Papers by Cattrysse Patrick
This chapter discusses teaching screenwriting in terms of translation and adaptation. Realigning ... more This chapter discusses teaching screenwriting in terms of translation and adaptation. Realigning terminology with everyday language, translation is redefined as an invariance-based phenomenon while adaptation is reconceived as a variance-based phenomenon, which entails better fit. More specific working definitions follow specifying what one could be teaching or learning in more precise terms. The acceptance of these proposals remains a matter of contention. One major obstacle involves the current Western Romantic view on art and culture. Having driven a rift between art and craft, Romanticism 2.0 opposes the aforesaid working definitions, and disparages screenwriting, translation, and adaptation, lest they comply with the Romantic rule. Suggestions follow to re-open the Romantic view to its pre-Romantic stance, and to revalue both art and craft values in screenwriting, translation and adaptation. Finally, conclusions highlight some caveats foreshadowing resistance also against nudgi...
Journalism and Media, 2022
This essay discusses teaching screenwriting in terms of translation and adaptation. Realigning te... more This essay discusses teaching screenwriting in terms of translation and adaptation. Realigning terminology with everyday language, translation is redefined as an invariance-based phenomenon while adaptation is reconceived as a variance-based phenomenon, which entails better fit. More specific working definitions follow specifying what one could be teaching or learning in more precise terms. The acceptance of these proposals remains a matter of contention. One major obstacle involves the current Western Romantic view on art and culture. Having driven a rift between art and craft, Romanticism 2.0 opposes the aforesaid working definitions, and disparages screenwriting, translation, and adaptation, lest they comply with the Romantic rule. Suggestions follow to reopen the Romantic view to its pre-Romantic stance, and to revalue both art and craft values in screenwriting, translation and adaptation. Finally, conclusions highlight some caveats foreshadowing resistance also against nudging back Romanticism 2.0 to its pre-Romantic views.
unpublished paper, 2018
This paper argues that to adopt a naturalized morals perspective, and to match it with narrative ... more This paper argues that to adopt a naturalized morals perspective, and to match it with narrative studies, may help advance the study of empathy and its relation to multi-cultural ethics within the larger study of audience involvement. Firstly, different texts may convey different morals, and therefore require different audiences adhering to different morals in order to obtain a preferred or negotiated reading. This invites us to reconsider some old concepts (e.g. anti-hero) as well as some newer ones (e.g. bad fan). Secondly, if studies of empathy tend to focus on character (dis)liking, narratologists generally adopt a wider view, involving multiple narrative agents including real makers, implied makers, narrator(s), narratee(s), implied audience(s) and real audience(s). Adopting this wider view allows for a more refined study of empathy that may play (or not) as a more diversified phenomenon at multiple levels. Thirdly, empathy is not the only player in ...
This paper discusses screenwriting in terms of art and craft. Section one briefly sketches how a ... more This paper discusses screenwriting in terms of art and craft. Section one briefly sketches how a wider "pre-modern" view on art, which included craft, has evolved into a "modern", narrower view of art, which redefined the concept as "fine art" and expelled craft from its territory. This paradigm shift entailed at once the development of two distinct value systems: a Romantic and a Classicist value system. Whereas the former serves to define and appreciate artworks in terms of fine art and to depreciate other cultural practices and products in terms of craft, the latter allows to appreciate craftworks on its own terms. Section two describes some of the core features of this Classicist value system. Before moving on, section three adds some caveats to the reader who might be opposed to binary categorizations: The Romantic and the Classicist value system are conceived as "probabilistic" categories. That is to say, they allow for graded category-membership and category-overlap. This explains how and why scholars have already speculated about a possible "third system of art". Section four looks into some of these proposals. Section five finally suggests that a "technical" approach to screenwriting or story writing could help materialize such a third system and offer several advantages.
