Each time we recognize how much the poets placed their central figures one in the forest where their life takes a major turn. 1220) and then in two fifteenth-century prose novels, Thüring von Ringoltingen’s Melusine (1456) and the anonymous Fortunatus (1509). Here I examine more closely the symbolic meaning of the forest as a mysterious, dangerous, yet also spiritual location in Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Titurel (ca. Augustine as well as in Dante’s Divina Commedia, and then in a plethora of other texts. The forest motif can be found in the works of St. For the sake of brevity, the English translation will only be commented upon rather tangentially as the main focus is on how the original German text has been transposed into the film.ĪBSTRACT This article demonstrates how much the forest was used by medieval writers as a symbolic space where critical events take place deeply affecting their protagonists. The purpose is to examine the context in which the product (or rather products) come into being and to look at the specific characteristics presented by the novel and the film as manifestations of different media. This paper does not aim to provide an ultimate solution to this conundrum, but rather to analyse a specific cultural product in its various (and equally valuable) manifestations: the German novel Der Vorleser, the English translation thereof and its film adaptation The reader by director Stephen Daldry. Whether from the point of view of literary studies, cinema studies or translation studies, no theoretical model seems to be able to do justice to all stances and, inevitably, the result will draw criticism. The study of the relationship between cinema and literature (and more specifically, of film adaptations) is a problematic field. I conclude this paper by suggesting re-defining our “home” as a way to include our vulnerability and transcend the generational guilt or victimhood. Lastly, I discuss the role of the humanities in recovering the sense of the divine in us and nurturing global citizens, who should be neither spineless cosmopolitans nor narcissistic nationalists. In lieu of legalism and moral mediocrity, I present what Solzhenitsyn referred to as “higher human possibilities”, which appeal to human dignity prior to human rights. Second, I discuss the limitations of law in relation to the female character’s secret illiteracy. As the novel deals with post-war second generation’s attempt to come to terms with the Holocaust, it raises many questions such as, “How do we integrate our historical grievance into our collective biography?” Looking into the personal relationship between two main characters in the novel, I first challenge the stereotypical images of perpetrators and suggest the act of recognizing inhumanity in all of us, or “the banality of evil” as an alternative to our tendency to normalize the terrible and demonize the ordinary. In raising these questions, I use a work of fiction, The Reader (1995) by Bernhard Schlink to see how our sense of responsibility for another is based on our memories of the past and extends to the present and the future. This paper examines the nature of our relationships with one another and asks in what sense and to what degree we are our “brothers’ keepers”.
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