Possible dialogical relations between cinema and literature: a look upon the romantic ideology of The Guarani

Abstract

In this study, which is part of the research project “The novel and its intersections – versions and transpositions of literary fiction”, we investigate the extent to which national identity forged by the Romanticism of José de Alencar could be resumed (or enlarged) in the film The Guarani (1996), by Norma Bengell. In order to do so, we firstly present the theoretical discussion on dialogism, polyphony and intertextuality. Drawing on readings of Bakhtin and Volochínov (1992), Bakhtin (1992, 1997, 1998), Kristeva (1974), Stam (2003), Genette (1982), among others, we outline the extension of the concept of dialogism to then investigate dialogical, intertextual and / or polyphonic aspects concerning the cinematographic enunciation translated from literature into cinema, more specifically from novel into film. In this sense, ideologies pertaining both to a source and target enunciation are related to their social audience and chronotope; intertextuality and polyphony are inserted in the set of dialogical relations, the enunciation being a discursive, social and historical object, which combines external approaches of language. We hope that the result of this research may contribute to unravel possible dialogical relations in comparative analysis between novel and film.