Film adaptation: between narratology and cultural studies (2013–2014)

Project idea

The project “Film Adaptation: Between Narratology and C ultural C riticism” offers the new model for the analysis of film adaptations and presents diverse examples of its application in a comparative perspective. The proposed model views a film adaptation not as a specific textual structure, but as a certain regime, a particular mode of comprehension. The main material of the research and book is film adaptations of the novels “The Idiot” and “Crime and Punishment” by Fyodor Dostoyevsky produced in Russia, USA, France, Finland, Japan, Italy, Poland, and Brazil. They are complemented by adaptations of works by Dante, Mary Shelley, Leo Tolstoy, and Alexander Pushkin. The intercultural design of the study allows scrutinizing the ways in which various constructions of “literary classics” or “canon” formed in the literary field shape the cinema – the art of modernity par excellence – and structure the cinematic field. The interrelation of literary classics and modern cinema is of special interest when the classics is “foreign”, “not ours” in relation to cinematic culture. This approach opens up the debate on the strengths and limits of narratological tools for the analysis of film adaptations and allows bringing in the insights from reception studies, sociology of literature and film.The result of the project is book-length study. It consists of the theoretical introduction, twelve analytical chapters, and conclusions. It will be important for historians and sociologists of literature and film, specialists in narratology, those interested in literary and film theory, and students of film adaptations.