Expanding Adaptation Networks From Illustration To Novelization by Kate Newell (Auth.)

Palgrave Studies in Adaptation
and Visual Culture
Series Editors
Julie Grossman
Le Moyne College
Syracuse, USA
Barton Palmer
University of California
San Diego, USA
This new series addresses how adaptation functions as a principal mode of
text production in visual culture. What makes the series distinctive is its focus
on visual culture as both targets and sources for adaptations, and a vision to
include media forms beyond film and television such as videogames, mobile
applications, interactive fiction and film, print and nonprint media, and the
avant-garde. As such, the series will contribute to an expansive understand-
ing of adaptation as a central, but only one, form of a larger phenomenon
within visual culture. Adaptations are texts that are not singular but com-
plexly multiple, connecting them to other pervasive plural forms: sequels,
series, genres, trilogies, authorial oeuvres, appropriations, remakes, reboots,
cycles and franchises. This series especially welcomes studies that, in some
form, treat the connection between adaptation and these other forms of
multiplicity. We also welcome proposals that focus on aspects of theory that
are relevant to the importance of adaptation as connected to various forms of
visual culture.
More information about this series at

http://www.springer.com/series/14654
Kate Newell
Expanding
Adaptation
Networks
From Illustration to Novelization
Kate Newell
Savannah College of Art and Design
Savannah, USA
Palgrave Studies in Adaptation and Visual Culture

ISBN 978-1-137-56711-6 ISBN 978-1-137-56712-3 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-56712-3
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017933082
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017

The author(s) has/have asserted their right(s) to be identified as the author(s) of this work in
accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and
retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology
now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the
publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to
the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made.
The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and
institutional affiliations.
Cover illustration: MirageC/ Getty Images
Printed on acid-free paper
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature

The registered company is Macmillan Publishers Ltd.
The registered company address is: The Campus, 4 Crinan Street, London, N1 9XW,
United Kingdom
for David and Beatrice
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Many people have helped support and sustain this book during its
development. I am particularly thankful to Julie Grossman for her encour-
agement and for, along with Barton Palmer, inviting me to take part in this
exciting series. Thomas Leitch has been a steady source of inspiration,
guidance, and encouragement. I am grateful to him not only for his insights
on the various ideas put forth in this book, but for helping me to realize
many years ago that my interests in literature and visual culture might find a
home in adaptation studies. I would like also to thank Timothy Corrigan
and Dennis Cutchins, whose work has helped shape my own and who
kindly read portions of this manuscript. I have presented versions of these
chapters at several meetings of the Literature/Film Association, South
Atlantic Modern Language Association, and Association of Adaptation
Studies and am appreciative of the feedback offered at various panels.
Thank you, also, to the editorial staff at Palgrave-Macmillan, particularly
Lina Aboujieb and Karina Jakupsdottir.
I am grateful to the Savannah College of Art and Design community
for its continual and generous support. In particular, a faculty sabbatical
award provided funding for research on literary maps and illustrated
editions at the Library of Congress. The staff at the Jen Library was
indispensable in helping this project to develop. I owe many, many
thanks to Janice Shipp for her diligence and to Deborah Rouse for
sharing with me the library’s collection of moveable books. Many
thanks also to the students who have enrolled in my adaptation
courses—their interest in media and questions on adaptation have
spurred my own.
vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Many colleagues, friends, and family members have supported this

project in ways both big and small. Many thanks to Erin Martineau for
her candid feedback on early versions of this manuscript and for her
editorial expertise. I am indebted to Holly Goldstein for her insights
and recommendations on the maps material and for being a constant
source of encouragement. I am also grateful to Susan Falls for her
sound advice throughout and to Chad Newsome for some early and
last minute bibliographic assistance. Special thanks to Patti Newell,
Carol Russman, and Julie Emory. This project would not have been
possible without the support, equanimity, and humor of my husband,
David Stivers—thank you. This book is dedicated to him and to our
daughter, Beatrice Newell-Stivers, for her exceptional patience and
unwavering confidence.
CONTENTS
1 Introduction: Not in Kansas Anymore: Adaptation

Networks 1
2 “It Wasn’t Like That in the Movie”: Novelization

and Expansion 25
3 Imagining the Unimaginable: Illustration as Gateway 63
4 Literary Maps and the Creation of a Legend 99
5 Pop-up Books: Spectacle and Story 135
6 “All Text is Lost”: Ekphrastic Reading 167
7 Conclusion: Like an Open Book 197
Index 211
ix
LIST OF FIGURES
Fig. 1.1 “Troubles Melt Like Lemon Drops,” photographed