This paper looks at the concept of cultural proximity, as suggested by Joseph Straubhaar in his 1... more This paper looks at the concept of cultural proximity, as suggested by Joseph Straubhaar in his 1991 paper Beyond Media Imperialism: Assymmetrical [sic] Interdependence and Cultural Proximity. It argues that, based on a polysystem study of film noir adaptations from the early 1990s, both cultural proximity and distance may either enhance or inhibit the cross-cultural or cross-generic flow of media content depending on some specific conditioners such as the stability or instability (e.g., success or lack thereof) of the target genre or context and the conservative or innovating function of the adaptations in their target context.
TTR : traduction, terminologie, rédaction, 2020
This paper discusses how theories of definition and probabilistic theories of categorization coul... more This paper discusses how theories of definition and probabilistic theories of categorization could help distinguish between translation and (literary film) adaptation, and eventually between translation (TS) and (literary film) adaptation studies (LFAS). Part I suggests readopting the common parlance definition of “translation” as the accurate rendition of the meaning of a verbal expression in another natural language, and “adaptation” as change that leads to better fit. Readopting these common parlance definitions entails categorical implications. The author discusses three parameters: whereas “translation” represents an invariance-oriented, semiotically invested, cross-lingual phenomenon, “adaptation” refers to a variance-oriented phenomenon, which is not semiotically invested, and entails better fit. Part II discusses how theories of categorization could help distinguish between TS and LFAS. The study of the disciplinarization of knowledge involves epistemic and socio-political c...
True Event Adaptation, 2018
Palabra Clave - Revista de Comunicación, 2017
This paper looks at the concept of cultural proximity, as suggested by Joseph Straubhaar in his 1... more This paper looks at the concept of cultural proximity, as suggested by Joseph Straubhaar in his 1991 paper Beyond Media Imperialism: Assymmetrical [sic] Interdependence and Cultural Proximity. It argues that, based on a polysystem study of film noir adaptations from the early 1990s, both cultural proximity and distance may either enhance or inhibit the cross-cultural or cross-generic flow of media content depending on some specific conditioners such as the stability or instability (e.g., success or lack thereof) of the target genre or context and the conservative or innovating function of the adaptations in their target context.
Benjamins Translation Library, 2008
One of the major problems in European cinema concerns the respective thresh-olds that separate na... more One of the major problems in European cinema concerns the respective thresh-olds that separate national EU member states. Not only do we need film stories that travel more successfully across national and cultural borders in and outside Europe, but filmmakers also require ever ...
Palabra Clave, 2021
This paper discusses the teaching of screenwriting and storytelling in terms of art and craft. It... more This paper discusses the teaching of screenwriting and storytelling in terms of art and craft. It argues that since Romanticism established itself in the 19th century as the dominant Western view on art and culture, it has driven a wedge between people’s notions of art and craft, promoting the former and demoting the latter. This rift has impeded the teaching of screenwriting and storytelling in general. Following this, art historians and sociologists of art have suggested developing a “third system of art,” one that reintegrates the artist and the artisan, the art and craft-based values. This essay develops the basic tenets of a “technical approach” to the teaching of screenwriting. This technical approach sits in-between a Romantically biased “free-wheeling” approach and a mechanistic, “rule-based” approach. It is argued that a technical approach to screenwriting or storytelling could help materialize such a “third system of art” and benefit the practice, teaching, and study of screenwriting and storytelling.
TTR Traduction, terminologie, rédaction, 2020
This paper discusses how theories of definition and probabilistic theories of categorization coul... more This paper discusses how theories of definition and probabilistic theories of categorization could help distinguish between translation and (literary film) adaptation, and eventually between translation (TS) and (literary film) adaptation studies (LFAS). Part I suggests readopting the common parlance definition of “translation” as the accurate rendition of the meaning of a verbal expression in another natural language, and “adaptation” as change that leads to better fit. Readopting these common parlance definitions entails categorical implications. The author discusses three parameters: whereas “translation” represents an invariance-oriented, semiotically invested, cross-lingual phenomenon, “adaptation” refers to a variance-oriented phenomenon, which is not semiotically invested, and entails better fit. Part II discusses how theories of categorization could help distinguish between TS and LFAS. The study of the disciplinarization of knowledge involves epistemic and socio-political conditioners. This section concludes that medium specificity, i.e., the linguistic versus lit-film paradigm, plays a major role in separating TS from LFAS. Another player that deserves more attention is the Romantic as opposed to the Classicist value system.
