“What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 1:9). This passage from one of the most cited religious intertexts, the Bible, suggests that any form of creation is based upon already existing creations. In one way or another, we all seem to be “standing on the shoulders of giants” (Isaac Newton 1675) then. In The Truth About Stories, Thomas King explores this connectedness of ideas in regard to storytelling and creation stories. He explains that he knows a story of the earth floating “in space on the back of a turtle” that has been repeated time and again, yet with a difference: “Sometimes the change is simply in the voice of the storyteller […or] the details. […] Other times it’s in the dialogue or the response of the audience. But in all the tellings of all the tellers, the world never leaves the turtle’s back. And the turtle never swims away.” Accordingly, stories are not only regularly inspired by other stories, but they often even explicitly retell them, whether in a faithful manner or with a twist. In this seminar, we will focus on texts and films which inspired rewritings and adaptations. In connection with this, we will briefly touch upon related theoretical concepts such as intertextuality, adaptation, and appropriation.
- Trainer/in: Silvia Anastasijevic