Retelling

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A retelling is a written reproduction of a story that was previously written or brought into shape by others, in one's own words . Templates for a retelling were and are mostly oral traditions or works such as novellas , novels and epics that have already been distributed in book form .

Retelling as a literary genre is subject to similar questions about textual fidelity as the translation of a literary text from another language - albeit very often with the use of far greater freedoms , which in turn are valued as an achievement of one's own creativity . Presumably for this reason, authors of retellings, in contrast to literary translators, are not infrequently honored as authors of independent works and named on the book cover.

As part of German lessons , retelling of smaller, orally presented texts or excerpts are part of the practiced and tested school essay forms.

Word origin and usage

In the Grimmschem or German dictionary , “retelling” is simply stated: “f. retelling and retelling ”. and under the keyword for the verb "retell" it says ambiguously: "verb .: retell something, tell it after his report.", to which the uncommented quote from Friedrich Schiller is added: "say something (usually bad) after him."

The current Duden (2007), on the other hand, clearly defines "retelling" as follows: "retelling | retelling who; -, -en: written transcript in your own words of a story or the like that you have read, heard "This is also consistent with the entry for the verb" nacherziegen ":" nach | er | he | täh | len <sw. V .; has>: (something that has been read, heard) in your own words. ”However, it is questionable to what extent the general definition of the verb“ retell ”also (still) refers to an oral retelling that is not literary or not in addition to the written retelling is ambitious at school. For the private retelling of a story from hearsay nowadays the term "retelling" is bypassed and instead, it is more likely that a. “Report”, “tell” or “assert” judgmental used.

Literary genre

Main features

  • As with the oral tradition , the written retelling is first and foremost about the preservation and dissemination of stories that are recognized as significant. This request is u. a. It is thanks to the fact that legends that are thousands of years old and the epics formed from them have entered the cultural memory of mankind and have not been forgotten. In addition, retellings also depict the language and spelling of a culture and, the older they are, they become important "contemporary witnesses" for many disciplines of historical studies .
  • In contrast to the oral and thus dynamic transmission per se, the retelling fixes a story as a written record, but is also subject to changes in the longer term, especially since the invention of the printing press. These changes usually increase the comprehensibility of a retelling or the further reception of a new generation of readers. The range of newly developed retellings ranges from true to text , i.e. In other words, in contemporary language they try to stay as close as possible to the intentions of the complete original template, up to the free retelling, which also accepts strong abbreviations, but without adding anything entirely new.
  • The older and therefore usually more well-known, it was mostly the retellings and not their original models that became the "quarry" of authors who z. B. only edit individual strands of a retelling in order to then bring them into a completely different form or satirically sharpen them or sometimes even turn their content into the opposite. (See also the section delimitations )

Delimitations

  • The further the retelling moves away from the original form of a template, nowadays it is usually only referred to as an adaptation - e.g. For example, if the scope of a work for a stage version or film adaptation is also greatly reduced in terms of content or, conversely, a saga or biblical story of a few pages about the novel and thus an internal perspective and a psychological level that is missing in the original has been expanded, which not only its protagonists act, but also lets you think and feel . In particular, one no longer speaks of a retelling if the original material has been supplemented by further plot carriers and narrative threads or even if individual passages have been deliberately changed through an interpretation or narrowed down to an interpretation that was not the intention of the original author.
  • It has not been clearly clarified to what extent oral transmission of stories within a family to the next generation or also free telling, e.g. B. of fairy tales recorded in books in the narrower sense are retellings - the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm z. B. were themselves retellings based on oral traditions. For example, depending on the region and the narrative situation, more or less large changes in the details or even in the course of the plot are assumed.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ dwb.uni-trier.de Grimm's or German dictionary on the noun NachERZÄHLUNG
  2. ↑ dwb.uni-trier.de Grimm's or German dictionary for the verb RE-TELL
  3. ↑ duden.de "Nacherzählung" - Source: Duden - German Universal Dictionary , 6th, revised edition. Mannheim, Leipzig, Vienna, Zurich: Dudenverlag 2007.
  4. ↑ duden.de “nacherzählen” - Source: Duden - German Universal Dictionary , 6th, revised edition. Mannheim, Leipzig, Vienna, Zurich: Dudenverlag 2007.