TTR Traduction, terminologie, rédaction, 2019
Adaptation, 2019
Definitional issues are not new in translation and adaptation studies (TS and AS, respectively), ... more Definitional issues are not new in translation and adaptation studies (TS and AS, respectively), and neither is the question of whether AS and TS should be seen as one discipline studying one object of study or rather as two disciplines studying two distinct sets of phenomena. This paper argues that an interdisciplinary view on the subject may offer some analytical tools that help advance this discussion. Since the issue is in part one of definition, Section one looks into theories of definitions and discusses four types of definition that could be of use to our debate.
This leads to the paradoxical conclusion that to define translations and adaptations is at once easy and difficult. Words like ‘adaptation’ or ‘translation’ are common nouns, which point to sets of entities that share nonunique features. Hence to name is to categorize. Section two probes into theories of categorization and how they could help categorize translational and adaptational phenomena. It turns out that a study of categories and categorizing must involve categorizers. Consequently, one may study science as an epistemic practice, but also as a social one. This introduces section three, which looks into the emerging discipline of interdisciplinarity studies, that is, the study of the compartmentalization (e.g., disciplinarization) of academic knowledge. The conclusion that follows suggests that perhaps, instead of trying to absorb each other, AS and TS should consider themselves rather as siblings, that is, members of a larger family called intertextuality or influence studies.
Thornley, Davinia (ed.) True Events Adaptation, New York, Palgrave Publishing, pp.11-31., 2018
This chapter deals with the study of the cinematic representation of history as adaptation. The q... more This chapter deals with the study of the cinematic representation of history as adaptation. The question is not new, but more recent adaptation commentators have revived its interest. It suggests that both the study of (literary or other) film adaptations and historical film studies show (dis)similarities, and that an exchange of concepts, methods and expertise would benefit both disciplines. Hence, in order to tackle this question, section one sketches a brief introduction to the field of historical film studies. Sections two to four follow the structure of a research program I discussed in previous writings (see, e.g., Cattrysse, L’Adaptation filmique; Cattrysse, Pour une théorie de l’adaptation filmique; Cattrysse, Descriptive Adaptation Studies). Indeed, one may study adaptations as end-products (section two), one may examine questions about adaptations as processes (section three), and one may study possible systemic relations that obtain between the two (section four). Section five concludes with some suggestions for future research.
Literature/FIlm Quarterly, 1997
Literature/Film Quarterly, 2018
The work of Patrick Cattrysse and Thomas Leitch represents two dramatically different approaches ... more The work of Patrick Cattrysse and Thomas Leitch represents two dramatically different approaches to adaptation studies. So it came as no surprise that when Cattrysse’s book Descriptive Adaptation Studies: Epistemological and Methodological Issues was published in 2014, it was sometimes highly critical of Leitch, and Leitch’s review of the volume the following year was equally critical of Cattrysse. The surprise came when the two met in person for the first time at the conference on Networks, Nodes, and New Approaches to Adaptation Studies at the Brigham Young University Humanities Center in Provo in February 2017 and found themselves challenged and stimulated by each other’s presentations, questions, and provocations. Before they left for home, they agreed to try their hand at a dialogue that would crystallize some of their differences in more judicious and useful ways, reframe their disagreements more productively, and consider how much common ground they could find in the questions they were asking if not the answers they proposed to those questions. They hope that the following dialogue, which does not so much resolve as reframe their ongoing debates, will serve as an invitation for other voices to join them, not as partisans of one or the other but as debaters themselves.
in Krebs, Katja, Cutchins, Dennis and Voigts, Eckart (eds.) Routledge Companion to Adaptation, Lo... more in Krebs, Katja, Cutchins, Dennis and Voigts, Eckart (eds.) Routledge Companion to Adaptation, London, Routledge, pp.40-54.