by Annie Leibovitz, Vogue 195.12 (December 2005):
316–317 11
Fig. 3.1 Harry W. McVickar, “Geneva,” Daisy Miller & An
International Episode, Harper & Brothers, 1892 73
Fig. 3.2 Gustave Nebel, illustration of Daisy in the garden
of the Trois Couronnes, Daisy Miller,
Heritage Press, 1969 75
Fig. 3.3 Gustave Nebel, illustration of Daisy in the Colosseum, Daisy
Miller, Heritage Press, 1969 76
Fig. 3.4 Lynton Lamb, “The Proposal,” Washington Square,
The Folio Society, 1963 81
Fig. 3.5 S.G. Hulme Beaman, “The Features Seemed to Melt and
Alter,” The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,
John Lane and the Bodley Head, 1930 85
Fig. 3.6 W. A. Dwiggins, illustration of Hyde at the door, Strange Case
of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Random House, 1929 87
Fig. 3.7 Barry Moser, “Edward Hyde,” The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll
and Mr. Hyde, Pennyroyal Press, 1990 89
Fig. 3.8 Barry Moser, “Hyde’s Fancy,” The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll
and Mr. Hyde, Pennyroyal Press, 1990 91
Fig. 4.1 The Voyage of the Pequod from the Book Moby Dick by Herman
Melville, Cleveland: Harris-Seybold, 1956 115
Fig. 4.2 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the Book by Mark
Twain, Cleveland: Harris-Intertype, 1959 117
xi
xii LIST OF FIGURES
Fig. 4.3 The Ian Fleming Thriller Map, Los Angeles: Aaron Blake,
1987 121
Fig. 7.1 Tim Youd, “Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep, 246 pages
typed on an Underwood Noiseless, Los Angeles Art Fair,
January 2014” 204
Fig. 7.2 Tim Youd, “Virginia Woolf ’s To The Lighthouse, 209 pages
typed on an Underwood Portable, Godrevy Lighthouse
and Penwith Gallery, St. Ives, Cornwall, England,
April 2015” 205
CHAPTER 1
Introduction: Not in Kansas Anymore:

Adaptation Networks
Writing about adaptation poses several problems. Most pressingly, what is

an adaptation? (Cardwell 2002; Hutcheon 2006). Adaptation has been
defined as a product—a “filmed novel,” or a film based on a play or short
story (Bluestone 1957, viii; Harrison 2005)—and as a relationship
between two or three products, generally literature and film (Richardson
1969; Beja 1979; Corrigan 1999; Cartmell 2010), or literature, film, and
theater (Bevington et al. 2006; Skal 2004). Today, the range of works
based on other works is staggering, and the number of products defined as
adaptation has broadened to such a degree as to prompt some writers to
erect boundaries between adaptation and other forms of sourced cultural
and artistic production. Other writers embrace the ever-expanding list of
adaptations, citing the literary and narrative bias of early definitions as
unnecessarily limiting (Leitch 2007, 258). Those uncomfortable with
thinking about adaptation as a product define it as a process by which
texts are put into conversation and made to signify in new ways (Andrew
1984, 96–106; McFarlane 1996). Others prefer to think of adaptation as a
manifestation of intertextuality, a demonstration of textual relationships,
references, allusions, and the like (Stam 2005). Still others prefer not to
choose between definitions but to have it all—to recognize adaptation as a
thing, a process, and an intertextual phenomenon all at once (Hutcheon
2006, 7–9; Sanders 2006). The challenge of defining adaptation becomes
particularly evident when we attempt to apply specific definitions across a
given work’s adaptation network (i.e., the aggregate of texts responsible
© The Author(s) 2017 1

K. Newell, Expanding Adaptation Networks, Palgrave Studies in
Adaptation and Visual Culture, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-56712-3_1
2 K. NEWELL
for and generated by a given work), as the specific definition determines

