Space represents a crucial component in the process of analyzing and understanding literature and the various cultural implications that literature is more often than not exposed to. This is particularly true when the subject of the analysis is American literature whose origins, and its later development through the years, represent a constant interchanging and merging of numerous cultural and social values. The spatial aspect and its influence on American literary production constantly develops, much like the country and its literary focus, adapting to the ever-changing world. Therefore the aim of this analysis cannot be an attempt to provide an overview of the numerous instances of interaction that have taken and still are taking place between literature, or its authors, and the various notions and ideas of space as defined by disciplines such as human geography. Instead, what this particular analysis can do is to provide insight into a type of “space” both extremely specific to the American experience and in many ways a constant presence within numerous American creative processes. It is the concept of the “Frontier” that positions itself as a key notion that defines many aspects of both the American imaginary and the real, and which as the analysis will show, is not limited to a defined historical or cultural context, but instead functions as a continuous source of inspiration and national/personal introspection. ...

The media are an important tool for creating public opinion and they can influence the creation of laws and policy. Media representation of young people is important because it can influence the public image of them and it can also influence the young themselves. On the other side, young people can be discriminated against and treated with suspicion because of a specific media image of them. In this paper we analyse a corpus of newspaper articles about violence among the young that occurred in Croatia recently. Analysing this discourse we try to find out who the participants are and what they emphasise as the most important questions and issues in connection with the young and violence. We try to find out how the creation of a text is influenced by power relations and other factors connected with the media (i.e. public opinion, stereotypes, public panic) and what the main image of the young created by the media is. We also analyse how language is used and which language and discourse elements (i.e. style, metaphors, and collocations) are used in creating a specific media image of the young. ...

Since film first established itself as pre-eminently a narrative medium there has been a long-running questioning on the nature of the connections between film and literature. Conrand’s known statement about his novelistic intention - “My task which I am trying to achieve is, by the powers of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel – it is, before all, to make you see” (McFarlane 3) - has often been quoted by the first filmmakers who were striving to make an adaptation and explore the vast territory of the cinematic world. Some novels have been constantly adapted, and, like Bram Stoker’s Dracula (written in 1897), have created a whole genre. In this essay we will try to analyse some aspects of the adaptation of Stoker’s novel Dracula in the first preserved film version of Friedrich Wilhelm Murnaus’ Nosferatu (1922), and, one of the latest adaptations, Bram Stoker’s Dracula by Francis Ford Coppola (1992). Some differences are noticeable between the ‘original’ narrative and how its complexity produces new readings, turning Dracula into a commodity appearing on the silver screen. We shall attempt to outline the hermeneutical circle of film adaptations in which all components play an influential role in the process of adaptation as well as in a final product; further we will indicate how historical and ideological shifts influence the adaptations and the differences between them. ...

Although film history has mostly been understood in national terms, there have also been attempts to present a general history of film styles. The history of film styles can be roughly divided into four distinct phases, each drawing on different aspects of narration. In the beginning, cinema privileged documentation and spectacle, presenting the exhibitionistic aspect of the new medium, whose structural characteristics had yet to be explored. Nöel Burch labeled this pre-narrative style a Primitive Mode of Representation, and this mode defied the narrative aspect of film-making. The shift towards narration occurred in the period between 1907 and 1909, when narrative films became the dominant mode of storytelling. The transition towards narrative cinema was mainly prompted by the demands of the market, which resulted in the gradual predominance of fictional narratives. The new style became known as the classical realist cinema, and Classical Hollywood Cinema became the leading representative. ...