Spanish Film and the Postwar Novel: Reading and Watching Narrative Texts

(Hardback)

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The novel and the film are two modes of representation based on different aesthetic tools, but both are capable of articulating narrative discourses. In Spanish Film and the Postwar Novel, author Norberto Minguez-Arranz offers a comparative analysis of the methods and mechanisms with which the novel and the film build their stories. A theoretical framework that that puts into perspective such concepts as specificity, representation, and point of view gives way to a comparative study of five Spanish postwar novels and their respective film adaptations: The Family of Pascual Duarte, Time of Silence, The Hive, El Bosque Animado, and Nuevas Amistades. Revealing the existence of cinematic features of the novel and literary features of the cinema, the author examines the ways in which this interdependence has become a permanent aspect of both arts, with mutual influences and a great deal of nonexclusivity of properties. By using this particular time and place as his locus of analytical thought, Minguez-Arranz provides an invaluable examination of two of this century's major creative forms.

Reviews

This study in comparative narratology in particular examines what the author calls "mechanisms of enunciation." Before comparing the novels with the films they inspired, the author concisely and clearly reviews the relevant theoretical literature relating to topics such as narrativity, point of view, and spatial and temporal dimensions. The comparative analyses of novels and films are cogently and closely argued. The book is well organized, and readers will benefit from the thorough scholarly apparatus, which includes notes, bibliography, and appendixes listing Spanish postwar novels adapted to cinema and the credits for the five films analyzed....Graduate students, researchers, and faculty.-Choice
"This study in comparative narratology in particular examines what the author calls "mechanisms of enunciation." Before comparing the novels with the films they inspired, the author concisely and clearly reviews the relevant theoretical literature relating to topics such as narrativity, point of view, and spatial and temporal dimensions. The comparative analyses of novels and films are cogently and closely argued. The book is well organized, and readers will benefit from the thorough scholarly apparatus, which includes notes, bibliography, and appendixes listing Spanish postwar novels adapted to cinema and the credits for the five films analyzed....Graduate students, researchers, and faculty."-Choice

Author Bio

NORBERTO MNGUEZ-ARRANZ is Professor of Communication at the University of Madrid./e He is the co-author of Principios de Teoria General de la Imagen and the editor of Literatura espanola y cine, as well as an editor of Telos, a journal devoted to communication, culture, and society in Spain and Latin America.