Animal Similes and Metaphors in Great Expectations. From Novel to Screen

This contribution analyses one of the most challenging aspects related to the reception and adaptations of Dickens’s Great Expectations: the transposition of its symbolic and metaphorical network, focusing on animal metaphors and similes which express the dehumanisation of the main characters. The recurrence of these visual metaphors in transpositions activates a two-way exchange that begins from the target text and illuminates the source text, complicating the dialogic process implemented by each adaptation, which involves not only “the work we already know with one we are experiencing” (Hutcheon 21), but also the platform of works orbiting around it.