Cinematographic Doors to Nineteenth-Century Literature

Timetable

Module aim (aims)

• to present the nineteenth-century literary masterpieces and the most interesting attempts to bring them onto silver screen;• to use adaptation theories in the process of interpretation;• to develop the skills of reading literary and theoretical texts,

Pre-requisites in terms of knowledge, skills and social competences (where relevant)

English B1/B2

Syllabus

Week 1: On theory of film adaptation. An Introduction; Week 2-3: Frankenstein and modernity. The threads and plots of time. Week 4-5: Realms of the Incredible: Edgar Allan Poe’s stories and their film adaptations; Week 6: “Great Expectations” and disappointments Week 7: From Pip to Harry Potter. Alfonso Cuarón, the Film Industry and the schemes of adaptation; Week 8: “Henrik Ibsen and the Birth of Modernism”. Week 9: Ibsen, Miller, McQueen and heresies of their times. Week 10: Greater Expectations? Self made hero and the map of Polish myths Week 11: Wojciech Jerzy Has’s The Doll or how to modernize the realist novel Week 12: Wonderlands? Following Cinematographic Rabbits; Week 13: “Curiouser and curiouser...” Tim Burton vs. Jan Švankmajer; Week 14: From romanticism to modernism. Case studies. Week 15: The End: F. F. Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now and J. Conrad’s Heart of Darkness

Reading list

Fiction1. L. Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in the Wonderland & Through the Looking Glass [fragments].2. J. Conrad, Heart of Darkness [any edition]3. Ch. Dickens, Great Expectations [fragments]4. E. A. Poe, Tales of Mystery and Imagination, [any edition, selected stories]. Theory 5. D. Cartmell, I. Whelehan, Screen Adaptation: Impure Cinema, Palgrave 2010, pp. 10-28, 97-111. 6. M. Donesi, "Popular Culture" Rowman 2012. 7. L. Hutcheon, A Theory of Adaptation, Routlege Chapman&Hall 2006. 8. T. Leitch, Film Adaptation and its Discontents. From “Gone with the Wind” to “Passion of the Christ”, John Hopkins University Press 2009, pp. 1-21, 236-256.9. J. Sands, ‘We „Other Victrians”’; or, Rethinking the Nineteenth Century, in: Adaptation and Appropriation, New York: Routlege 2006, pp. 120-129.