Pasolini, Chaucer and Boccaccio: Two Medieval Texts and Their Translation to Film

by Agnès Blandeau

Overview

Pier Pasolini's "trilogy of life" is a series of film adaptations of major texts of the past: The Decameron, The Canterbury Tales, and One Thousand and One Nights. The movies demonstrate a film author's acute aesthetic sensibility through a highly original cinematic rendering of the sources. The first two films, closely examined in this book, offer a personal, purposefully stylized vision of the Middle Ages, as though Pasolini were dreaming Boccaccio's and Chaucer's texts through the filter of his "heretic" consciousness. The unusual poetic visualization of the source works, which could be described as irreverent cinematic homage, has the potential to renew the traditional reading of such literature.

This book shows how cinema becomes an alternative form of storytelling. It first studies the two films in detail, putting them in perspective within the trilogy. Next it interprets them, recounting misinterpretations and expounding upon Pasolini's ideological perception, and defends the oft-criticized adaptations. Finally, it discusses how the films represent innovation over strict adaptation. Appendices offer charts with information on the narrative structures of the films and the correspondences between them.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780786422470
Publisher:	McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Publication date:	07/19/2006
Pages:	218
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.44(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Agnès Blandeau has published articles on The Canterbury Tales and their adaptation on film. An associate professor at Nantes University, she lives in France.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Preface     
Introduction     

I. THE FILM: AN ALTERNATIVE FORM OF TELLING, ANOTHER
TEXTUAL ARCHITECTURE, AND DIFFERENT MEANINGS
1. I Racconti di Canterbury: The Film Text of The Canterbury Tales     
2. Placing I Racconti di Canterbury in Perspective with The Decameron     
3. Il Fiore delle mille e una notte: The Last Panel of the Triptych     

II. THE ADAPTATION: A CLOSE ENCOUNTER OF THE THIRD KIND
4. The Shock of Pasolini’s Trilogy     
5. A Trans-semiotization: The Subversive Intention in I Racconti di Canterbury     
6. Eloquent Pictures     
7. A Defense of Adaptation     

Conclusion     
Appendix 1: Chart Showing Narrative Structure of I Racconti di Canterbury in Text and Film     
Appendix 2: Chart Showing Narrative Structure of The Decameron in Text and Film     
Appendix 3: Chart Showing Echoes and Correspondences Between I Racconti di Canterbury and The Decameron     
Notes     
Bibliography     
Index