This concise and readable new text for courses in Film Adaptation or Film and Literature introduces students to the art of adapting works of literature for film. Adaptation describes the interwoven histories of literature and film, presents key analytical approaches to adaptation, and provides an in-depth overview of adaptations of novels, short stories, plays, nonfiction, and animation. The book concludes with an analysis of why adaptations sometimes fail.
This collection of essays offers a sustained, theoretically rigorous rethinking of various issues at work in film and other media adaptations. The essays in the volume as a whole explore the reciprocal, intertextual quality of adaptations that borrow, rework, and adapt each other in complex ways; in addition, the authors explore the specific forces
Most books on film adaptation—the relation between films and their literary sources—focus on a series of close one-to-one comparisons between specific films and canonical novels. This volume identifies and investigates a far wider array of problems posed by the process of adaptation. Beginning with an examination of why adaptation study has so often supported the institution of literature rather than fostering the practice of literacy, Thomas Leitch considers how the creators of short silent films attempted to give them the weight of literature, what sorts of fidelity are possible in an adaptation of sacred scripture, what it means for an adaptation to pose as an introduction to, rather than a transcription of, a literary classic, and why and how some films have sought impossibly close fidelity to their sources. After examining the surprisingly divergent fidelity claims made by three different kinds of canonical adaptations, Leitch's analysis moves beyond literary sources to consider why a small number of adapters have risen to the status of auteurs and how illustrated books, comic strips, video games, and true stories have been adapted to the screen. The range of films studied, from silent Shakespeare to Sherlock Holmes to The Lord of the Rings, is as broad as the problems that come under review.
From David Lean's big screen Great Expectations to Alejandro Amenábar's reinvention of The Turn of the Screw as The Others, adaptations of literary classics are a constant feature of popular culture today. The Bloomsbury Introduction to Adaptation Studies helps students master the history, theory and practice of analysing literary adaptations. Following an introductory overview of major debates and concepts, each chapter focuses on a canonical text and features: - Case study readings of adaptations in a variety of media, from film to opera, televised drama to animated comedy show, YA fiction to novel/graphic novel. - Coverage of popular appropriations and re-imaginings of the text. - Discussion questions and creative exercises throughout to guide students through their own analyses. - Annotated guides to further reading and viewing plus online resources. - The book also includes chapter overviews and a glossary of critical terms to give students quick access to key information for further study, reference and revision. The Bloomsbury Introduction to Adaptation Studies covers adaptations of: Jane Eyre; Great Expectations; The Turn of the Screw; The Great Gatsby.
Film and television adaptations of classic literature have held a longstanding appeal for audiences, an appeal that this book sets out to examine. With a particular focus on Wuthering Heights , the book examines adaptations made from the 1930s to the twenty-first century, providing an understanding of how they help shape our cultural landscape.
Authoring a film adaptation of a literary source not only requires a media conversion but also a transformation as a result of the differing dramatic demands of cinema. The most critical central step in this transformation of a literary source to the screen is the writing of the screenplay. The screenplay usually serves to recruit producers, director, and actors; to attract capital investment; and to give focus to the conception and production of the film project. Often undergoing multiple revisions prior to production, the screenplay represents the crucial decisions of writer and director that will determine how and to what end the film will imitate or depart from its original source. Authorship in Film Adaptation is an accessible, provocative text that opens up new areas of discussion on the central process of adaptation surrounding the screenplay and screenwriter-director collaboration. In contrast to narrow binary comparisons of literary source text and film, the twelve essays in this collection also give attention to the underappreciated role of the screenplay and film pre-production that can signal the primary intention for a film. Divided into four parts, this collection looks first at the role of Hollywood's activist producers and major auteurs such as Hitchcock and Kubrick as they worked with screenwriters to formulate their audio-visual goals. The second part offers case studies of Devil in a Blue Dress and The Sweet Hereafter, for which the directors wrote their own adapted screenplays. Considering the variety of writer-director working relationships that are possible, Part III focuses on adaptations that alter genre, time, and place, and Part IV investigates adaptations that alter stories of romance, sexuality, and ethnicity.
Extending the boundaries of contemporary adaptation studies, this book brings together leading international scholars to survey new directions in the field. Re-thinking the key questions at the heart of the discipline, Adaptation Studies: New Directions, New Challenges explores a wide range of perspectives and case studies in cross-media transformation. Topics covered include: * The history of adaptation studies * Theories of adaptation * Adaptations in film, literature, radio and historical sources * What is an 'original' text?
The majority of scholarly treatments for film adaptation are put forth by experts on film and film analysis, thus with the focus being on film. Analyzing Literature-to-Film Adaptations looks at film adaptation from a fresh perspective, that of writer or creator of literary fiction. In her book, Snyder explores both literature and film as separate entities, detailing the analytical process of interpreting novels and short stories, as well as films. She then introduces a means to analyzing literature-to-film adaptations, drawing from the concept of intertextual comparison. Snyder writes not only from the perspective of a fiction writer but also as an instructor of writing, literature, and film adaptation. She employs the use of specific film adaptations (Frankenstein, Children of Men, Away from Her) to show the analytical process put into practice. Her approach to film adaptation is designed for students just beginning their academic journey but also for those students well on their way. The book also is written for high school and college instructors who teach film adaptations in the classroom.
