Narrative Event Reconfiguration Across Media: A Literature Review Toward a Comparative Framework of Representation and Adaptation

By Roland SPAHIU

Abstract
This study examined how a narrative event was represented and transformed in three narrative media: the novel, the film script, and the theatrical drama. Relying on a qualitative approach in the form of a literature review, the paper synthesized theoretical and critical studies from the field of narratology, adaptation studies and intermediality. The analysis showed that each media used different formal strategies for the construction of the event. The novel represented the event primarily through linguistic narration and access to psychological interiority, allowing for temporal elasticity and narrative subjectivity. The film script recast the event as visible action and structured around rhythm and causality, while the theatrical drama realized the event through embodied performance and real-time spatial presence. The study also found that time, space and narrative perspective directly influenced the way the event was constructed and experienced by the audience in each media. Moreover, it was found that adaptation and cross-media storytelling explained the transformation of the event as a process of reconfiguration rather than preservation of the original form. In conclusion, the paper provided a comparative framework for understanding how narrative events change in form and meaning when they circulate between different media.

Keywords: Narrative Event, Narrative Theory, Adaptation Studies,
Intermediality, Cross-Media Storytelling

https://doi.org/10.58944/aolg3771