Claremont Colleges Scholarship @ Claremont Scripps Senior Theses Scripps Student Scholarship 2012 Adaptation: Is the Book Really Better Than the...Television Series? Jane F. Eberts Scripps College Recommended Citation Eberts, Jane F., "Adaptation: Is the Book Really Better Than the...Television Series?" (2012). Scripps Senior Theses. Paper 105. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_theses/105 This Open Access Senior Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Scripps Student Scholarship at Scholarship @ Claremont. It has been accepted for inclusion in Scripps Senior Theses by an authorized administrator of Scholarship @ Claremont. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. ADAPTATION: IS THE BOOK REALLY BETER THAN THE…TELEVISION SERIES? by JANE F. EBERTS SUBMITTED TO SCRIPPS COLLEGE IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE DEGREE OF BACHELOR OF ARTS PROFESSOR JOHN PEAVOY PROFESSOR JAMES MORRISON April 20, 2012 TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface: Why look at adaptation? …………………………………………………………... 3 Introduction: Defining Adaptation ………………………………………………………………..... 6 Chapter 1: History and Adaptation ………………………………………………………….. 12 The influence of history: looking back to understand the present Bias towards classic literature: What constitutes high vs. mass culture? Chapter 2: Fidelity in Adaptation …………………………………………………………….. 18 Attitudes towards adaptation and the relationship of the adaptation to its source text: Are they a couple or do they stand-alone? Case Study: Adaptation, The Film Chapter 3: Contextualizing Adaptation ……………………………………………………. 26 Battle of the medium: Anything film can do, television can do differently Case Study: Harry Potter and the franchise that took over the world Case study: True Blood: Taking a bite our of a book series…and then some So now we have a wizard and a telepath to read about and watch…Now What? Battle of the medium, round two: Same fight, same source texts, different contexts Case Study: Shakespeare, past and present: the outlier of adaptations Conclusion: Final Thoughts …………………………………………………………………….....