BETWEEN SCREENS & TEXTS: ELEMENTARY AS LITERARY TRANSPOSITION

Abstract

This paper aims to analyze comparatively the television series Elementary (CBS), a contemporary retelling of the works of Sherlock Holmes by the Scottish writer Arthur Conan Doyle, in order to realize the narrative differences between the two expressions of art, thus seeking to understand how the literary adaptation happens and how great the transformations can be in the transposition, whether they are positive or not, and the impact they have on the public and specialized criticism, as well as to understand what is modified by necessity and what is deconstructed by narrative interest. To this end, the American series Elementary was analyzed based on the works of authors such as Ricardo André Ferreira Lima (2015), James Wood (2017), and others who discuss in their books and articles the relationship that cinema and literature have developed in more than a century. As final results, it was seen that literature contributed significantly to the stories taken to the screen, even when they were silent, being the transposition to the audiovisual one of the most significant advances in the exchange between arts, making possible several recreations as it happens with Elementary, by adapting the literature of Sherlock Holmes as a 21st century detective story.