| CODE | ENG2068 | ||||||||
| TITLE | Medieval Literature into Film | ||||||||
| UM LEVEL | 02 - Years 2, 3 in Modular Undergraduate Course | ||||||||
| MQF LEVEL | 5 | ||||||||
| ECTS CREDITS | 2 | ||||||||
| DEPARTMENT | English | ||||||||
| DESCRIPTION | This study-unit seeks to examine and critique thematic and formal considerations behind cinematic adaptations of medieval literary works. The study-unit focuses on the following issues: 1. A Chaucerian Carnivalesque: The Bakhtinian Pilgrimage of Pasolini’s I Racconti di Canterbury. 2. From Romance to Ritual: Weeks’ Sir Gawain in Weston’s Green Chapel. 3. Boorman’s Romantic Quest: Le Morte D’Arthur as a Tristanised Excalibur. 4. Signifying Nothing: Bresson’s Lancelot du Lac and the Arthurian Paradoxism of Tennyson’s Idylls. 5. Chrétien in Gotham: The Wasteland Myth in Gilliam’s The Fisher King. Throughout, considerations relating to myth, magic, and ritual; representations of devastation and redemption; and the affinities between the different demands and promises of literature and cinema will be addressed. Reading List: Burns, E. Jane, ‘Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be: The Middle Ages in Literature and Film’, in Shadows of the Magic Lamp: Fantasy and Science Fiction in Film, ed. George E. Slusser and Eric S. Rabkin (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1985), pp. 86-97 Clegg, Cynthia, ‘The Problem of Realizing Medieval Romance in Film: John Boorman’s Excalibur’, in Shadows of the Magic Lamp: Fantasy and Science Fiction in Film, ed. George E. Slusser and Eric S. Rabkin (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1985), pp. 98-111 Codell, Julie F., ‘Decapitation and Deconstruction: The Body of the Hero in Robert Bresson’s Lancelot du Lac’ in The Arthurian Revival: Essays on Form, Tradition and Transformation, ed. Debra Mancoff (New York: Garland, 1992), pp. 266-282 Forni, Kathleen. ‘A “Cinema of Poetry”: What Pasolini did to Chaucer’s Cantebury Tales’, Literature/Film Quarterly 30.4 (2002): 256-263 Green, Martin, “The Dialectic of Adaptation: The Cantebury Tales of Pier Paolo Pasolini’, Literature/Film Quarterly 4.1 (1976): 46-53 Harty, Kevin J., ed., Cinema Arthuriana: Essays on Arthurian Film (New York: Garland, 1991) Harty, Kevin J., King Arthur on Film: New Essays on Arthurian Cinema (Jefferson: McFarland, 1999) Kennedy, Harlan, The World of King Arthur according to John Boorman’, American Film 6 (1981): 30-37 Osberg, Richard H., ‘Pages torn from the Book: Narrative Disintegration in Gilliam’s The Fisher King’, Studies in Medievalism 7 (1995): 194-224 Robinson, Carol L. ‘Celluloid Criticism: Pasolini’s Contribution to the Chaucerian Debate’, Studies in Medievalism 5 (1993): 115-126 Rumble, Patrick, “Contamination and Excess: I Racconti di Cantebury as a “Struttura da Farsi”’, in Pasolini Old and New: Surveys and Studies, ed. Zygmunt G. Baranski (Dublin: Four Courts, 1999), pp. 345-361 Shichtman, Martin B., ‘Hollywood’s New Weston: The Grail Myth in Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now and John Boorman’s Excalibur’, PostScript 4 (1984): 35-48 Sternberg, Doug, ‘“Tom’s a-cold’: Tranformation and Redemption in King Lear and The Fisher King”. Literature/Film Quarterly 23 (1994): 160-169 Thompson, Kristin, Breaking the Glass Armor: Neoformalist Film Analysis (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), 289-316 |
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| STUDY-UNIT TYPE | Lecture | ||||||||
| METHOD OF ASSESSMENT |
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| LECTURER/S | Saviour Catania |
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The University makes every effort to ensure that the published Courses Plans, Programmes of Study and Study-Unit information are complete and up-to-date at the time of publication. The University reserves the right to make changes in case errors are detected after publication.
The availability of optional units may be subject to timetabling constraints. Units not attracting a sufficient number of registrations may be withdrawn without notice. It should be noted that all the information in the description above applies to study-units available during the academic year 2023/4. It may be subject to change in subsequent years. |
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