Learning and teaching Estonian literary classics through transmedia

This paper employs the semiotic principles of culture and transmedia studies to explore the possibilities of learning literary classics through transmedia. Subject to ongoing repetitions and transformations, literary texts are implicitly and explicitly mirrored in everyday communication, mass media, pop culture, and other media. One finds references to literary classics in language, advertisements, art, and even behavioral patterns. From a semiotic perspective, retelling stories across various languages of culture fulfills mnemonic and creative functions, permitting the preservation of cultural heritage while simultaneously renewing it. A balance between continuity and multiplicity, or preservation and innovation, is inherent to the principles of transmedia education identified by Henry Jenkins: each new iteration of a story should contain elements of the canonic version as well as introduce alternatives to the established canon.

Two learning strategies are examined here in exploring the continuity and multiplicity of a literary text. The first strategy consists of analyzing the collection of versions inspired by the original text while noting the elements preserved, eliminated, transformed, or added by the authors of the new versions. The second strategy, more practical in nature, explores the further expansion of a text’s transmedia universe through participatory practices. These learning strategies, despite their inherent informality — that is, “evaluation” and “learning by doing” (Scolari et al. 2018, 806) — can be implemented effectively in a formal literary course.

The theoretical argument is supported by the example of the digital learning platform Estonian Film Classics, a course developed by the Transmedia Research Group at the University of Tartu. The focus here is on the part of the course dedicated to the novel Kevade (Spring) by Oskar Luts (1912, 1913), and its eponymous film adaptation by Arvo Kruusement (1969). Two sections are discussed in particular: “The World of Spring,” which examines Spring against the backdrop of multiple versions in various discourses and media, and “DIY Spring,” a digital toolbox that allows students to create their own interpretations of Spring in the form of rap music, social media retellings, memes, and so on. In doing so, the students explore the role of different media in constructing the image of the original and thereby affecting perceptions of it.