Annotation
This course explores mimetic and performative aspects of literature and its various audio and audiovisual recreations. In so doing, it seeks to acquaint the students with the most influential theories of film adaptation, followed by a practical analysis of selected film adaptations of major works of Anglo-American literature and, to a lesser degree, standalone films based on very ambitious original scripts. The standard close-reading process resides in the juxtaposition of a written passage against its audio and/or visual rendition. The course syllabus consists of films (part film adaptations), Anglo-American plays and short stories, predominantly by late 20th century writers. Particular attention is devoted to the juxtaposition of diegetic and mimetic techniques of artistic expression, pictorial imagery as a functional equivalent of language, and also the deployment of Modernist and Postmodern narrative strategies in film. The course also provides practical methodology towards teaching English via films, employing a wide range of language acquisition techniques, namely subtitle gap-fill, comprehension quiz, multiple choice, periphrastic exercises etc.).
Teaching units: 1. Analogies and contrasts
Two film variations on a job interview
(Oscar Wilde: The Importance of Being Earnest, Irvine Welsh: Trainspotting) 90 minutes 2. Film as a social probe and cautionary tale
Dan Rosen: The Last Supper 90 minutes 3. Modernist narrative techniques and their pictorial equivalents
Woody Allen: Match Point 90 minutes 4. The courtroom novel and its filmic renditions I
Tom Wolfe: The Bonfire of the Vanities 90 minutes 5-6. The courtroom novel and its filmic renditions II (analogie a kontrasty)
Harper Lee: To Kill a Mockingbird
David Guterson: Snow Falling on Cedars 2 x 90 minutes 7. Diegesis vs. mimesis
Tom Stoppard: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead 90 minutes 8-9. Cultural liminality I – tragic mulatto (a text-film-radio play juxtaposition)
Alice Dunbar Nelson: The Stones of the Village
Philip Roth: Human Stain 2 x 90 minutes 10-11. Cultural liminality II - a film-film juxtaposition
Hanif Kureishi: My Son the Fanatic
John M. Coetzee: Disgrace 2 x 90 minutes 12. Functional equivalence: book to screen
Witi Ihimaera: Whale Rider 90 minutes