Syllabus
Week 1
Intro
Oscar Wilde: The Importance of Being Earnest (+ film rendition) - excerpts
Irvine Welsh: Trainspotting (+ film rendition) - excerpts
Focus: mimetic and diegetic means of artistic expression / compare & contrast
Week 2
Dan Rosen: The Last Supper
Focus: film as a sociological probe: radicalism vs. liberalism; a cautionary tale
Week 3
Alice Dunbar Nelson: The Stones of the Village + a dramatized version by Eliza Anderson
Philip Roth: The Human Stain (film adaptation + excerpts)
Focus: written, mimetic and auditory input – compare & contrast, cultural liminality I (the tragic mulatto phenomenon)
Weeks 4-7
STUDENT PRACTICE – NO CLASSES
Week 8
Woody Allen: Match Point Focus: Naturalism vs. Romanticism in a nutshell; coincidence vs. inevitability
Week 9
Tom Stoppard: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
Focus: Drama of the Absurd, rhetoric vs. body language
It is strongly recommended to READ THE PLAY before you watch the performance or at least refer to the actual play while watching the film rendition.
Week 10
Hanif Kureishi: My Son the Fanatic
Focus: liminality and cultural schizophrenia – a juxtaposition
Weeks 11 - 12
Liminality - cultural schizophrenia
Thomas Keneally: The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith
John M. Coetzee: Disgrace
Backup lecture - Australian literature - optional
Annotation
This course aims to explore mimetic and performative aspects of literature and its various audio and audiovisual recreations. 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.
Keywords: adaptation, artistic autonomy, mimetic/non-mimetic, analogy/contrast, performative, dialogue/monologue