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Fall
2002
Humanities
395: Special Topic:
Literature and Cinema
The goal
of this seminar is to study literature and cinema
as two parallel ways (systems of signs or semiotic
systems) of describing the world and expressing
the world view of the author(s). Our focus will be on the
relationship between these two different sign systems —
verbal art (i.e., written literature) and (initially silent,
subsequently audio-visual) cinema. The aesthetic and semiotic
similarities and differences between literary texts and their
cinematic projections will be discussed. We will compare film
with the literary texts both from the point of view of the
contents (social, historical, philosophical ideas) and the
expressive devices used by the filmmaker and the writer. Each
film studied at the seminar will be discussed in its relation
to the work of literature on which it is based. Particular
attention will be paid to the following aspects of the films
and their literary counterparts:
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a)
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narration
and the role of the heroes (plot and story/“fable”)
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b)
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temporal
structure (linear time and flashbacks, cyclic reversals)
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c)
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spatial
relations (general shots and close-ups, structure of
the shot, point of view )
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“Readings”
will include texts written by filmmakers and a number of films,
including:
- Jean
Cocteau Orpheus (France, 1950) / Rainer Maria Rilke,
“Orpheus, Euridice, Hermes”
- Federico
Fellini Satyricon (Italy, 1969) / Petronius, Satyricon
- Paolo
Pasolini Canterbury Tales (Italy,1971/1972) / Geoffrey
Chaucer, Canterbury Tales
- Bernardo
Bertolucci The Double (Italy, 1968) / Fyodor Dostoevsky,
“The Double”
- Akira
Kurosawa Idiot” (Japan, 1951) / Fyodor Dostoevsky,
The Idiot
- Akira
Kurosawa Rashemon (Japan, 1950) / two short sories
by Ryunosuke Akutagawa
- Andrzej
Wajda Ashes and Diamonds (Poland,1958) / Jerzy Andrzejewski,
Ashes and Diamonds
- Luchino
Visconti Death in Venice (Italy, 1971) / Thomas Mann,
“Death in Venice”
- Andrei
A. Tarkovsky Solyaris (Russia, 1972) / Stanislaw
Lem, Solyaris
- Andrei
A. Tarkovsky Stalker (Russia, 1980) / A.N. and B.N.
Strugatskies, “A Sideway Banquet”
- Stanley
Kubrick A Clockwork Orange (UK, 1971) / Anthony Burgess,
A Clockwork Orange
Students
interested in enrolling in this class should have taken at
least one of the following courses as a pre-requisite and
should consider this as they register for Spring 2002 courses:
Art 231, English 390, German 227, Philosophy 235 or 245, Russian
265, Russian and European Studies 291, or any 300-level literature
course.
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