Shannon Wells-Lassagne

Armelle Parey

This book offers a new perspective on adaptation of books to the screen; by focusing on endings, new light is shed on this key facet of film and television studies. The authors look at a broad range of case studies from different genres, eras, countries and formats to analyse literary and cinematic traditions, technical considerations and ideological issues involved in film and television adaptions. The investigation covers both the ideological implications of changes made in adapting the final pages to the screen, as well as the aesthetic stance taken in modifying (or on the contrary, maintaining) the ending of the source text. By including writings on both film and television adaptations, this book examines the array of possibilities for the closure of an adapted narrative, focusing both on the specificities of film and different television forms (miniseries and ongoing television narratives) and at the same time suggesting the commonalities of these audiovisual forms in their closing moments. Adapting Endings from Book to Screen will be of interest to all scholars working in media studies, film and television studies, and adaptation studies.

Last Pages, Last Shots

Adapting Endings from Book to Screen

Fiona McMahon

This book engages with Margaret Atwood’s work and its adaptations. Atwood has long been appreciated for her ardent defence of Canadian authors and her genre-bending fiction, essays, and poetry. However, a lesser-studied aspect of her work is Atwood’s role both as adaptor and as source for adaptation in media as varied as opera, television, film, or comic books. Recent critically acclaimed television adaptations of the novels The Handmaid’s Tale (Hulu) and Alias Grace (Amazon) have rightfully focused attention on these works, but Atwood’s fiction has long been a source of inspiration for artists of various media, a seeming corollary to Atwood’s own tendency to explore the possibilities of previously undervalued media (graphic novels), genres (science-fiction), and narratives (testimonial and historical modes). This collection hopes to expand on other studies of Atwood’s work or on their adaptations to focus on the interplay between the two, providing an interdisciplinary approach that highlights the protean nature of the author and of adaptation.

The Handmaid's Tale and Beyond

Adapting Margaret Atwood

L’adaptation filmique a toujours été essentielle au septième art, qu’il s’agisse du recours aux textes littéraires classiques utilisés dès les premiers films pour donner au nouveau média une aura de respectabilité, de l’utilisation des romans noirs pour populariser la cinématographie des expressionnistes allemands, ou de la pratique actuelle d’adaptations visant à capter un public déjà acquis (par exemple les adeptes des romans de Jane Austen, ou de best-sellers comme Twilight ou des jeux vidéo comme Doom). Toutefois, l’adaptation a souvent été dénigrée : les amateurs des textes-sources déplorent le manque de fidélité du film, alors que les adeptes d’un cinéma « pur » regrettent que ce souci de fidélité aboutisse à un film « littéraire » qui n’explore pas ses possibilités proprement filmiques. Au-delà de ces clivages, cet ouvrage cherche à présenter les enjeux du phénomène : il réunit quinze spécialistes qui traitent des différents aspects de l’adaptation : ses raisons économiques, sa problématisation de la théorie de l’auteur chère à la Nouvelle Vague, et surtout, ce que l’étude comparative du texte et son image peuvent s’apporter mutuellement en termes de supplément de sens. Le livre se conclut avec trois articles qui proposent une méthodologie de l’étude de l’adaptation, incitant le lecteur à son tour à se livrer à des études d’adaptations.

Adaptation et réadaptation dans le monde anglophone

De la page blanche aux salles obscures

As American television continues to garner considerable esteem, rivalling the seventh art in its "cinematic" aesthetics and the complexity of its narratives, one aspect of its development has been relatively unexamined. While film has long acknowledged its tendency to adapt, an ability that contributed to its status as narrative art (capable of translating canonical texts onto the screen), television adaptations have seemingly been relegated to the miniseries or classic serial. From remakes and reboots to transmedia storytelling, loose adaptations or adaptations which last but a single episode, the recycling of pre-existing narrative is a practice that is just as common in television as in film, and this text seeks to rectify that oversight, examining series from M*A*S*H to Game of Thrones, Pride and Prejudice to Castle.

Television and Serial Adaptation

Ariane Hudelet

"Rather than limiting the cinema, as certain French New Wave critics feared, adaptation can give new inspiration to explore the possibilities of the intersection of text and film. This collection of essays covers various aspects of adaptation studies--questions of genre and myth, race and gender, readaptation, and pedagogical and practical approaches"--

Shannon Wells-Lassagne

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