This collection seeks to explore what authenticity means in the context of adaptation, whether there is such a thing as an authentic adaptation, and what authenticity can offer for adaptation. It does so through four specific sections, each thinking through related questions raised by the theme. By outlining theoretical approaches to authenticity, querying authorship’s relationship to adaptation, the role of medium, and the place or value of the audience, this collection brings together a holistic perspective of authenticity that will intervene in the contemporary debates within adaptation. Authenticity’s increasing importance in the zeitgeist filters through to adaptation, yet it is something that has not been explicitly debated or discussed within the field. As such, this collection both highlights and attempts to fill a gap in scholarship.
Chapter 1: Introduction.- Chapter 2: Authentic Adaptation.- Chapter 3:
The Book of Lindelof: Authorship and Identity in The Leftovers and
Watchmen.- Chapter 4: I have looked upon all that the universe has to hold
of horror: The authentic Lovecraftian image in film and television.- Chapter
5: Its not a Star Wars reference: Searching for Shakespearean Authenticity
and Adaptation in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.- Chapter 6: Authorial
Authenticity and Adaptation in Abbas Kiarostamis Close-Up.- Chapter 7: The
new depthiness of Hamlet in Lockdown Digital Performance.- Chapter 8:
Medium, Mental Illness, and Experience: A Little Life.- Chapter 9: Some of
which actually happened: A Million Little Pieces (2018) and the Dual
Fidelities of Adapting Nonfiction.- Chapter 10: Tales of Girlhood: embodiment
and authenticity in The Wonder (2022) and Aftersun (2022).
Chapter 11:
Authenticity, Adaptive Memory, and the Reinvention of Mark Twains Adventures
of Huckleberry Finn (1884).- Chapter 12: Never the Last Word: What Definitive
Adaptations Can Teach Us about the News.
Christina Wilkins is a lecturer at University of Birmingham, UK
