Literature and Cinema · English Literature

According to adaptation scholar George Bluestone, when a filmmaker attempts to adapt a novel's mental trope (like a metaphor or simile), what happens to that trope in cinema?

It duplicates exactly, since language and images work identically in the brain.
It becomes a literal object or visual relation on screen, losing linguistic ambiguity
It must be deleted, since cinema cannot communicate metaphor.
It causes an immediate narrative paradox that ruins the film's structural logic.

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Correct answer: It becomes a literal object or visual relation on screen, losing linguistic ambiguity

Bluestone argued that a linguistic metaphor like 'her mind was a stormy sea' relies on conceptual ambiguity and the abstract properties of language. When cinema translates this, it must either show a literal stormy sea or a worried face, turning an open-ended mental concept into a concrete, specific image. Cinema can construct its own visual metaphors, but they operate through spatial juxtaposition rather than linguistic abstraction.

Difficulty: Medium Question 12 of 19

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According to adaptation scholar George Bluestone, when a filmmaker attempts to adapt a novel's mental trope (like a metaphor or simile), what happens to that trope in cinema?

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