Module organiser and tutor: Prof Astrid Köhler (A.Kohler@qmul.ac.uk)

Teaching: Semester 2: Wednesdays 9-11am, Bancroft Building 3.20

What are the specific qualities are of films and novels as media? How is a story changed when it moves from one medium to the other? Does it even remain the same story?
Using texts of international significance from the German canon, we will explore what happens to the parameters of prose fiction when they are transferred to the medium of film. This includes not only the way the plot is realised, but also many other factors which affect the intellectual and emotional responses elicited in reader and viewer. Some of these factors are explained through methods of analysis and critical terminology which have been developed either in literary studies or in film studies, but we will be concerned throughout the course to find convergences as well as divergences.
Our primary texts are four works of prose fiction from the early 19th to the early 21st centuries, and films based on them made between the 1970s and the last decade. All are available in English translation or with English subtitles. If you are studying German, you will be expected to study the literary texts in German; but you will be most welcome to discuss translation matters both in class discussions and in your coursework.