This collection of forty new essays, written by the leading scholars in adaptation studies and distinguished contributors from outside the field, is the most comprehensive volume on adaptation ever published. Written to appeal alike to specialists in adaptation, scholars in allied fields, and general readers, it hearkens back to the foundations of adaptation studies a century and more ago, surveys its ferment of activity over the past twenty years, and looks forward to the future. It considers the very different problems in adapting the classics, from the Bible to Frankenstein to Philip Roth, and the commons, from online mashups and remixes to adult movies. It surveys a dizzying range of adaptations around the world, from Latin American telenovelas to Czech cinema, from Hong Kong comics to Classics Illustrated, from Bollywood to zombies, and explores the ways media as different as radio, opera, popular song, and videogames have handled adaptation. Going still further, it examines the relations between adaptation and such intertextual practices as translation, illustration, prequels, sequels, remakes, intermediality, and transmediality. The volume's contributors consider the similarities and differences between adaptation and history, adaptation and performance, adaptation and revision, and textual and biological adaptation, casting an appreciative but critical eye on the theory and practice of adaptation scholars--and, occasionally, each other. The Oxford Handbook of Adaptation Studies offers specific suggestions for how to read, teach, create, and write about adaptations in order to prepare for a world in which adaptation, already ubiquitous, is likely to become ever more important.
It is common practice nowadays for adaptation critics to denounce the lack of meta-theoretical thinking in adaptation studies and to plead for a study of ‘adaptation-as-adaptation’; one that eschews value judgments, steps beyond normative fidelity-based discourse, examines adaptation from an intertextual perspective, and abandons the single-source model for a multiple-source model. This study looks into a research program that does all that and more. It was developed in the late 1980s and presented in the early 1990s as a ‘polysystem’ (PS) study of adaptations. Since then, the PS label has been replaced with ‘descriptive’. This book studies the question of whether and how a PS approach could evolve into a descriptive adaptation studies (DAS) approach. Although not perfect (no method is), DAS offers a number of assets. Apart from dealing with the above-mentioned issues, DAS transcends an Auteurist approach and looks at explanation beyond the level of individual agency (even if contextualized). As an alternative to the endless accumulation of ad hoc case studies, it suggests corpus-based research into wider trends of adaptational behavior and the roles and functions of sets of adaptations. DAS also allows reflection upon its own epistemic values. It sheds new light on some old issues: How can one define adaptation? What does it mean to study adaptation-as-adaptation? Is equivalence still possible and is the concept still relevant? DAS also tackles some deeper epistemological issues: How can phenomena be compared? Why would difference be more real than sameness or change more real than stasis? How does description relate to evaluation, explanation and prediction, etc.? This book addresses both theory-minded scholars who are interested in epistemological reflection and practice-oriented adaptation students who want to get started. From a theoretical point of view, it discusses arguments that could support the legitimacy of adaptation studies as an academic discipline. From a practical point of view, it explains in general terms ways of conducting an adaptation study. Patrick Cattrysse’s work is of utmost importance to Adaptation Studies. As the first extended attempt to develop a rigorous methodology which borrows in very meaningful ways from Adaptation Studies’ cousin Translation Studies, this book should be on every Adaptation scholar’s shelf. While Hutcheons, Sanders and Leitch, to name but a few, layed the groundwork which allowed Adaptation Studies to establish itself as a field of inquiry in its own right, Cattrysse moves the field into the next necessary stage: that of developing conceptual tools which stand the test of critical investigation and allow Adaptation Studies to move beyond the single case-study approach. (Katja Krebs - University of Bristol) This book is a bold initiative: it proposes, and illustrates, a comprehensive new empirical research programme for film adaptation studies, inspired by the way systems theory and norm theory have expanded Translation Studies. One of the book’s unusual strengths is the way the proposal is grounded in a thoughtful theoretical discussion of conceptual and methodological issues, dealing with such notions as theory, descriptivism, definition, diachrony and explanation. This gives the work a significance that ranges well beyond Adaptation Studies alone; it deserves the attention of scholars in the humanities in general. (Andrew Chesterman - University of Helsinki) This dense and theoretically-informed study argues forcefully for a descriptive systems analysis approach to literature/ film adaptation, building on the author’s earlier corpus-based study of film noir and adaptation. Providing a wide-ranging discussion of important critical questions (including the place of logical positivism in humanistic studies), this book will give adaptation scholars much to think about. Well-written, carefully organized, and consistently persuasive, DESCRIPTIVE ADAPTATION STUDIES promises to be an important intervention in a field of increasing importance in humanistic studies. Must reading for scholars in the field (R. Barton Palmer; Clemson University).
