Ebook: The Arden Research Handbook of Shakespeare and Adaptation

The Arden Research Handbook of Shakespeare and Adaptation is the first comprehensive reference resource to explore the dynamics of adapted Shakespeare across a range of media forms. The volume maps the field of Shakespeare adaptation studies, identifying theories of adaptation, their application in practice, and the methodologies that underpin them. It considers how adaptation is a key driver of Shakespeare’s ongoing vitality in the contemporary world as Shakespeare is encountered through novels, films, television, and internet culture. It investigates current research and points towards future lines of inquiry for students, researchers and practitioners of Shakespeare adaptation.
The opening section on research methods and problems considers definitions of adaptation. A central section develops these theoretical concerns through a series of case studies that move across a range of genres, media forms, and locations to ask not only how Shakespeare is variously transfigured, hybridised and valorised through adaptational play, but also how adaptations produce interpretive communities, and within these potentially new literacies, modes of engagement, and sensory pleasures. The Handbook devotes separate chapters to artists and practitioners of Shakespeare adaptation, including novelists, dramatists and YouTube vloggers, and thus provides a uniquely detailed insight for the reader into the creative impulses and energies at work in adapted Shakespeare. The Handbook establishes the conceptual parameters of the field through detailed, practical resources that will aid the specialist and non-specialist reader alike, including an A-Z of key terms in Shakespeare adaptation studies, a chronology of the field, a guide to research resources, and an annotated bibliography.