which works are included and which excluded from that network.
Sometimes a single source can inspire so many subsequent adaptations
across media that it becomes a cultural phenomenon with wide-ranging
impact. The 1939 MGM musical The Wizard of Oz is what we might call a
“culture-text,” which Brian Rose explains as a text that “through the
processes of consistent readaptation in popular media, and through the
reusage and augmentation of motifs first appearing in earlier adaptations,
[creates] a body of popular-cultural memories and associations” (1996,
15).1 Indeed, the 1939 film has so permeated Western culture that the
majority of the population can immediately recognize the iconography of
the ruby slippers, the cyclone, the yellow brick road, the green-skinned
witch, the flying monkeys, the phrases “Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in
Kansas anymore” and “there’s no place like home,” and several of the
songs, even if they have never seen the film. While the 1939 film may be
the most well-known and recognizable Oz text, it is but one in a vast
constellation. The film is based on L. Frank Baum’s novel, The Wonderful
Wizard of Oz (1900), illustrated by William Wallace Denslow, which is
but one in a series of thirteen books written by Baum (the other twelve
illustrated by John Rea Neill), among them The Marvelous Land of Oz
(1904), Ozma of Oz (1907), and The Patchwork Girl of Oz (1913), and
more than twenty sequels written by Ruth Plumly Thompson, also illu-
strated by Neill. The 1939 film and the 1900 novel have inspired numerous
popular adaptations in film and television, such as The Wiz (1978), Return
to Oz (1985), The Muppets’ Wizard of Oz (2005), Tin Man (2007), Oz The
Great and Powerful (2013), The Wiz Live! (2015), and Emerald City
(2017), to name a few, as well as several print adaptations, including
Gregory Maguire’s 1995 revisionist novel Wicked: The Life and Times of
the Wicked Witch of the West, which was, in turn, adapted into a stage
musical, Wicked, by Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holzman in 2003.
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz provided the impetus for a number of stage
scripts, such as the 1902 play written by Baum, designed by Denslow, scored
by Paul Tietjens, and directed by Julian Mitchell, as well as several early films
—The Fairylogue and Radio-Plays (1908) and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
(1910) (both by Selig Polyscope), the 1925 Wizard of Oz (Chadwick), and
the 1933 animated short, The Wizard of Oz, created by Ted Eshbaugh
(which was held back from distribution due to legal conflicts with
Technicolor)—several ballets, a novelization of the 1939 film by M.J. Carr
(1993), and another revisionist novel: Geoff Ryman’s Was (1992). Editions
of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz continue to be published with illustrations
INTRODUCTION: NOT IN KANSAS ANYMORE: ADAPTATION NETWORKS 3
by contemporary illustrators in a range of styles all quite distinct from that of

Denslow or Neill, among them Barry Moser (1986), Lisbeth Zwerger
(1996), Robert Ingpen (2011), and Michael Sieben (2013). Oz has also
provided the impetus for a number of pop-up books, and countless examples
of fan fiction and fan art in a range of genres and subgenres.
The relationship between Oz and popular culture has been mutually
beneficial and manifests in all media and in examples too numerous and
diffuse to enumerate. In 2014 Madame Tussaud’s in New York cele-
brated the 75th Anniversary of the 1939 MGM musical with a Yellow
Brick Road exhibit in Times Square that featured a wax figure of Judy
Garland as Dorothy. Additionally, the museum installed on its sidewalk a
sculpture of two legs clad in a pair of black and white striped stockings
and six-foot tall ruby slippers, intended to recall the legs of the Wicked
Witch of the East, to promote two Oz-themed attractions: “The Wizard
of Oz Cinema 4-D Experience” and “Land of Oz.” The Wizard of Oz has
been the source for a 1993 Super Nintendo game, at least three online
video slot games (The Wizard of Oz, Wizard of Oz Ruby Slippers, and
Wizard of Oz Wicked Riches), and several board games (e.g., The Game of
Life: The Wizard of Oz [2013], The Wizard of Oz Yellow Brick Road
Game [1999], The Wizard of Oz Game [1974], The Wonderful Game of
Oz [1921]). The Wizard of Oz has also inspired the Land of Oz amuse-
ment park and resort, the creative collaboration of Jack Pentes and
Grover Robbins, open from 1970 through 1980 in Beech Mountain,
North Carolina.
This overview, by no means exhaustive, shows the range of Oz-based
works, and suggests the challenge facing anyone seeking to draw neat
divisions between the adaptations and the not-adaptations. Oz-based
works fare differently against product, process, and intertexual concep-
tions of adaptation. Linda Hutcheon’s often-cited definition defines adap-
tation-the-product as “an extended, deliberate, announced revisitation of
a particular work of art” (2006, 170). Hutcheon’s phrasing suggests that
for a work to be an adaptation it should check each of the boxes simulta-
neously (i.e., extended, deliberate, announced revisitation), but I would
like to consider the qualifiers individually at first. Each of the Oz examples
I have mentioned is deliberate and announced and signals its connection
to the Oz universe in marked and recognizable ways, and each revisits Oz
in the sense that it repeats particular iconography and returns to particular
themes. The aspects of Hutcheon’s definition that become fuzzy for Oz
texts are “extended” and “of a particular work.” As might be expected,
this latter characteristic features prominently in product-based views of
4 K. NEWELL
adaptation. John Bryant’s definition, for example, synthesizes Hutcheon’s:

