Eva Parra-Membrives – författare

For a long time now, women have struggled for the vindication of their rights and for their visibility. This struggle may seem a story of success, maybe not complete or equal for all women, but at least one which slowly but surely carries with it the promise of equality for all women. However, a closer look reveals that in various fields of culture the representation of women frequently undergoes a manipulation which makes the image of women lose the intention initially attempted.This is often the case with adaptations of literary texts to thescreen, when the initial literary message is changed because of, for example, marketing demands or some ideological stance. Rarely do we find the opposite case where the indifferent or emasculated original female characters are turned into guardians and/or apologists of feminine power. The present volume focuses precisely on the way in which the image of women is modified in films and TV series, when compared with the original literary texts.

What is the meaning of a "bestseller" for the history of literature? How do we defi ne it in the fi rst place, and what consequences does the success on the book market have for the literary evaluation of a text? What is the relationship between quantity and quality? Many literary scholars shy away from doing research on "bestsellers", but the question regarding the formation of a literary canon is closely connected with this issue. How do we evaluate the quality of a text in the fi rst place? The topic of the "bestseller" forces us to examine more closely the relationship between the reading public, literary scholarship, and the book market. On the one hand we have to examine the sales strategies for a book, on the other we have to consider what intentions a literary text might pursue fi rst of all, and how we as literary scholars have to engage with the text critically. From this results also the challenge to re-investigate the foundation of literary scholarship and to take note of premodern and modern "bestsellers" in their social-historical and mental-historical relevance, without ignoring the textual aesthetics.

Der Kriminalroman ist en vogue. Schon ein flüchtiger Blick auf die Bestsellerlisten reicht, um sich der Popularität der Gattung bewusst zu werden. Trotzdem wird der Krimi von den Literatur- bzw. Kultur- oder Medienwissenschaftlern immer noch als bloße Unterhaltungs- und Trivialware angesehen, der ein gewisser schematischer Strukturaufbau zugrunde liegt. Als Kitschliteratur in die Ecke der Belletristik verbannt macht vor allem die Literaturforschung immer noch einen großen Bogen um das Genre. Nach wie vor scheint der vielsagende Satz von Richard Alewyn zu gelten, der Ende der 1960er Jahre konstatierte: "Das Lesen von Detektivromanen gehört zu den Dingen, die man zwar gerne tut, von denen man aber nicht gern spricht."Dieser Band greift die Frage nach dem entgegen aller Erwartungen weit gefassten, von Vielfalt und Verschiedenartigkeit getragenen Gesamtbild des Krimis auf und bietet eine literaturwissenschaftliche Unter suchung des Variantenreichtums der Gattung.

For a long time now, women have struggled for the vindication of their rights and for their visibility. This struggle may seem a story of success, maybe not complete or equal for all women, but at least one which slowly but surely carries with it the promise of equality for all women. However, a closer look reveals that in various fields of culture the representation of women frequently undergoes a manipulation which makes the image of women lose the intention initially attempted.This is often the case with adaptations of literary texts to thescreen, when the initial literary message is changed because of, for example, marketing demands or some ideological stance. Rarely do we find the opposite case where the indifferent or emasculated original female characters are turned into guardians and/or apologists of feminine power. The present volume focuses precisely on the way in which the image of women is modified in films and TV series, when compared with the original literary texts.