Drawn from the Classics: Essays on Graphic Adaptations of Literary Works

The graphic novel is the most exciting literary format to emerge in the past thirty years. Among its more inspired uses has been the superlative adaptation of literary classics. Unlike the comic book abridgments aimed at young readers of an earlier era, today's graphic novel adaptations are created for an adult audience, and capture the subtleties of sophisticated written works. This first ever collection of essays focusing on graphic novel adaptations of various literary classics demonstrates how graphic narrative offers new ways of understanding the classics, including the works of Homer, Poe, Flaubert, Conrad and Kafka, among many others.

Table of Contents:
Table of Contents Preface  1 Introduction  3 Here There Be Monsters (and Heroes): Homer’s Odyssey and the Graphic Novel—Paul D. Streufert  19 Hwaet If? Beowulf in Comics—Jason Tondro  33 Killing Desdemona: Staging Sexual Violence in Othello Graphic Novels—J. Caitlin Finlayson  46 Illustrating the Uncertainty Within: Recent Comics Adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe—Derek Parker Royal  60 The Good, the Bad and the Parodic in Graphic Adaptation—Eric S. Rabkin  82 In Search of the White Whale: Adaptations of Moby-Dick—Dirk Vanderbeke  96 “I don’t see what good a book is without pictures or conversations”: Imaginary Worlds and Intertextuality in Alice in Wonderland and Alice in Sunderland—Matthew J.A. Green  110 “Does That Change Anything?” (Post)Feminist Implications of Gemma Bovery—Eric L. Berlatsky  127 Drawing Style, Genre and the Destabilization of Register in a Graphic Adaptation of Trollope’s 1878 Novel John Caldigate—David Skilton and Simon Grennan  147 The Masks of Dracula: In Search of the Authentic Performative Vampire in Three Graphic Novel Adaptations of Bram Stoker’s Dracula—Ana G. Gal  161 The Picture and Dorian Gray: Interpretive Pluralism in Graphic Adaptations of Wilde’s Novel—Esther Bendit Saltzman  177 Illustrating the Abyss: An Interview with Catherine Anyango on Heart of Darkness —Christine Ferguson  194 Visualizing the Unrepresentable: Graphic Novel Adaptations of Kafka’s Metamorphosis—Martha Kuhlman  205 An Unusual Adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby—Stephen E. Tabachnick  221 Not Telling, but Retelling: From Raymond Queneau’s Exercises in Style to Matt Madden’s 99 Ways to Tell a Story and Back—Jan Baetens  235 Illustrated Man: Ray Bradbury, Comics and the Authorized Graphic Novels—Darren ­Harris-Fain  249 Bibliography  263 About the Contributors  267 Index  271

About the Author :
Stephen E. Tabachnick retired in 2020 after having served as an English professor at the University of Memphis and several other universities in the US and abroad. He is the author or editor of 13 books, including 5 on the graphic novel. Esther Bendit Saltzman completed her master’s thesis on graphic novel adaptations and has presented papers on adaptations of Macbeth and A Christmas Carol. She lives in West Hills, California.

Review :
“recommended” —Choice; “the volume succeeds...in establishing that ‘while pure literary texts will always have their unique merits, graphic novel adaptations can bring a new vision and a new interpretation to the works upon which they are based,’ and I am delighted to have a host of exceptional work that I can reference the next time I am questioned about the ‘dumbing down’ of great literature through comics adaptations”—English Literature in Translation 180–1920.