Meaningful Absence Across Arts and Media: The Significance of Missing Signifiers

This volume focusses on a rarely discussed method of meaning production, namely via the absence, rather than presence, of signifiers. It does so from an interdisciplinary, transmedial perspective, which covers systematic, media-comparative and historical aspects, and reveals various forms and functions of missing signifiers across arts and media. The meaningful silences, blanks, lacunae, pauses, etc., treated by the ten contributors are taken from language and literature, film, comics, opera and instrumental music, architecture, and the visual arts. Contributors are: Nassim Balestrini, Walter Bernhart, Olga Fischer, Saskia Jaszoltowski, Henry Keazor, Peter Revers, Klaus Rieser, Daniel Stein, Anselm Wagner, Werner Wolf

Werner Wolf is Professor and Chair of English and General Literature at the Univer¬sity of Graz/Austria. Main areas of research: literary theory (aesthetic illusion, narratology, meta-phenomena), functions of literature, 18th- to 21st-century English fiction, intermediality studies (including relationships between literature, music and art ). Nassim W. Balestrini is Professor and Chair of American Studies and Intermediality and Director of the Centre for Intermediality Studies in Graz (CIMIG) at the University of Graz, Austria. Main research areas: 18th- to 21st-century American literature, intermediality, life writing, climate change drama, poet laureate traditions. Walter Bernhart is retired Professor of English Literature at the University of Graz/Austria and President of the International Association for Word and Music Studies (WMA). Main areas of research: English poetry (16th, 19th, 20th centuries), literary theory (metrics, rhythm studies), intermediality studies (word/music relations, especially opera and lied).