Scholarly record

FROM WORDS TO IMAGES OR FROM IMAGES TO WORDS?

Mihaela-Gabriela G. Paun

Abstract

The study "From words to images or from images to words?" is an application of Media and Communication field, Literature and Film Studies in particular. It analyses the short story "Tinere?e f?r? de tinere?e" ("Youth Without Youth"), by Mircea Eliade, in the film adaptation of Francis Ford Coppola. Mircea Eliade is better known internationally as a historian of religions, more than as a writer of fantastic literature. In an era which prefers image to the written text, the transfer of it in images implies a high difficulty. The study focuses on the relationship between multiple meanings that both text and film write with means specific to each semiotic system and uses semiotic analysis and semantics as methods. Our intention was to make a comparative analysis between text and film, so as to identify the qualities of the text that the film cannot "write", but also the qualities of the film that the text could just suggest. The result is that even if fantasy, or better said fantastic, is fully developed in the written text, in filmography is rather redefined, because fantasy is born and lives both through written words and images. The film by F. F. Coppola restores faithfully the thematic universe of the text written by Mircea Eliade. The film preserves the historical reality, the story, the characters? names, the contexts and the symbols that give an unusual note to the text. Thus, the two languages, of filmography and literature, interfere and complement each other by realizing an example of semiotic complementarity.

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