Three Articulations of The Sweet Hereafter: The Auteur, the Novelist and the Co-authored Text

Abstract

The repetition of the title The Sweet Hereafter for novel (1991), film/DVD (1997/1998) and book chapter (2004) is suggestive of the slippages between them. The research traces the intermedial transitions of the TSH through three articulations to demonstrate how the texts subvert the temporal hierarchy posited by the notion of ‘fidelity’ in adaptation studies. The concepts of ‘original’ and “derivatives” are replaced by an intertextual simultaneity that posits the novelist and the auteur as co-authors of The Sweet Hereafter text. The first section of this RP considers the process of adaptation of the novel into film and draws on the highly self-reflexive dialogue between novelist and writer/director included on TSH DVD (1998). The second section of this RP traces how the ideas from the DVD discussion are reoriented through a collaboration on a book chapter which deconstructs the interplay of the visual and verbal as they work on screen.