(The) Story of/and Dramatization

The main aim of the study is to analyze two key concepts of literary theory, namely the notions story and dramatization of literary works. In the first part of the essay, the structuralist definitions of story introduced by Tzvetan Todorov, Seymour Chatman, and others are examined as well as its definition in the framework of the fictional worlds theory as presented by Lubomír Doležel and Bohumil Fořt. This part results in a new definition of story for the purpose of dramatization. The second part gives a survey of definitions of dramatization and introduces two new categories: the textual dramatization, which inheres only transformations on the linguistic level, and perfomative dramatization inhering also the process and the result of staging, during which one sign system is substituted by another one (a process which may be referred to as intersemiotic translation). Eventually, the process of dramatization is being observed as a transformation of particular elements of story (characters, space, events) and fictional world structures (extension and intension)