Abstract
This essay addresses the question of television series as literature from a pedagogical perspective. It springs from the experience of teaching television serial drama at the doctoral level in a Comparative Literature department. Barthes’ concept of plurality speaks to the differing and deferred reception of television drama once it travels across continents: it applies to the study and reception of non-Anglophone television series, screened with subtitles that invoke estrangement due to a reception that places emphasis and strain on concurrent images, writing, and sound. Retracing the experience of teaching television drama to literary scholars, my essay claims the urgency of a critical investigation of forms of textuality that defy disciplinary boundaries.
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Lombardi, G. (2021). The Literary in Television, or Why We Should Teach TV Series in Literature Departments. In: Winckler, R., Huertas-Martín, V. (eds) Television Series as Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-4720-1_8
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