Author(s)

Qifan Jiang

Corresponding Author

Qifan Jiang

Abstract

Literature represents an Abstractand recapitulatory interpretation, on which reality is reflected through language with the spirit and sentiments of the author conveyed via characters, reproducing lives in a particular region during a particular time span, whereas, cinema shapes and demonstrates characters by audios and visuals. It is built on four points of a relatively stable quadrilateral: time, space, vision and hearing. However, it’s more of a tangible interpretation and a comprehensive art including theatre, photography, painting, sculpture, music, dance, architecture and other arts, rather than merely a visual and audio art. Therefore, both literature and cinema are part of art. They may be associated with different fields with different manifestations to convey sentiments and content. Nevertheless, the two can have fascinating interactions through some certain ways. Eileen Chang can be considered as an epitome in the aspect of combining novels and films in the history of Modern and contemporary Chinese literature. With regard to her cast of mind in novels, she creatively integrated techniques of cinema into the narratives without any trace, making it a high degree of visual and expressive tension, and unique narratives with the tendency of “being cinematographic” in the history of modern novels, while Jane Eyre, one of the most famous novels that has been most cinematographed by far, has been repeatedly reappearing in light and shadow in less than two hundred years, which has a great connection with its own feature of cinematography. To reveal the relationship, which narratives being considered, between the narrative techniques of novel and those of cinema such as time and space transformation and montage, in this paper, we review the two representative novels herein from the view of cinema, which is of great significance to enhance the possibility of breaking stagnant development of manifestations of modern novels in the new stage of cultural development.

Keywords

Eileen chang, The golden lock notes, Jane eyre, Cinema, Cinematography