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Through words and pictures - literature and film

Class at Faculty of Education |
OPNA2A128B

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