Literatur und Intermedialität

Status of the subject: mandatory

Structure of the subject: 6th Semester, 2 hours per week (2 courses)

Credits: 2

Teachers: Dr. Bökös Borbála

The course provides students with a more conscious reading (interpretation) of film adaptations of literary texts. Based on Linda Hutcheon’s and Brian McFarlane’s theories, some basic concepts of film adaptations will be introduced like transferability and adaptation proper, palimpsest and intertextuality, transposition, and appropriation, etc. These analytic tools offered both in the theoretical introduction and all through the seminars can provide answers to questions such as why and how certain elements of the literary text are inevitably changed by adaptation, and thus, also the question of mediality will be discussed. Apart from the inevitable adaptations (because of the non-transferability of certain elements and functions), the course will also raise the question how as a result of the adaptation the “original” text has been changed, and how those changes may affect certain emphases both in the diegetic and non-diegetic elements of the literary and cinematic texts. Ultimately, the course intends to create an attitude in the students that dispels the general “fidelity” expectation, and rather considers film adaptations as intertexts to the literary texts. This awareness will be created by a close reading of both the literary and the cinematic texts, in this way the basic method used will be a comparative (re)reading of both the literary text and that of the film.


en3203-lit-si-intermed.pdf