Novel – Illustration – Adaptation: The Revived Worlds of Jules Verne

• Authors: BUBENÍČEK Petr
• Year of publication: 2011
• MU Faculty or unit: Faculty of Arts
• Description: The culturologist-poetological analysis, whose methodology draws on the theory of intermediality (W. Wolf., I. O. Rajewski) and on intermedially oriented narratology (H. P. Abbott, M. L. Ryan), will focus on adaptations that transpose or even insert illustrations of novels into their structure. The aim of this paper is therefore to continue the discussion about the ways in which intermedia studies can contribute to a further development of adaptation studies. The paper will demonstrate this on the transpositions of Jules Verne’s adventure novels, made by the director, graphic artist and representative of Czech animated cinema, Karel Zeman (1910 – 1985). His films A DEADLY INVENTION (1958), THE STOLEN AIRSHIP (1966) a ON THE COMET (1970) will be analyzed. First the relations between Verne’s texts and the illustrations in the books will be examined. Then the adaptations themselves will be analyzed, showing the impressive effect of the use of the illustrations known from the books. In this way, the films affect the viewer not only through all the possibilities of film narration (speech, sound and moving pictures), but also through the possibilities of pictorial narrativity: the aesthetic illusion is reinforced by the evocative power of the picture which suddenly becomes static; the viewer can stay in the dramatic scene for a while before the story continues. This raises the question of whether the drawings are a part of a multimedial (plurimedial) form of the new work, or media transfers or intertextual references. An analysis of the films’ soundtracks is also of great importance: the mixture of the revived illustrations, noise and music reveals a naive vision of the coming industrial world that contrasts with a nostalgic longing for the old days.