Publication Type
Journal Article
Version
publishedVersion
Publication Date
8-2019
Abstract
Adapted from the 1966 novel by the Japanese Catholic writer Shusaku Endo, Martin Scorsese’s Silence offers a timely occasion for expanding the critical discourse on adaptive fidelity. This article explores the ways that both texts draw from historical and scriptural sources within the Christian tradition—most notably the biblical tale of Judas—to clarify the meaning of faith in their respective contexts. Employing Andre Bazin’s theory of adaptation, I argue that alongside their source texts, both novel and film compose an intertextual ‘ideal construct’ of religious fidelity as dynamically lived across time and place, a fidelity paradoxically performed via various modes and tropes of adaptive infidelity.
Keywords
Adaptation studies, Fidelity criticism, Intertextuality, Martin Scorsese, Religion and film, Shusaku Endo
Discipline
Comparative Literature
Research Areas
Integrative Research Areas
Publication
Literature and Theology
Volume
33
Issue
4
First Page
434
Last Page
450
ISSN
0269-1205
Identifier
10.1093/litthe/frz024
Publisher
Oxford University Press
Citation
NG, Teng-kuan.
Of faith and faithlessness: Adaptive fidelity in Shusaku Endo's Martin Scorsese's Silence. (2019). Literature and Theology. 33, (4), 434-450.
Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/cis_research/404
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Additional URL
https://doi.org/10.1093/litthe/frz024