Theorizing Adaptation

From intertextuality to postmodern cultural studies, narratology to affect theory, poststructuralism to metamodernism, and postcolonialism to ecocriticism, humanities adaptation studies has engaged with a host of contemporary theories. Yet theorizing adaptation has been declared behind the theoretical times compared to other fields and charged with theoretical incorrectness by scholars from all theoretical camps. In this thorough and groundbreaking study, author Kamilla Elliott works to explain and redress the problem of theorizing adaptation. She offers the first cross-disciplinary history of theorizing adaptation in the humanities, extending back to the sixteenth century, revealing that until the late eighteenth century, adaptation was valued for its contributions to cultural progress, before its eventual — and ongoing — marginalization by humanities theories. The second half of the book offers ways to redress the troubled relationship between theorization and adaptation. Ultimately, Theorizing Adaptation proffers shared ground upon which adaptation scholars can debate productively across disciplinary, cultural, and theoretical borders.

Kamilla Elliott is Professor of Literature and Media in the Department of English Literature and Creative Writing at Lancaster University. She is the author of Rethinking the Novel/Film Debate and Portraiture and British Gothic Fiction: The Rise of Picture Identification, 1764-1835, and co-chairs the Association of Adaptation Studies.

Introduction: The Problem of Theorizing Adaptation

Part 1: Theorizing Adaptation
Chapter 1 Histories of Theorizing Adaptation
Chapter 2 Theorizing Adaptation in the Sixteenth to Nineteenth Centuries
Chapter 3 Theorizing Adaptation in the Twentieth Century
Chapter 4 Theorizing Adaptation in the Twenty-First Century

Part 2: Adapting Theorization
I. Retheorizing Theorization
Chapter 5 Redefining Definitions
Chapter 6 Resetting Taxonomies
Chapter 7 Rethinking Theoretical Principles

II. Refiguring Theorization
Chapter 8 The Rhetoric of Theorizing Adaption
Chapter 9 Refiguring Adaptation Studies

Conclusion

Bibliography