientific world.

The chapters assembled in the three sections of this volume reflect on history and present of visual and non-visual, material and conceptual icons of literature, art, humanities, and science. They demonstrate that “iconizing” is a common, however complex practice that involves dissemination, decontextualization, fragmentation, (re-)functionalization, (re-)valuation and various forms of (re-)usage (i.e. transformation, adaptation, appropriation). Icons are thus, object to a constant dynamic flow between academic disciplines, arts and the everyday. They transgress the borders of cultural fields and of what is considered to be high-brow and popular culture—but at the same time they (re-)establish them as their representatives.

This volume is the result of a series of workshops held in Jena and Greifswald in 2017, 2018, and 2019. We would like to express our gratitude to the Alfried Krupp Kolleg in Greifswald for its generous support. We would also like to thank the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) for funding the publication of this volume.

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