Literary Protagonists In Cinema

CİNEMA – PSYCHIATRY SEMINARS
AKBANK SANAT & PSİKESİNEMA –PSİKEART

NOVEMBER 2019 – JUNE 2020

“LITERARY PROTAGONİSTS IN CINEMA”

Coordinator: Prof. Dr. M. Emin Önder

In this session, we will be discussing one of the most popular and ambitious titles concerning the interaction between literature and cinema, “Literary Protagonists in Cinema”, both by way of reading and watching.

Could literary protagonists be considered as characters? In fact, there is no such thing as a one-to-one correlation between character formation and the formation of literary protagonists. It could be argued that the formation of a character can be the subject of a novel by itself. On the other hand, the richness of detail found in novels; the streets where protagonists stroll; the nature that surrounds them; the positions that the network of relationships established in the novel propels them towards; occasionally, as in the case of “Crime and Punishment”, the protagonist finding himself motivated towards certain behaviours that he himself could not foresee; or like Mrs. Dalloway, as the author describes in unparalleled detail, experiencing agonizing pain without being able to figure out the reason, all demonstrate that what makes the protagonist a “protagonist” is the general narrative composition and structure of the novel. The circumstances of a protagonist in a novel might, for instance, symbolize the final residues of a century when knighthood was taking its leave, as depicted in Don Quixote, or reveal the real but overlooked fact of the relationship between crime, the state and powerful families, as portrayed in Puzo’s “Godfather”. And in the course of that narrative we might encounter a unique human being: like Carmen, Zebercet, Meryem, Osman, Jean-Baptiste, or Alex...