“Adaptation is an announced retelling of an originating text” (2013, 48).
For Julie Sanders, “[a]n adaptation signals a relationship with an inform-
ing sourcetext or original” (2006, 26). Colin MacCabe also provides a
product-based definition, explaining “an adaptation refers to a film that
relies for some of its material on a previous written work” (2011, 3).
A challenge for Oz, then, is that while all of the examples included in
the overview are deliberate, announced revisitations, they do not revisit a
particular work. They revisit particular works. The 1939 film The Wizard of
Oz, for example, commonly labeled an adaptation of Baum’s The
Wonderful Wizard of Oz, revisits that novel, Denslow’s illustrations,
early stage productions, and the 1933 animated short. Bryant’s qualifica-
tion of “originating” is also problematic. Designating Baum’s novel as the
origin of “Oz” is fraught by the number of biographical and historical
sources from which Baum drew: the niece cited as a source for Dorothy
Gale, the suffragists cited as the source for the Good Witches of the North
and South, the debate over the gold standard cited as the source of Baum’s
silver shoes and the Yellow Brick Road. From the outset, more than a
specific precursor, each Oz adaptation has been adapting an idea or
interpretation of Oz, generated by what Lawrence Venuti calls formal
and thematic interpretants—that is, categories of relations, equivalences,
codes, and ideologies that mediate between work and an adaptation,
communicating a particular agenda and leading audiences to particular
meanings (2007, 33). Perhaps more than identifying “a particular work of
art,” “an originating text,” or an “original” to revisit, what the range of
Oz texts suggests is that there is no definitive Oz text to adapt. Baum’s
novel may be a starting point for some texts, and a stopping-over point for
others. Rather, what is adapted is a range of readings, a storehouse of
agreed upon interpretations.
The qualifier “extended” also poses a challenge for Oz texts. Hutcheon
distinguishes adaptations, which offer an “extended . . . revisitation of a parti-
cular work,” from “allusions to and brief echoes of other works,” which she
reasons “would not qualify as extended engagements, nor do most examples
of music sampling, because they recontextualize only short fragments of
music” (2006, 9). Charles Musser makes a similar distinction between adap-
tation and works-that-refer-to-other-works: “Citation, limited (or literal)
quotation, allusion, evocation are not, in fact, forms of adaptation as we
should strictly define the term. They mobilize connections between two
texts that are insufficiently sustained to involve adaptation” (2008, 231).
Qualifiers such as “extended” and “sustained” seem reasonable in the short

