The political duality in Richard Somers: a study of D.H. Lawrence's Kangaroo in literature and cinema

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to analyze the rewriting of the protagonist Richard Somers of the autobiographical novel Kangaroo (1980), by the British writer D. H. Lawrence to the cinema by the director Tim Burstall, in his 1986 homonymous film. In the novel, Lawrence transposes through the character an ambivalent perception of the nationalist group <the Diggers=, sometimes showing himself to be against the hierarchical perceptions imposed by European aristocratic principles, because of his origins in the English working class; sometimes sympathizing with the nationalist movement due to its overvaluation of the male figure, converging with the author9s personal interests. Therefore, this research focused on a comparative analysis of Lawrence9s novel and Burstall9s adaptation, highlighting some cinematographic strategies used by the director to translate the ambiguity in the aforementioned character, as well as the technical and symbolic elements used in the adaptation and construction of the character in both media. To do so, we have used Cattrysse (1992) and Lefevere (2007) as theoretical framework to analyze translation as a type of rewriting, and the concepts of cinematographic composition by Martin (1955) and Aumont et al. (1995).