Drawn from the Classics

Stephen E. Tabachnick retired in 2020 after having served as an English professor at the University of Memphis and several other universities in the US and abroad. He is the author or editor of 13 books, including 5 on the graphic novel. Esther Bendit Saltzman completed her master’s thesis on graphic novel adaptations and has presented papers on adaptations of Macbeth and A Christmas Carol. She lives in West Hills, California.

“recommended” —Choice; “the volume succeeds...in establishing that ‘while pure literary texts will always have their unique merits, graphic novel adaptations can bring a new vision and a new interpretation to the works upon which they are based,’ and I am delighted to have a host of exceptional work that I can reference the next time I am questioned about the ‘dumbing down’ of great literature through comics adaptations”—English Literature in Translation 180–1920.

• Table of ContentsPreface 1Introduction 3Here There Be Monsters (and Heroes): Homer’s Odyssey and the Graphic Novel—Paul D. Streufert 19Hwaet If? Beowulf in Comics—Jason Tondro 33Killing Desdemona: Staging Sexual Violence in Othello Graphic Novels—J. Caitlin Finlayson 46Illustrating the Uncertainty Within: Recent Comics Adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe—Derek Parker Royal 60The Good, the Bad and the Parodic in Graphic Adaptation—Eric S. Rabkin 82In Search of the White Whale: Adaptations of Moby-Dick—Dirk Vanderbeke 96“I don’t see what good a book is without pictures or conversations”: Imaginary Worlds and Intertextuality in Alice in Wonderland and Alice in Sunderland—Matthew J.A. Green 110“Does That Change Anything?” (Post)Feminist Implications of Gemma Bovery—Eric L. Berlatsky 127Drawing Style, Genre and the Destabilization of Register in a Graphic Adaptation of Trollope’s 1878 Novel John Caldigate—David Skilton and Simon Grennan 147The Masks of Dracula: In Search of the Authentic Performative Vampire in Three Graphic Novel Adaptations of Bram Stoker’s Dracula—Ana G. Gal 161The Picture and Dorian Gray: Interpretive Pluralism in Graphic Adaptations of Wilde’s Novel—Esther Bendit Saltzman 177Illustrating the Abyss: An Interview with Catherine Anyango on Heart of Darkness —Christine Ferguson 194Visualizing the Unrepresentable: Graphic Novel Adaptations of Kafka’s Metamorphosis—Martha Kuhlman 205An Unusual Adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby—Stephen E. Tabachnick 221Not Telling, but Retelling: From Raymond Queneau’s Exercises in Style to Matt Madden’s 99 Ways to Tell a Story and Back—Jan Baetens 235Illustrated Man: Ray Bradbury, Comics and the Authorized Graphic Novels—Darren ­Harris-Fain 249Bibliography 263About the Contributors 267Index 271