Franz Kafka zwischen den medien
Creators: name: Grammatikopoulos, Damianos
Publisher: name: No Publisher Supplied
Year: 2018

description: My dissertation, entitled Franz Kafka zwischen den Medien. Film- und Comics-Adaptionen des Kafka’schen Werkes examines adaptations of Franz Kafka’s novels and short stories with special attention given to (audio-) visual translations of The Metamorphosis, The Trial, and The Castle. The project rethinks the notion of an adaptation as something secondary and derivative by exploring the “supplementary” relationship in which the original and its translations are enmeshed. I view the adapted works as expansions of the source text that widen and complicate the meaning of the story on which they are based. In my analyses, precursor text and adaptation(s) are shown to be related in such a way that each brings out unsuspected dimensions in the other.  Drawing on materials from a diverse field of studies, my chapters investigate the reciprocal effect that source text and adaptation have on each other. Leaving aside a binary, hierarchical view between literature and film, or any other narrative media that places the literary text above its adaptation, my work treats the adapted material not as a supplementary, condensed visual transposition of an original text, but both as an independent work of art and a modification of the story on which it is based. By choosing not to view the source text as a center around which adaptations revolve, my analysis contributes to a comprehensive and extensive approach to the study of visual and audio-visual transpositions.    I argue that adaptations have the potential to add complex layers of meaning to the source text and thus change our understanding of the latter. An adaptation is essentially an interpretation and as any interpretation it has the potential to profoundly alter the text it is utilizing. As opposed to the common approach within the field of adaption studies that focuses solely on two media, usually literature and film, my dissertation incorporates a third medium: the graphic novel. While the study of literary texts that have been adapted to graphic novels is on the rise as well, my dissertation expands the field by concentrating on works that have been adapted into at least two narrative media.   Furthermore, my methodology takes into account the complexity of Kafka’s texts and the depth of its rich language. By pointing to adaptations, the rich implications of Kafka’s words and sentences become “visible” and often transform into something completely new. In my analysis, Kafka’s texts and their adaptations merge into an elaborate inter-medial narrative, making the source story more complex and fertile for subsequent interpretations. The enthusiastic response from senior scholars in related fields to my conference-presentations is an indication of the far-reaching ramifications that a reading across media can have. Furthermore, several chapters and subchapters of my dissertation are currently under consideration for publication. The last chapter on parasitism (5. Simulationen des Kafkaesken), has already been published in the journal Humanities, and the two subchapters on The Castle (2. Das Schloß) are currently under consideration for publication at the German Studies Review (2.1.2 Schwellenmotive: Fenster und Türen des Schloßes) and The German Quarterly (2.1.1 Vor dem Schloß) respectively.