The turn of the screw: as representações do fantástico e da histeria na adaptação fílmica do conto de Henry James

Abstract

This research presents an analysis of the fantastic and of the hysteria in Henry James’ short story, A Volta do Parafuso (2010), and in one of its filmic adaptations, Tim Fywell’s The Turn of the Screw (2009), discussing the concepts of the fantastic, proposed mainly by Tzvetan Todorov, and of hysteria, as initially studied by Sigmund Freud and Joseph Breuer, between 1893 and 1895. In addition, some points on the adaptation process developed by Linda Hutcheon, Robert Stam, and Thais da Silva were highly regarded. In this way, this work shows a relation between the source-text next to the adaptation of the fantastic and of the hysteria to the cinema and the implications of the transposition from one medium to the other. As a result of the analysis of Fywell’s options, this study has verified the permanence of the uncertainty content on the ghosts to be a supernatural manifestation or the governess’ hallucinations, as they are presented in the James’s story.