Film Adaptation and Its Discontents

Thomas Leitch is a professor of English at the University of Delaware.

I would highly recommend Leitch's study, in particular for its diversity and complexity. The author demonstrates that he is familiar with a large and heterogeneous corpus, including canonical as well as popular or marginal films and texts, which adaptation studies can only benefit from. -- Thomas Van Parys Image & Narrative 2007 As a cogent summary and critique of film adaptation, this would be a good first book for newcomers to the subject... Highly recommended. Choice 2008 This convincingly argued and eloquently presented volume is replete with an array of accessible examples that provide an illustrative stylistic lightness of touch... whilst resisting any potential dilution of the underlying radical and important thesis-a thesis which incontrovertibly advances and enhances our approach to adaptation studies on a number of highly original and insightful levels. -- Dr. Alison Forsyth Journal of Adaptation in Film & Performance 2008 Film Adaptation and Its Discontents is a worthy and distinctive entrant into an already crowded field. Its strengths lie in the detailed and persuasively argued collective case histories... as well as its often penetrating and always illuminating discussions of specific problems. -- R. Barton Palmer Film Quarterly 2009 For those interested in the cinematic works their favorite books inspire,Thomas Leitch's Film Adaptation and Its Discontents should provide food for thought. -- Rebecca Oppenheimer The Jeffersonian 2009 I highly recommend the book both to those new or well versed in adaptation studies as a thought-provoking look at the questions to be asked - and perhaps answered - in this domain of ever-increasing importance. -- Shannon Wells-Lassagne Cercles 2010

• Acknowledgments1. Literature versus Literacy2. One-Reel Epics3. The Word Made Film4. Entry-Level Dickens5. Between Adaptation and Allusion6. Exceptional Fidelity7. Traditions of Quality8. Streaming Pictures9. The Hero with a Hundred Faces10. The Adapter as Auteur11. Postliterary Adaptation12. Based on a True StoryNotesBibliographyIndex