Literature/Film Quarterly, 2018
The work of Patrick Cattrysse and Thomas Leitch represents two dramatically different approaches ... more The work of Patrick Cattrysse and Thomas Leitch represents two dramatically different approaches to adaptation studies. So it came as no surprise that when Cattrysse’s book Descriptive Adaptation Studies: Epistemological and Methodological Issues was published in 2014, it was sometimes highly critical of Leitch, and Leitch’s review of the volume the following year was equally critical of Cattrysse. The surprise came when the two met in person for the first time at the conference on Networks, Nodes, and New Approaches to Adaptation Studies at the Brigham Young University Humanities Center in Provo in February 2017 and found themselves challenged and stimulated by each other’s presentations, questions, and provocations. Before they left for home, they agreed to try their hand at a dialogue that would crystallize some of their differences in more judicious and useful ways, reframe their disagreements more productively, and consider how much common ground they could find in the questions they were asking if not the answers they proposed to those questions. They hope that the following dialogue, which does not so much resolve as reframe their ongoing debates, will serve as an invitation for other voices to join them, not as partisans of one or the other but as debaters themselves.
Palabra Clave, 2017
This paper looks at the concept of "cultural proximity", as suggested by Joseph Straubhaar in his... more This paper looks at the concept of "cultural proximity", as suggested by Joseph Straubhaar in his 1991 paper Beyond Media Imperialism: Assymmetrical [sic] Interdependence and Cultural Proximity. It argues that based on a polysystem study of film noir adaptations that was done in the early 1990s, both cultural proximity and distance may either enhance or inhibit the cross-cultural or cross-generic flow of media content depending on some specific conditioners such as the stability or instability (read e.g. success or lack thereof) of the target genre or context and the conservative or innovating function of the adaptations in their target context.
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Papers by Cattrysse Patrick
This leads to the paradoxical conclusion that to define translations and adaptations is at once easy and difficult. Words like ‘adaptation’ or ‘translation’ are common nouns, which point to sets of entities that share nonunique features. Hence to name is to categorize. Section two probes into theories of categorization and how they could help categorize translational and adaptational phenomena. It turns out that a study of categories and categorizing must involve categorizers. Consequently, one may study science as an epistemic practice, but also as a social one. This introduces section three, which looks into the emerging discipline of interdisciplinarity studies, that is, the study of the compartmentalization (e.g., disciplinarization) of academic knowledge. The conclusion that follows suggests that perhaps, instead of trying to absorb each other, AS and TS should consider themselves rather as siblings, that is, members of a larger family called intertextuality or influence studies.
This leads to the paradoxical conclusion that to define translations and adaptations is at once easy and difficult. Words like ‘adaptation’ or ‘translation’ are common nouns, which point to sets of entities that share nonunique features. Hence to name is to categorize. Section two probes into theories of categorization and how they could help categorize translational and adaptational phenomena. It turns out that a study of categories and categorizing must involve categorizers. Consequently, one may study science as an epistemic practice, but also as a social one. This introduces section three, which looks into the emerging discipline of interdisciplinarity studies, that is, the study of the compartmentalization (e.g., disciplinarization) of academic knowledge. The conclusion that follows suggests that perhaps, instead of trying to absorb each other, AS and TS should consider themselves rather as siblings, that is, members of a larger family called intertextuality or influence studies.
The acceptance of these proposals remains a matter of contention. One major obstacle involves the current Western Romantic view on art and culture. Having driven a rift between art and craft, Romanticism 2.0 opposes the aforesaid working definitions, and disparages screenwriting, translation, and adaptation, lest they comply with the Romantic rule. Suggestions follow to re-open the Romantic view to its pre-Romantic stance, and to revalue both art and craft values in screenwriting, translation and adaptation.
Finally, conclusions highlight some caveats foreshadowing resistance also against nudging back Romanticism 2.0 to its pre-Romantic views.