term as they could describe the textual relationship of the average film
adaptation of a literary work, what I would call “whole-work” adaptation.
For example, a comparison of the 2005 film Pride & Prejudice and the 1813
novel Pride and Prejudice might conclude an extended engagement or
sustained connection between the two works. All the same, a number of
self-labeled adaptations are only allusions to and echoes of other texts
(Leitch 2007, 259).
These qualifiers suggest a problematic alignment of temporality with
depth of engagement and skirt audience’s individual experiences with a
work. A passing allusion can be sustained if it resonates through a reader’s
experience of a work, in effect providing a lens through which the work is
understood. “Extended” and “sustained” apply most readily to creative
modes that are commonly linear and narrative, such as film, television series,
novels, theater performance—namely, the vehicles most commonly desig-
nated as adaptations already. In this way, the process of delineating adapta-
tion takes on circularity. In an effort to define adaptation we look to what we
have already labeled as such and use those characteristics as the basis of the
definition. Yet other media and modes announce a relationship between
works and the engagement offered is as extended as it can be for that mode: a
sculpture or painting adaptation of a novel is bound to convey a different
vision of extended and sustained engagement than a film, but it is no less
extended. Returning to Hutcheon’s complete definition of adaptation—“an
extended, deliberate, announced revisitation of a particular work of art”—to
which Oz works would it apply? Likely to the various stage, film, and
theatrical productions, as well as the novelization, as each is a whole-work,
narrative adaptation that retells Baum’s story. The illustrated editions, theme
park, wax sculptures, and online video slot games, however, occupy a gray
area. They hit each individual qualifier (i.e., deliberate, announced,
extended, revisitation), but whether they meet them collectively is less
certain. Largely episodic in nature, each coheres as a version of Oz through
audiences’ recognition of the narrative thread. Each revisits Oz in asking its
audience to return to what they know of Oz, to re-see it in a new light.
The aggregate of Oz works are more definitively adaptations under
definitions that focus on process. If product-rooted definitions of adapta-
tion stress the relationship between two works—the adaptation and the
particular work of art, the originating text, or the previous work—process-
rooted definitions stress what adaptation can do for or to a work. Sanders
identifies a number of possibilities. Adaptation can be “a transpositional
6 K. NEWELL
practice, casting a specific genre into another generic mode”; “it can
parallel editorial practice in some respects”; “it can also be an amplificatory
procedure engaged in addition, expansion, accretion, and interpolation”;
it is “frequently involved in offering commentary on a sourcetext”; and it
can “constitute a simpler attempt to make texts ‘relevant’ or easily com-
prehensible to new audiences and readerships via the processes of prox-
imation and updating” (2006, 18–19). The various practices highlighted
here—transpositional, editorial, amplificatory, commentary—are evident
across the Oz adaptation network. Indeed, they are some of the practices
that generate the network. Many Oz adaptations are developed as correc-
tions to or expansions of previous versions. Maguire’s novel Wicked: The
Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, for example, provides
correctives to the 1939 musical’s characterizations of the Wicked Witch of
the West, the Wicked Witch of the East, Glinda the Good Witch of the
North, and others, and clarifies and amplifies the political histories, family
genealogies, and landscapes of Oz offered in the book series. Different
versions of works rewrite, revise, and expand certain details of previous
iterations. The Muppets’ Wizard of Oz, for example, transposes, amplifies,
and comments on aspects of Baum’s novel, as well as on the 1939 film and
The Wiz (Newell 2010). Richard Hand and Katja Krebs describe adapta-
tion as “a creative act of conversion, or rather rewriting” and as “a creative
process and method [that] denies texts a sense of completeness, forcing
them to be challenged continuously on a textual and generic level.”
Additionally, they suggest that adaptation is “a creative process which
reflects and mirrors ideologies and manipulation of meaning in hybrid
cultures” (2007, 3). Put succinctly by Timothy Corrigan, “Adaptation
describes, of course, multiple textual exchanges besides those involving
film” (2007, 29). Whereas even the broadest product-oriented definitions
install boundaries around what is and is not adaptation, process-oriented
definitions appear broad enough to include anything.
From understanding adaptation as a process that “denies completeness”
and involves “multiple textual exchanges,” it is really just a short step to
understanding adaptation as a manifestation of intertextuality. Robert
Stam’s often-cited conclusion, that “[f]ilm adaptations, then, are caught
up in the ongoing whirl of intertextual reference and transformation, of
texts generating other texts in an endless process of recycling, transforma-
tion, and transmutation, with no clear point of origin,” provides the most
acute statement on the inherent intertexuality of all adaptation (2005, 31).
Hutcheon’s definitions of adaptation include “[a]n extended intertextual
engagement with the adapted work” (2006, 8), and Hand and Krebs
suggest that adaptation “offers dynamic evidence of the importance and
prevalence of intertextuality” (2007, 3). Such perspectives would account
for all of the Oz works I include in my overview. Each refers to multiple other
texts—for example, Denslow’s illustrations clearly refer to Baum’s prose but
also Denslow’s other works as well as other commercial styles. Each also
generates additional texts: without Denslow’s illustrations we would not
have Neill’s, whose style is defined, in part, as not-Denslow’s.
As welcoming as intertextual understandings of adaptation are, they are
not without their own complications. As Thomas Leitch points out, “all
adaptations are obviously intertexts, but it is much less obvious that all
intertexts are adaptations” (2012, 89). Should a line between adaptation
and intertextuality be drawn, and where would we draw it? Musser warns
of the dangers of conflating adaptation and intertexuality in his comment
that “critics can be tempted to evoke the process of adaptation almost any
time they uncover an intertextual reference. Taken to a daring and appar-
ently logical extreme, intertextuality and adaptation are categories that
become interchangeable” (2008, 231). Musser reasons that “[i]f adapta-
tion is increasingly understood as an overarching Ur category or process,
we must then begin to think more carefully about its limits” (2008, 231).
A central question seems to be whether adaptation is an example of
intertextuality or whether intertextuality is an example of adaptation.
Regardless of how we answer this question, we can agree that both
adaptation and intertextuality focus our attention on the inherent multi-
plicity of all artistic and cultural works, and demonstrate the parallel
multiplicity of our reading strategies. Just as no text is closed, producing
meaning only for and within itself, no audience reads a text simply as itself.
Readers apply their experiences with other texts, media, and modes, and
their biographical experiences to their reading. Our reading strategies are
not brought forth from the objects we read but are shaped by the meth-
odologies we apply (Venuti 2007, 33–34).
In terms of distinguishing adaptation-as-process from adaptation-as-
manifestation-of-intertextuality, we might consider that adaptation-as-
process invites us to look closely at the impact of certain activities of
adaptation on adaptation. How, for example, might the transposition and
expansion of Oz into a theme park impact our reading of other Oz itera-
tions? Adaptation-as-intertextuality might help us trace a broader textual
genealogy and legacy for Oz texts. Reading the Oz theme park in this way,
we might consider the influence of Baum, the 1939 film, as well as other
8 K. NEWELL
performance-focused and interactive iterations of Oz, and also the influence

