| CODE | ENG5007 | ||||||
| TITLE | Comparative Literature and Film | ||||||
| UM LEVEL | 05 - Postgraduate Modular Diploma or Degree Course | ||||||
| MQF LEVEL | Not Applicable | ||||||
| ECTS CREDITS | 10 | ||||||
| DEPARTMENT | English | ||||||
| DESCRIPTION | How is a literary text transformed into an audio-visual one? What exactly is the process at work in a cinematic adaptation? What different means of representation are required when novelistic devices such as point of view, focalization, authorial voice, and metaphor are depicted audiovisually? What strategies do literature and film share? What techniques are particular to each medium? What visual correlatives are created when literary devices are not “translatable” into filmic ones? What makes certain literary texts more adaptable to the screen than others? This study-unit will study the points of convergence and divergence between literature and film, as well as the links between narrative theory and film studies. Together with the transposition of novelistic techniques to the screen, attention will be given to the cinematic devices which are deployed in literary texts. The “fidelity” discourse and medium specificity (literature as literature and film as film) will also be examined. The adaptations which will be discussed will include Martin Scorsese’s The Age of Innocence, Neil Lebute’s Possession, Philip Haas’s Angels and Insects, Nicholas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now, Douglas McGrath’s Emma , and Amy Heckerling’s Clueless and their respective literary precursors. Objective: This study-unit discusses intermediatic and comparative issues concerning literature and film, and focuses in particular on issues relating to adaptation. Required Reading: - Bluestone, George, Novels into Film (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1957) - Chatman, Seymour, Story and Discourse. Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1978) - Giddings, Robert, Selby, Keith, and Wensley Chris, Screening the Novel. The Theory and Practice of Literary Dramatization (London, Palgrave: 1990) - Jameson, Fredric, The Geopolitical Aesthetic. Cinema and Space in the World System (Bloomington and Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1992 ) - McFarlane, Brian, Novel to Film. An Introduction to the Theory of Adaptation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996) - Jameson, Fredric, “The Nostalgia Mode and Nostalgia for the Present,” in Peter Brooker and Will Brooker (eds), Postmodern After-Images. A Reader in Film, Television and Video (London: Arnold, 1997) - Cartmell, Debora and Whelehan Imelda (eds.), Adaptation. From Text to Screen, Screen to Text (London and New York, Routledge: 1999) - Corrigan, Timothy, Film and Literature. An Introduction and Reader (New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1999) - Lothe, Jakob, Narrative in Fiction and Film (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000) |
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| STUDY-UNIT TYPE | Lecture | ||||||
| METHOD OF ASSESSMENT |
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| LECTURER/S | Saviour Catania Gloria Lauri Lucente |
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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 2025/6. It may be subject to change in subsequent years. |
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