Blackwell Reference Online

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The screen adaptation of literary works has not emerged as a focus of cinema studies since the advent of theory began to organize (some might say create) the field in the late 1970s. That film scholars have not been interested in what we might term adaptation studies has not gone unnoticed. In a widely influential survey of theoretical work, published twenty years ago, Dudley Andrew conceded that film adaptations constituted a “peculiar discourse,” yet issued a strong call to arms: “We need to be sensitive to that discourse and to the forces that motivate it.” His colleagues, with a few exceptions, have not responded to the summons. This is surprising on theoretical grounds. For (post)structuralists otherwise display an enthusiasm for connections that transgress textual boundaries. Intertextuality is a key element in the postructuralist understanding of how texts are constructed and how they do their cultural work. It is essentially a relational concept that focuses not on texts in se but on the relations between them. Popularized by Julia Kristeva, following the work of M. M. Bakhtin, intertextuality thus contests the received notion of closed and self-sufficient “works,” their borders impermeable to influence, their structures unwelcoming of alien forms. As an archly postmodernist critical protocol, inter-textuality provides an ideal theoretical basis from which can proceed ... log in or subscribe to read full text