LIT 499-07 Seminar in Research and Theory: Literary Adaptations
Professor: Lincoln Konkle
Class meetings: Thursday 5:30-8:20pm
The purpose of this course is to examine the adaptation of works of literature to other genres or media or art forms. Students will not only perform comparative analysis of several works and adaptations of them, but they will also go beyond merely describing similarities and differences to interpreting and arguing why those similarities and differences occur. The originals and adaptations we will study are Grimm’s Fairy Tales–Sexton’s poems Transformations; Albee’s play Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?–Nichols’ film; Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness–Coppola’s film Apocalypse Now; Shakespeare’s Hamlet–Olivier’s film–Stoppard’s play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead; the epic poem Beowulf–Gardner’s novel Grendel—Sturla Gunnarsson’s film Beowulf and Grendel; Homer’s epic The Odyssey–Gareth Hinds’ graphic novel The Odyssey; and The Book of Job from the Bible–Archibald MacLeish’s play J.B. Students will further learn about adaptation by adapting a short work (a poem, a short story, a painting) to another genre or medium (a short play or short story, a drawing or painting, a musical interpretation, a video). Finally, students will write a research paper on an adaptation of their choice. Instructor: Konkle Day/Time: Thursdays 5:30-8:20