An Example of “False Friends”: Literary Genres / Filmic Genres (Intermediality and Remediation in Print and on Screen)

Abstract

This article deals with the analogies and differences between the notion of genre in literature and the notion of genre in cinema. Despite the apparent similarities between genre concepts in both domains, it appears that the notion of genre has a very different status in literature and in cinema, not only because not all genres are represented in both media, but also because of the fact that the debate on “ genre fiction” versus “ genreless fiction” is key to many forms of writing, whereas it is less frequently addressed in cinema. The aim of this article is not to draw general or universal conclusions from this comparison of film and literature, but to reopen the debate on issues of adaptation and/ versus medium-specificity in the era of convergence culture.