Deconstructing allegory and symbolism in fantasy short stories and their film adaptations
No Thumbnail Available
Date
2024
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of Oum El Bouaghi
Abstract
“RIP Van Winkle’’ or RVW is a fantasy piece of literature written by Irving Washington, the father of the American literature, among a collection of short stories as “Sleepy Hollow”, “The Broken Heart”, “A Royal Poet”, shortly known as “The sketch book”. Irving Washington has gifted the bibliophile with narrated tales, full of allegory & symbolism that still question the cultural consciousness and sound across generation especially those interested in American literature. His timeless and valuable “RVW” overcomes the unrevealed limits of pure storytelling that invites the readers to discover several complicate layers of meaning. These precious literary iconic have resisted time & been adapted into cinematic, theatre and cartoon versions. This dissertation aims to explore the interplay between allegory, symbolism, and deconstructionism in Washington Irvin’s written works and their cinematic adaptations. By applying the Deconstructionism theory, we aim to show how allegorical & symbolic elements in Irvin Washington’s literature are interpreted, transformed, or eventually re-contextualized when repositioned from the written to the visual form as showed through F.F Coppola directorial vision. Allegory & symbolism can enrich the text with multiple meanings, which are more extended with deconstruction because the writer, reader, director & cinephile may interpret the word or the scene differently from the author. Through this analysis, our objective is to reveal some implicit nuances expressed into Washington Irving's “RVW” short-story & examine how its cinematic adaptation reshape, reinterpret, or maintain the core of his allegorical & symbolic depth within the field of American written and visual storytelling.