scispace - formally typeset
Search or ask a question
Journal ArticleDOI

Narrativity and Sound in German Radio Play Adaptations of Paul Auster's The New York Trilogy

01 Jan 2017-Partial Answers (The Johns Hopkins University Press)-Vol. 15, Iss: 1, pp 151-165
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explored the different modes of narrative sound in three German radio play adaptations of Auster's New York Trilogy, Stadt aus Glas, Katharina Bihler's Schlagschatten, and Norbert Schaeffer's Hinter verschlossenen Turen.
Abstract: In line with the strong emphasis on visuality in the wake of the “visual turn” in literary and cultural studies, graphic novel adaptations of literary texts have recently been the objects of scholarly study and narratological theory building. Much less attention, if any, has been accorded to radio play adaptations of novels like Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy . An analysis of radio play adaptations acquires a special significance in the case of this highly enigmatic work, which makes a seriously playful use of postmodern narrative strategies. It is perhaps above all this feature which made the adaptation of the novel’s first instalment, City of Glass , into a graphic novel by Paul Karasik and David Mazucchelli so successful. While the graphic novel visualizes characteristic features of its mother text, this paper explores the different modes of narrative sound in three German radio play adaptations of Auster’s novel. Alfred Behrens’ Stadt aus Glas , Katharina Bihler’s Schlagschatten , and Norbert Schaeffer’s Hinter verschlossenen Turen employ narrative devices like voices in both German and English, the evocation of city soundscapes, the narrative uses of music as well as issues of the simultaneity and/or difference of story and discourse time. The narrative auralization of Auster’s novels in the radio plays under discussion can be shown to foreground non-visual aspects of the pre-texts and to add further dimensions for interpretation that underline the usefulness of audionarratological analysis for adaptation studies.
Citations
More filters
Book Chapter
01 Jan 2016

3 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
14 Dec 2016
TL;DR: In this article, the authors analyze the German radio play adaptation of Philip Roth's novel Indignation from an audionarratological perspective and show how both the book and the radio play offer potential for multisensory experiences on the part of readers and radio audiences.
Abstract: This article analyses the German radio play adaptation of Philip Roth's novel Indignation (Emporung, 2010) from an audionarratological perspective and shows how both the book and the radio play offer potential for multisensory experiences on the part of readers and radio audiences. The article furthermore explores how the two media differ in their semiotic and sensory affordances and possibilities. It is argued that aural signs and signals predetermine certain aspects of the storyworld in the radio play: for example, characters' and the narrator's voices, soundscapes, but also ambient sound and music. Due to its focus on the aural channel, radio drama calls on audiences' imagination in distinct ways, while also complicating narratological concepts. The ‘transcriptivity’ from written to spoken text that is inherent in the transposition of novel into radio play accounts for the fact that the radio play also adds new multisensory and interpretive dimensions to its pre-text. It therefore has to be considered ...

2 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
17 Dec 2019
TL;DR: This article analyzed silence at the interface between print and audio media by reading and listening to Heinrich Boll's short story "Murke's Collected Silences" (Doktor Murkes gesammeltes Schweig... ).
Abstract: This article analyses silence at the interface between print and audio media by reading and listening to Heinrich Boll's short story ‘Murke's Collected Silences’ (‘Doktor Murkes gesammeltes Schweig...

2 citations