LITERATURE ON THE SCREEN: THE CONTROLLING METAPHORS IN CONTEMPORARY ADAPTATION THEORY

The article examines several controlling metaphors of contemporary adaptation studies that allow us to elaborate on the in-betweenness of any text appropriated by different media (cinema, theatre, video games, popular music). I will highlight four metaphors — the palimpsest (R. Stam, L. Hutcheon), the heterocosm (Hutcheon), the network (D. Lanier, K. Newell), and the least established—“а flesh ly dialogue” (D. Richard). The article explains why the metaphors of heterocosm and the network, existing separately, might be replaced by the “adaptation universe” (with its network structure). Unpacking the place of each metaphor in the history of ideas on adaptations (retellings, reworkings, “repetitions with variations”), I will demonstrate how they become starting points for the analysis of texts. While pa limpsests allow us to focus on the work of memory and imagination, the adaptation universe offers a new understanding of complex interactions between texts, authors, and audiences. The “fleshly dialogue” shifts the focus from memory, imagination, or interactions to immediate perception. Audiences and texts (films, performances, games), in their contacts, produce the in-between spaces of intensified perceptions, which help stories not only to mean but to feel differently.