of other theme parks, the designer’s and architect’s previous works, and any
number of other informing texts. The intertextual approach allows for an
expansion of the adaptation network in directions not available through the
process- or product-oriented approaches. How we define adaptation mat-
ters to its study, yet settling on one catch-all definition is very difficult and,
given the myriad manifestations of adaptation, perhaps undesirable.
My own conceptualization of adaptation is weighted heavily by reading
strategies and the manner in which adaptation reflects and contributes to
the development of what I think of as a particular work’s network: the
broad inventory of narrative moments, reference points, and iconography
that comes to be associated with a particular work through successive acts
of adaptation.2 I view adaptation as a mobilization of reference points,
some of which audiences access and some of which they do not. Adapters
read works through the lens of other works and craft adaptations that
reflect those perspectives. The number of informing views is then refracted
in audiences’ individual reading practices, which are themselves similarly
and differently inflected. As we know from reader-oriented theories,
“meaning” does not emerge from the objects we read but is shaped by
the strategies we deploy and the interpretive communities to which we
belong (Fish 1976; Iser 1980; Rabinowitz 1985; Hall 1986). Given this
view, I do not insist that adaptation reflect a sustained engagement
with a pre-existing text or texts, as I do not believe that such engagement
can be defined by theory, but is experiential and dependent on the
audience. I agree with Hutcheon and Christine Geraghty that an appeal
and “pleasure” of adaptation is its “emphasis on repetition and difference”
(Geraghty 2008, 5; Hutcheon 2006, 4) and that it relies on audiences to
use their myriad foreknowledge to fill in gaps (even/especially when they
are unfamiliar with adaptations’ informing texts). Like Hand and Krebs,
I view adaptation as “rewriting.” Each adaptation engages in processes of
rewriting and revision; what they rewrite or revise, though, may not be a
specific source but an idea of a source. I am less convinced than Hand and
Krebs that such processes ward off completeness, as a cursory overview of
nodes in any adaptation network shows repetition and variation occurring
in equal measure across the aggregation. While the variations of a given
adaptation point toward deferred closure, the repetitions consistent across
a work’s adaptation network point toward sustained closure, a general
recognition that this is the text. Adaptation involves processes of inter-
pretation and selection that privilege certain textual and narrative features.
Such processes, interesting in the comparison of two adaptations, become

truly telling in the study of a given work’s adaptation network, which reveals
the same features being reinforced from adaptation to adaptation and,
in turn, reinforcing for audiences what “counts” in/as a particular work.
What is being adapted in each of the iterations of Oz? Popular and
academic discourse on adaptation suggests that certain aspects of a work
can be “transposed across different media and genres” in processes of
adaptation, among them story, themes, and characters (Hutcheon 2006,
10–11), and that audiences are likely to recognize an adaptation as an
adaptation if such features are present. The episodic nature of several of
the works included in my overview narrows the list of features even
further. For adaptations of Oz to be recognized as such, they must
reproduce key narrative moments and reinscribe a particular iconography.
In his Novel to Film (1996), Brian McFarlane identifies elements of a
literary work that can be translated to film and elements that require
“adaptation proper.” McFarlane’s study focuses primarily on narrative
features and, following Roland Barthes, he divides narrative into consti-
tutive components, explaining that “cardinal functions”—that is, the
“hinge points of the narrative” that determine its development—must
be translated for an audience to accept a given work as an adaptation of
another (1996, 13–14). Such moments “open up alternatives of conse-
quence to the development of the story,” they mark points of tension at
which a narrative could shift direction. For Oz adaptations such moments
might include Dorothy’s landing in Munchkinland or her audience with
the Wizard. Such moments are read as essential as they “open up” multiple
possible narrative trajectories. We can look at any adaptation of any work
and see that, more often than not, adaptations will include such hinge
points, regardless of whatever else might be “left out” in the process.
However, that we prioritize such moments has more to do with linear,
plot-driven reading models than with anything inherently essential about
the moments themselves. In terms of what gets adapted and what does
not, “actions” and “events” consistently land in the “adapted” column.
From medium to medium adapters reproduce so-called “hinge” points
and, through repetition, such points coalesce as the work. That we come
to read a collection of characters and plot points as “the work” results
from a reading experience that grants priority to certain aspects as a result
of patterns that have always granted priority to those aspects. Practices of
selection and prioritization have been theorized as necessary to the inter-
medial translation of narrative in that not all features of one work can be
10 K. NEWELL
translated into another work’s form or medium (Andrew 1984; McFarlane

1996). To my thinking, though, the practice of selecting the same features
over and over, by adapter after adapter across media, is less about necessary
condensing than about a practiced inscription of what counts in a work.
The patterns of repetition that establish a particular work as part of a
larger network are evident also in the re-inscription of signature icono-
graphy. Each work signals itself as a node in the Oz network through the
replication of a particular, recognizable visual aesthetic, as well as through
other characteristics of setting, costume, theme, and motif that, in turn,
trigger responses to the object or work as an adaptation and put into
motion several secondary reactions. That is, in the recognition of icono-
graphy, audiences also fill in gaps of character and story, so that these
aspects become inseparable from the more blunt significations of the icon
itself. For example, most Times Square passersby do not experience the
sculpture jutting out of Madame Tussaud’s as a free floating signifier but
as a signifier of the Wicked Witch of the East and, by extension, of The
Wizard of Oz. The recognition of the red shoes as not just any red shoes
but the ruby slippers occurs simultaneously with a filling in of the gaps in
character, narrative, and thematics of which the shoes are one signifier.
Crucially, though, the iconography does not pre-exist adaptation, but,
rather, comes into being through processes of adaptation, through “repe-
tition with variation,” through “[t]hematic and narrative persistence com-
bine[d] with material variation” (Hutcheon 2006, 4). We understand the
significance of the red shoes as a result of their fetishization in the 1939
film and subsequent merchandizing. We may also understand their sig-
nificance in contrast—they are not the silver shoes of Baum’s, The Wiz’s,
or The Muppets’ Dorothy. We come to recognize elements of a work as
iconographic via processes of adaptation that foreground these elements as
significant by altering them.
This process is exemplified in Annie Leibovitz’s Wizard of Oz-themed
spread for the December 2005 issue of Vogue, which recreates several
scenes from the 1939 MGM film, casts well-known actors and artists in
the familiar roles, and includes as copy lyrics and dialogue from the film.
The spread adapts The Wizard of Oz through the lens of Vogue—a process
that reinforces Oz iconography as well as Vogue iconography but with
variations expected from the merger. Given Vogue’s focus on fashion, art,
and culture, it is not surprising that costuming features prominently in
the photographs or that MGM sentimentality takes a backseat to aes-
thetics. Dorothy Gale’s blue gingham dress and ruby slippers have become
iconic through repetition, appearing as they do in every image of Dorothy

