DIALOGICAL ENCOUNTER BETWEEN MIKHAIL BAKHTIN AND WALTER BENJAMIN: A READING OF THE NOVEL THE HANDMAID’S TALE AND ITS ADAPTATION TO A TV SERIES
The handmaid’s tale. Bakhtin. Benjamin. Dialogical encounter.
This paper seeks to establish a dialogue, that is, a contrast-dialogue between Walter Benjamin and Mikhail Bakhtin, considering three categories: discourse, language, and experience. We aim to create a critical reading approach to the novel The Handmaid's Tale (1996) by Canadian author Margaret Atwood and its homonymous adaptation for the TV series produced by Bruce Miller (2017-), the research corpus. Thus, the general objective of this work is to understand how the dialogical confluence between Benjamin and Bakhtin contributes to the analysis of discourse, language, and experience in the corpus. To this end, the specific objectives are: (a) investigate how the closed discourses in the corpus are desacralized by the open discourses from Benjamin’s and Bakhtin’s point of view; b) discuss language, considering Benjamin and Bakhtin, as a redemptive aspect of the character Offred in the corpus; c) analyze the construction of experience in the corpus, in the light of Benjamin and Bakhtin. In methodological terms, since our corpus is constituted of a series and a novel, we will analyze them in the light of critical literary and cultural theories, using bibliographical research as the technical procedure. The theoretical framework was: to discuss discourse, language, and experience we use the work of Mikhail Bakhtin (2014, 2017, 2018, 2019a, 2019b, 2019c); and the writings of Walter Benjamin (1994, 2009, 2020). And for the debates about Adaptation Studies, the texts that guide the discussion about adaptation, serial, and film language are theorists such as Hutcheon (2011), Stam (1992a, 2006b, 2008c), Bazin (1991), Xavier (2008a, 2018b), Metz (2019), Aumont (1995a, 2002b), Martin (2005), Machado (2000), Gaudreault and Jost (2009). This paper is in the process of construction, so the results and conclusion will be added later.