Adaptation as a Means of Reflecting upon Immersivity and Self-Referentiality

Summary, in English

In this article, I will apply parts of the method introduced by Linda Hutcheon in her recently reedited book A Theory of Adaptation (2010) and try to answer the question “why” an adaptation is made. I will particularly study three complex cases of adaptation, which might even put into question the definition of adaptation itself, but I will concentrate on aspects related to immersion and self-referentiality. All these examples, which are Jasper Fforde’s novel The Eyre Affair (2001), Abdellatif Kechiche’s film Black Venus (Vénus noire, 2010) and Peter Greenaway’s film Goltzius and the Pelican Company (2012), address the above mentioned aspects in interesting and ingenious manners. In Fforde’s novel, an adaptation within the same medium of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847), the shift of genre permits a narratively advanced game with the reader’s possible immersion in the world of fiction, challenging and broadening thus theories of reader’s involvement or immersivity, such as Marie-Laure Ryan’s. In Black Venus and Goltzius and the Pelican Company, the shift of medium and the residual presence of the source medium in the adapting medium offers the possibility of accomplishing subtler, but quite as daring games with the immersivity and self-referentiality of the source text as in The Eyre Affair. In Kechiche’s film, there are three scenes which can be seen as film adaptations of theatre performances where even the reaction of the audience is presented. The audience gets progressively more immersed in the performances, to the point of interacting with it. Something similar happens in Goltzius and the Pelican Company, but Greenaway adds one level more, which permits self-referential reflections on the adapted product itself and on the act of its reception. However, despite the differences between them, all these three examples illustrate the possibility to include theoretical reflections in artistic works, dissolving thus the difference between theory and practice (cf. Kamilla Elliot).

• Author: Liviu Lutas
• Department/s: French Studies
• Publishing year: 2013
• Language: English
• Pages: 110-124
• Publication/Series: Ekphrasis. Images, Cinema, Theatre. Media
• Volume: 10
• Issue: 2/2013
• Links: http://ekphrasis.accentpublisher.ro/site/
• Document type: Journal article
• Publisher: Cluj University Press
• Topic: Languages and Literature
• Keywords: Intermediality; Greenaway; adaptation; immersion; self-referentiality
• Status: Published
• ISBN/ISSN/Other: ISSN: 2067-631X