Classics to ComicsPart 1

NICOLE LOBELLOAscension Episcopal SchoolYoungsville/Lafayette, LA

Privilege to accord a higher value or superior position to

Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary

Originators of Music

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart c. 1780Joseph Simmons, Daryl McDaniels,

And Jam Master Jay of Run DMC c. 1980

Originators of Art

Leonardo da Vinci c. 1500 Banksy c. 1990 - Present

Originators of Communication Devices

Alexander Graham Bell c. 1875 Steve Jobs c. 2007

Should privilege (higher value or superior position) be given

to either in each set?

How about this pair?

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies• Seth Grahame-Smith’s parody mashup was published in April 2009• On April 9, 2009 --- #3 on the New York Times Best Seller List• May 2010 --- Graphic Novel version was published• June 2010 --- iPod/iPhone Video Game version released• October 2011 --- Interactive eBook version was released• 2016 --- Film version due to be released

The New Yorker's Macy Halford, however, called the book's estimated blend of eighty-five percent Austen's words and fifteen percent Grahame-Smith's "one hundred per cent terrible"; while she admitted that the mashup may have accurately identified a subtextual theme of "mystery and menace" in the original novel, she still found Grahame-Smith's writing to be awful.

In early 2009, awareness of the forthcoming novel rose due to attention from Internet bloggers,

newspaper articles, National Public Radio…in response, the publisher increased the initial print run from 12,000 to 60,000 copies, and moved the publication date to April 1.

The AV Club (a non-satirical subsidiary of The Onion) gave the novel a grade of A, commenting that "(w)hat begins as a gimmick ends with renewed appreciation of the indomitable appeal of Austen’s language, characters, and situations...”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pride_and_Prejudice_and_Zombies

Pride and PrejudiceMarvel Classics (2010)

Modern Novel Adaptations

of Classic Works

Who do you think is arguably the most prolific and successful

adapter of all time?

A writer who adapted prior works to appeal to his own

contemporary audiences…??

Merchant of Venice ~ 14th centuryFlorentine novelette called Il Pecorone

and Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta

Othello ~ 14th century story by Italian author Cinthio

Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus, Julius Caesar,and Timon of Athens ~ 1st century Plutarch’s

The Parallel Lives of the Greeks and Romans

Hamlet ~ 12th centurySaxo Grammaticus’

Historiae Danicae toldthe story of the real lifeDanish King Amleth andan unknown author’s

play titled Ur-Hamlet, whichwas well known in the 1590s

King Lear ~ fairytale “The Goosegirl at the Well” and

first story of King Leir inGeoffrey of Monmouth’s

History of Britain

Much Ado About Nothing ~16th century

John Harrington’s poem Orlando Furioso

Taming of the Shrew ~16th century drama I Suppositi

Romeo and Juliet ~Plot was well known in Shakespeare’s time, but he likely worked mainly from

Arthur Brooke’s 1562 poem “The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet”

All’s Well That Ends Well,Cymbeline, and The Two Gentlemen of Verona ~14th century Giovanni

Boccaccio’s Decameron

Henry IV, Henry V, Henry VI, Henry VIII, Richard II, Richard III, Edward III, King Lear, Macbeth,

and Cymbeline ~16th century Raphael Holinshed’s

work Holinshed’s Chronicles

37http://www.shakespeare-w.com/english/shakespeare/source.html

Comedy of Errors ~ Ancient Roman Plautus’ Meaechmi and Amphityon

4Love’s Labour’s Lost, Midsummer Night’s Dream,

Merry Wives of Windsor, The Tempest

Translations

“Transportation to another medium, or even moving within the same one, always means change or, in the language of the new media, ‘reformatting.’ And there will always be both gains and losses”

(Robert Stam, Film Theory: An Introduction, 2000: 62)

“The translation is not a rendering of some fixed nontextual meaning to be copied or paraphrased or reproduced; rather, it is an engagement with the original text that makes us see that text in different ways”

(Wallace Benjamin, “The Task of the Translator,” 1992: 77)

“Recent translation theory argues that translation involves a transaction between texts and between languages and is thus ‘an act of both inter-cultural and inter-temporal communication’”

(Susan Bassnett, Translation Studies, 2002: 9)

Paraphrasing ~ Adaptations

“John Dryden is quoted as defining paraphrase as “translation with latitude, where the author is kept in view…, but his words are not so strictly followed ashis sense; and that too is admitted to be amplified” (Linda Hutcheon, A Theory of Adaptation, 2006: 17)

“Because adaptations are to a different medium, they are re-mediations, that is, specifically translations in the form of intersemiotic transpositions from one sign system (for example, words) to another (for example, images). This is translationbut in a very specific sense: a transmutation or transcoding…a recoding into a new set of conventions as well as signs” (Linda Hutcheon, A Theory of Adaptation, 2006: 16)

Knowing and Unknowing Audiences

“If we do not know that what we are experiencing actually is an adaptationor if we are not familiar with the particular work that it adapts, we simply experience the adaptation as we would any other work. To experience it as an adaptation, however, as we have seen, we need to recognize it as such and to know its adapted text, thus allowing the latter to oscillate in our memories with what we are experiencing. In the process we inevitably fill in any gaps in the adaptation with information from the adapted text. Indeed, adapters rely on this ability…sometimes they rely too much, and the resulting adaptation makes no sense without reference to and foreknowledge of the adapted text. For an adaptation to be successful in its own right, it must be so for both knowing and unknowing audiences”

(Linda Hutcheon, A Theory of Adaptation, 2006: 120-121)

PDF text -- http://www.d.umn.edu/~csigler/PDF%20files/hutcheon_adaptation.pdf

Homer’s The Odyssey

Original text – c. 675-725 B.C.

Robert Fagles Translation – 1996

Gareth Hinds Graphic Novel – 2010

Adaptations of The OdysseyGeorge Chapman – 1616Alexander Pope – 1725Richard Lattimore – 1965-67Emil Rieu – 1946Robert Fitzgerald – 1961Robert Fagles – 1996Martin Hammond – 2000Gareth Hinds – 2010

Book 9: In the One-Eyed Giant’s Cave

Robert Fagles, The Odyssey (1996)

Gareth Hinds The Odyssey (2010)

•What would be an example of difference between the graphic novel and the text-only reading experience?•How does the combination of image and word create a new perception and interpretation of a prose text?•What makes a graphic novel adaptation effective or ineffective?•What can theory add to an understanding of these adaptations?•How can graphic novel adaptations contribute to an understanding of the adapted texts?

Stephen Tabachnick and Esther Saltzman (eds.),

Introduction of Drawn from the Classics: Essays on Graphic Adaptations of Literary Works (2015)

The adaptation should be evaluated in terms of its success as a comic book and how creatively it uses and expands on the artistic and technical possibilities of the medium. Does it use the full range of verbal and visual techniques peculiar to the comic book as a form of creative expression? M. Thomas Inge, Comics as Culture (1990)

IntertextualityQuestions