in virtually every piece of publicity and merchandizing. Such saturation has
had two effects: it has established this costume as quintessentially “Oz”
and made it so well known that it need not be reproduced in its entirety
but can be merely suggested by a related item of clothing. Vogue’s
Dorothy, played by Keira Knightley, wears white rather than blue ging-
ham and a different white dress in each scene. She wears red shoes, but
these also vary with each scene.
Such variations do not render the spread incoherent as a Wizard of Oz
adaptation for several reasons. Should Vogue’s readers fail to identify the
photographs’ iconography, the copy will foster the Oz connection (Fig. 1.1).
Thus the photograph in which Knightley reclines on a bed wearing a
bright white dress with scarlet apron and sparkly red heels, holding a
terrier, and looking out of the frame at the viewer as the two other figures,
a man and a woman, look over her is accompanied by the following copy:
“‘Troubles Melt Like Lemon Drops’: ‘And I’m not going to leave here
Fig. 1.1 “Troubles Melt Like Lemon Drops,” photographed by Annie

Leibovitz, Vogue 195.12 (December 2005): 316–317
12 K. NEWELL
ever, ever again, because I love you all! And, oh, Auntie Em, there’s no
place like home!’” Image and words corroborate this representation for
the reader. We recognize Knightley as Dorothy, the two figures as Auntie
Em and Uncle Henry (played by Francesco and Alba Clemente), and the
scene as that at the MGM film’s conclusion in which Dorothy wakes from
her dream. The lyric from “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” combined
with characters’ names and “there’s no place like home” ensure that
readers will identify the source.
When we read an adaptation as an adaptation we do so not only through
the lens of its announced or foregrounded source text but through a number
of other lenses as well, each with its own defining iconography, all of which
align to allow audiences to make sense of the adaptation. The Wizard of Oz is
not the only guide through which readers approach these photographs.
Many readers are likely familiar with Vogue as a magazine with a particular
focus and format. Each of the contemporary artists cast for this spread has his
or her own history with Vogue and, as a consequence, his or her name would
likely to be familiar to regular readers, even if readers were unfamiliar with
the artists’ work. The Vogue spread uses this familiarity to create some “in
jokes” for its readers. For example, instead of being surrounded by
Munchkins during the scene in which Glinda (played by Kara Walker)
confers on Dorothy the ruby slippers, the women are surrounded by Penn
State’s Blue Band, which had opened Marc Jacobs’s New York show in
September 2005. The only photographed scene featuring the Wicked Witch
of the West is that of her melting into the ground. That the witch is played by
Kiki Smith, an artist known for figures undergoing metamorphosis, would
not be lost on Vogue’s readers. Additionally, Dorothy wears dresses and
shoes by designers commonly featured in the magazine, such as Prada,
Vera Wang, Oscar de la Renta, Donna Karan New York, Christian
Louboutin, Mui Mui, Balenciaga, and Marc Jacobs, which results in a fetish
refresh: Dorothy’s commonly fetishized costume reinterpreted through
equally fetishized designer finery (prices included on each page).
Certain literary works are adapted into film or other media because they
have been established as “classic” through various institutional practices:
scholars study and write about them and teachers teach them. Adaptations
participate in this process, not only by selecting certain works over others
(and thus confirming their worthiness as cultural artifacts) but also by
selecting certain aspects of a work over others. Some elements of Baum’s
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz rarely appear in subsequent adaptations,
becoming vestigial as a result. A glance at Oz’s adaptation network
shows little evidence of Baum’s Golden Cap, the Kalidahs, the Giant Spider,
or The China Country, for example. Other elements enter the network’s
iconographic storehouse through adaptation. The 1902 stage play, for
example, initiated several features, among them the musical format,
Dorothy’s surname “Gale,” Glinda’s rescue of Dorothy and her friends
from the Poppy Field with snowfall, which have been reinforced by a
number of subsequent adaptations (Swartz 2000). Dorothy’s dazzling
transition from the gray world of Kansas to the colorful world of Oz—
a hallmark of the 1939 film—has its origins in the 1933 animated film. The
1925 film is the first to cast the same actors to play both the farmhands and
the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Cowardly Lion. Through repetition
over subsequent adaptations (and repeated experiences with the same adap-
tation), some elements begin to take on a life of their own; such is the case
with phrases such as “not in Kansas anymore” and “I’m melting,” both of
which originate in the 1939 film, and now circulate freely in other popular
culture contexts. Dorothy’s ruby slippers are such a powerful signifier of Oz
that they can signal The Wizard of Oz independently of other Oz icons, and
have provided the focal point for several adaptations, among them Salman
Rushdie’s dystopian and futuristic “At the Auction of the Ruby Slippers”
(1994) as well as Amy Beeder’s ekphrastic poem “The Shoes” (2006). In
both works the slippers function externally as a signifier of the link to Oz and
internally as a talisman of hope, home, and salvation.
The power of the shoes in the world of Rushdie’s story is varied, diffuse,
and unequivocally fetishistic; the shoes stand in for people, community,
memory, loss, and metaphysical lack. Rushdie’s narrator attends the titular
event and confides that:
We revere the ruby slippers because we believe they can make us invulner-
able to witches (and there are so many sorcerers pursuing us nowadays);
because of their powers of reverse metamorphosis, their affirmation of a lost
state of normalcy in which we have almost ceased to believe and to which the
slippers promise us we can return; and because they shine like the footwear
of the gods. (1994, 92)
Various groups attend the auction with equally urgent desires to fill a void,
to have the slippers complete them, to bring them “home.”
“Home” has become such a scattered, damaged, various concept in our

