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- Title
From Novel to Song via Myth Wuthering Heights as a Case of Popular Intermedial Adaptation.
- Authors
Bernhart, Walter
- Abstract
This paper argues that adaptations of literary works into later, frequently popular, versions of them in other media are rarely cases of direct intermedial transposition but generally pass through a more abstract, essentially media-indifferent stage, which is based on the Stoff, or 'subject matter', of the literary source rather than on its more essentially 'literary' elements. Successful Stoffe for intermedial adaptation prove to be fertile towards generating myths or icons, which in turn stimulate further creative responses in various cultural contexts. Yet this successful myth-generating quality of a literary source very well ultimately rests in a highly literary quality of the source itself, namely in its ability to create a vivid 'storyworld' and to guarantee the reader's 'immersion' in this storyworld. Thus, concerning source/target text relationships, critical attention is directed not so much towards the issue of the target text's 'fidelity' to the source, but more so towards the source text's 'fertility' relating to its 'immersive', 'storyworld-building' and 'myth-generating' power. The case is argued by analysing the adaptive process from Emily Brontës famous novel Wuthering Heights to Kate Bush's highly successful eponymous popular song of the 1970s.
- Subjects
WUTHERING Heights (Book : Bronte); LITERARY adaptations; MUSIC; INTERMEDIALITY; BRONTE, Emily, 1818-1848; BUSH, Kate, 1958-
- Publication
Word & Music Studies, 2007, Vol 9, p13
- ISSN
1566-0958
- Publication type
Article