Literary Affinities : An Intertextual Reading of Michael Cunningham s The Hours and Stephen Daldry's The Hours

Abstract

This thesis analyzes Michael Cunningham s novel The Hours (1998) and Stephen Daldry s film adaptation The Hours (2002) in relation to the novel s intertextual elements. This is not something that is easily done as the introduction of intertextual elements explodes the singularity of the signifiers in the novel. Therefore, the matching of two sign systems that usually constitutes a comparative study of adaptation is replaced with a broader and more inclusive understanding of the relations between texts. Accordingly, I search for the intertexts I detect in the novel both in the film s allusions and references, and according to whether or not the layer of meaning they add to the novel has been integrated into the cinematic whole.

While different readers may recognize and develop a great variety of the intertextual components in The Hours, I have chosen to emphasize Virginia Woolf s novel Mrs. Dalloway and her essay Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown , Doris Lessing s novel The Golden Notebook and her short story To Room Nineteen , Jorge Luis Borges s Poem The Other Tiger , and historical narratives such as diaries, letters, and biographies that evolve around the life of Virginia Woolf. I show that although the texts that are intertextually connected to the novel are of various genres from different literary periods, they have in common a focus on the problems of subject-formation and on the relationships between women and literature. While many of the novel s intertexts have been dropped even as indirect allusions in the adaptation, their contribution to the level of meaning has, to a certain extent, been retained. Even though the interiority of texts is played down, the film version contains some interesting interpretations of the novel that highlight its intertextual aspects.