A Book Review of Lissette Lopez Szwydky and Glenn Jellenik’s Edited Collection Adaptation Before Cinema: Literary and Visual Convergence from Antiquity Through the Nineteenth Century

Adaptation Before Cinema: Literary and Visual Convergence from Antiquity Through the Nineteenth Century is one of the latest additions to the Palgrave Studies in Adaptation and Visual Culture, an outstanding series dedicated to exploring new ways of reflecting on the dialogue between adaptation and visual culture. With an underlying impulse to obliterate the unidirectional perception of adaptation as a derivative version of a source text, the series encompasses a broad range of media as symbolic spaces of multiplicity that generate connections and continuities between all forms of texts and narratives. Adaptations are treated as “complexly multiple” texts that are connected to “other pervasive plural forms” such as “sequels, series, genres, trilogies, authorial oeuvres, appropriations, remakes, reboots, cycles and franchises” (Szwydky & Jellenik, 2023, blurb). As such, the books published in this series offer a rich and thought-provoking ground not only for scholars of adaptation studies but also for scholars of literary studies, cultural studies and film studies who seek fresh perspectives and like to think outside the box.