Approaches to Adaptation: The State of Adaptation Studies

Scholars and critics have taken a number of approaches to sort out the relationship between sources and new works. All have been influenced by Dryden’s 1683 division of translations (metaphrase, paraphrase, and imitation) which captures many intuitions about adaptation. Despite the theoretical inventiveness and internal rigour of these accounts, adaptation studies is hamstrung by considerations of fidelity, the temptation of evaluation, the influence of parallel or unrelated disciplines, and the difficulties of ‘equivalence’. I provide an overview of the history of adaptation studies and suggest how a relevance theoretic account can productively contribute to the discussion. I conclude the chapter with a short section on the clear distinction between translation and adaptation, arguing that applying the translation model—which is both insufficient and unsuitable—has distorted our understanding of adaptation.