The Scandal of Adaptation

The thirteen essays in this volume seek to expose the scandals of adaptation. Some of them focus on specific adaptations that have been considered scandalous because they portray characters acting in ways that give scandal, because they are thought to betray the values enshrined in the texts they adapt, because their composition or reception raises scandalous possibilities those adapted texts had repressed, or because they challenge their audiences in ways those texts had never thought to do. Others consider more general questions arising from the notion that all adaptation is a scandalous practice that confronts audiences with provocative questions about bowdlerizing, ethics, censorship, contagion, screenwriting, and history. The collection offers a challenge to the continued marginalization of adaptations and adaptation studies and an invitation to change their position by embracing rather than downplaying their ability to scandalize the institutions they affront. Thomas Leitch is Unidel Andrew B. Kirkpatrick, Jr. Chair in Writing at the University of Delaware, USA, where he teaches undergraduate courses on film and graduate courses on literary and cultural theory. His most recent books are The Oxford Handbook of Adaptation Studies (2017) and The History of American Literature on Film (2021).