Literature, film and other textual architectures: some observations on theories of adaptation

Abstract

Studies investigating the relationship between literature and film have been largely oriented by an analysis vector which always departs from literary texts towards films. Moreover, the overwhelming majority of criticism done by renowned theorists such as Robert Stam and Brian McFarlane approaches almost exclusively texts considered canonical. This reveals an overemphasis on the notion that the “primordial” text in a study of adaptation should be the literary text. This essay discusses some of those concepts, challenging the “binary” models in adaptation studies and showing how the vectors of analysis can be usefully reversed, for example, starting from films to literature and to other textual architectures. This approach, shared by theorists such as Linda Hutcheon (2006) and Thomas Leitch (2007), rejects old notions that guided comparisons between literary and filmic texts, such as fidelity and equivalence, replacing them with intertextuality and transmedia storytelling.