ENG 5138 Parker Spring 2021

In this course, we will study classic and contemporary theories of film adaptation, borrowing as well as breaking from the concept of fidelity to create a space to explore how the cinema engages with literature, and how literary stories are deformed and reformed through the medium of film. We will examine a variety of text-to-film adaptations and explore their wider adaptation networks”; some will be more classically defined, such as Robert Siodmak’s adaptation of Hemingway’s The Killers (1964), while others will force us to address adaptation as a concept perhaps equal to influence, as when we study the connectivity between Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope (1948) and Thomas de Quincey’s “On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts.” Subsequently, we will also consider how some literature was influenced by film, or adapted itself by “seeing cinematically,” before the cinema even fully evolved. Selected adaptation and film theory will be read, including writings by André Bazin, Roland Barthes, Raymond Bellour, Sergei Eisenstein, Kamilla Elliott, Thomas Leitch, Linda Hutcheon, and Robert Stam.

Films for study may include: Adaptation, Alice in Wonderland, The Big Sleep, Blade Runner, Blade Runner: 2049, Dune, Eyes Wide Shut, The Killers, Nosferatu, Rope, Suspiria (1977 & 2018), Vivre sa Vie.