Ballad worlds. Studies of the transmedial reception of the medieval ballds in Scandinavian modernity

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Annegret Heitmann
• Subject Area: General and Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies
• Term: from 2013 to 2018
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 248631501

The Scandinavian ballads, often wrongly described as »folkeviser«, not only bear witness to past culture and long-term transmission, but also provide the cultural imagination of Scandinavia in modern times with a rich reservoir of inspiring motifs, themes, forms, and medial representations. It is striking that ballads not only continue to attract literary interest, but that the genre´s performativity and inherent intermediality provides a remarkable potential for varied inter- and transmedial recycling. This project aims to identify and analyse the various strands of ballad reception in text, image, music, dance, theatre and film, aided by a theoretical approach to intermediality and a focus on the interplay between reception and the source texts. Of particular interest is the question which characteristics of the ballads are emphasized at specific stages of modernity and which transmedial processes are entailed.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants