Connecting Literature with Theatre and Cinema

U.G.C International Seminar

D.R.S - SAP III (Phase III), Department of English
University of Calcutta
23rd - 25th March, 2015
Literature as an artistic form of written text from the very beginning of its journey
always offered us visuals, picturesque images and fascinating rhetoric of sights and sounds.
While on the other hand, cinema and theatre transform words to life through visuals, sound,
music, dialogue, acting and blending of other cognitive and sensory stimulations. In their
ability to attract audience, representation of diverse social, cultural, political and
philosophical issues of human life, depiction of individual and collective experiences,
perceptions and emotions; literature, theatre and cinema share close, almost intertwined and
mutual spaces. When writing becomes the medium of the visual then characters, time and
space structure themselves in interesting ways. Conversely, when the written narratives do
lend themselves to filmic adaptations we see the visual code brings to bear upon them its own
temporality. So, both ways we see transaction between the visual and the written readjusting
and restructuring various literary, theatrical and cinematic tropes.
In this context, the issue of adaptation and transaction between various art-forms
become very significant. Cinematic, theatrical and literary adaptations are now being
analysed as products of artistic creativity caught up in the ongoing whirl of intertextual
transformation, of texts generating other texts in an endless process of recycling,
transformation, and transmutation, with no clear point of origin. Aside from the formalism of
such transaction, the epistemic underpinnings of the representation of the visual in the written
and visualization of the written in cinematic and theatrical forms, and the power of gaze as
well as ideological perspectives in such transactions can be treated as interesting areas of
inquiry. Innumerable instances can be cited of such transactions and correspondences. From
Laurence Oliviers immortal adaptation of many Shakespearean plays, Akira Kurosawas
many epic films like Throne of Blood and Ran, Satyajit Rays illustrious movie like Pather
Panchali which was based on the classic bildungsroman of Bengali literature and countless
other cinematic creations, Ritwik Ghataks recreation of the Shaktipada Rajgurus fiction in
Meghe Dhaka Tara, Peter Brooks rendering of the Indian epic - The Mahabharata, the list is
endless. There have been instances of novelists who have worked from their own screenplays
to create novels at nearly the same time as a film. Both Arthur C. Clarke, with 2001: A Space
Odyssey, and Graham Greene, with The Third Man, have worked from their own film ideas to
a novel form. The examples of such transactions between cinematic, theatrical and literary
medium are inexhaustible and therefore it is impossible to mention every instances
individually.
The seminar covers an interdisciplinary terrain of literary, cinematic, theatrical
mediums and its ramifications in various social and cultural arenas. It seeks to address issues
like the following, but is not confined to them:

Issues of Literary, Cinematic and Theatrical Adaptation: fiction into film, drama to
film, or the other way round.
Narration as iconography

Translation as a trope of writing the visual

The visual trope in the narratives: Use of visual aesthetics of cinema or other genres
into written texts.
Correspondences and Transactions other than Adaptations between Art-forms like
Cinema, Theatre and Literature.
Gaze in textual and cinematic narratives and their dialogues.

Abstract (word limit): 300 words.

Submission: Abstracts must be submitted as MS Word Document attached along with an
email stating the name and complete details of the paper presenter.
Last date of submitting Abstracts: 5th March 2015.
Email for submitting abstracts: drs3.english@gmail.com