©TommyJapan1/Flickr

Call for papers

The study of the relations between the cinema and literature used to be focused on the question of adaptation from the literary text to the filmic one, adaptation being a long-standing topic of concern in the history of the Arts, forming the foundation of Adaptation Studies.

Comparative studies of this nature have long gone far beyond the aporia of notions of faithfulness/betrayal with respect to the original (Bazin, 1959), via developments derived from the influence of the ongoing fruitful dialogue between Literary Studies and Media Studies, and more specifically in the case of the latter, Visual Studies and Intermedia Studies.

In the last few decades the analysis of contact zones between the two arts has taken extremely productive directions as it has explored phenomena and concepts such as:

- transculturalization, hybridization or cannibalization, in order to study cultural representations through the assimilation of literary sources drawn from the Western canon (Stam, 1989, 2004);

- multi-centred relations and networks of intertextuality and intericonicity among the cinema, literature and a vast supporting range of media formats (graphic narratives and comics, television series, video games etc);

- novelization, dealing with the process of the adaptation of film to literature and/or to graphic narratives (Baetens & Cohen, 2019);

- that type of writing that writes as if to be projected, as a mode of articulation in contemporary fiction between the cinema and literature, both as technical device and psychic process (Martin, 2019);

- the role of the Archive (correspondence, preparatory notes, jottings, etc) with respect to the genesis of the writing of transmedial and adapted scripts (Brunow, 2022).

- the impact of audiovisual translation choices on literary film adaptations.

This Conference aims to prolong reflection on these and other associated questions in order to engage with the evolution of the relations between the cinema and literature, in an ever more complex space in which an increasing diversity of inter- and transmedia communicative options coexist and compete. Among these options can be found different media forms and formats, and different methods of cultural diffusion, beyond traditional publishing and the film industry. What kind of “elective affinities” best reveal and problematize contemporary cultural dynamics (Cléder, 2012)? How to write after the cinema (Baetens & Cohen, 2019)? What practices are being developed within contemporary inter/transmedia cultural fields, what types of intervention, what varieties of positioning do they adopt? And what are the effects of these practices on categories such as genre, authorship, textual authority, narrative, character, etc., in the transition from the cinematographic field to the literary field, and vice versa? What kind of connections exist between literary texts, their translations, and the process of film subtitling?

Bibliography

Bazin, A. (1959). Qu’est-ce que le cinéma ? II : Le cinéma et les autres arts. Le Cerf.

Baetens, J., Lits, M. (Eds.). (2004). La novellisation. Du film au roman. Leuven University Press.

Baetens, N., Cohen, N. (Eds). (2019). Écrire après le cinéma. Études Françaises, Volume 55, numéro 2, pp.115-133.

Brunow, D. (2022). Towards an archival study of screenplay versions: The role of screenwriting research for adaptation studies, Interfaces, 47, pp.1-21.

Cléder, J. (2012). Entre littérature et cinéma: Les affinités électives. Armand Colin.

Cléder, J. & Wagner, F. (Eds).(2017). Le cinéma et la littérature. Cécile Default.

Martin, M. (2019). Un nouveau genre dans la littérature française contemporaine ? In: J.

Pawel, A. (2020). Translating the translated: the applicability of translated literary texts to the subtitling of their film adaptations. Perspectives – Studies in Translation Theory and Practice. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0907676X.2020.1815815

Stam, R. (1989). Subversive Pleasures. Bakhtin, Cultural Criticism and Film. Johns Hopkins University Press.

Stam, R. (2004). Literature Through Film: Realism, Magic, and the Art of Adaptation. Wiley-Blackwell.

We invite all who are interested in the dialogue between literature and cinema, and vice versa, to attend this Conference for two days of reflection and discussion devoted to the following thematic fields of enquiry:

New phenomena and dynamics of transculturalization, hybridization or cannibalization between literature and the cinema and vice versa.
Forms of intertextuality and intericonicity among the cinema, literature and other contemporary media formats.
Contemporary Inter/Transmedia artistic practices and strategies that mobilize the resources of the cinema and literature.
Modifications in authorship, forms, and genres, along with the emergence of novel forms and genres.
Audio-visual translation and literary adaptations in cinema.