present travails. There is so much to yearn for. There are so few rainbows any
more. How hard can we expect even a pair of magic shoes to work? They
14 K. NEWELL
promised to take us home, but are metaphors of homeliness comprehensible

to them, are abstractions permissible? Are they literalists, or will they permit
us to redefine the blessed word?
Are we asking, hoping for, too much? (1994, 93)
Through his sustained narrative “we” the narrator aligns his own view
with that of his fellow auction attendees and implicates readers suggesting
that we, too, might be hoping for too much from this icon.
Beeder’s speaker expresses similar wonder in anthropomorphizing the
shoes that “yearned secretly towards whoever desired them” (2006, 54,
line 8). Beeder’s shoes are more generalized—“they were really silver,
transformed to ruby for the / Technicolor screen” (2006, 54, 2–3). The
power of these shoes is comparable to those up for auction in Rushdie’s
story, though Beeder’s speaker seems less hopeful than Rushdie’s in the
likelihood of the shoes complying with wish fulfillment:
…more powerful than the golden cap and Glinda’s kiss

together—& believe me
were so singularly flamboyant, mysterious, and possessed
other powers never discovered
were feared, restored silence
in any room, had long traced the expectancy in every stolen
glance, and still
had no heart to remain with us. Will answer no prayer. (2006, 54, 11–18)
Each permutation, each iteration, and each adaptive practice changes the
way we think about adaptation and its functions, and the way we think
about specific texts. The Oz examples demonstrate several things about
adaptation. Adaptations communicate with their audiences by working
within familiar models that help guide readers in how to read the variation
in the repetition. We understand Leibovitz’s photographs because we
are familiar with photography, or her specific style, or Vogue, or Keira
Knightley, or The Wizard of Oz, or any of the additional guides provided.
Adaptations utilize recognizable iconography, yet that iconography is
not fixed. Rather, the iconography is inscribed but with variation through
processes of adaptation ensuring that audiences accept a range of substitu-
tions within a particular signifying field. Whether Dorothy travels with a
terrier or a cow, as in many of the stage productions and the 1910 film,
or a prawn, as in The Muppets’ Wizard of Oz, is not as important as that she
travels with a companion. It is through the reinforcement of specific

aspects of a work, through a process of selection and interpretation that
the text becomes established.
I have sought to show through the Oz examples that elements con-
sidered central to a source text become so through successive adaptations
that establish, work within, and reinforce a signature iconography. This
book addresses several print-based modes that have not conventionally
been read as adaptations—novelizations, illustrations, literary maps, pop-
up books, and ekphrases. The examination of such modes invites new
entry points for the study of adaptation and provides new ways of reading
works and their cultural impact. Like conventional film adaptation, these
modes have been theorized as “dependent,” meaning that they come into
being through the pre-existence of something else. Their commercial
moorings have prompted debates over their artistic merit and cultural
value. These modes have been studied within the academic and profes-
sional disciplines with which they are commonly associated, but have
remained largely peripheral to adaptation study, likely due to the fact
that print-based adaptations are not regularly thought of as adaptations.
The primacy of film and literature and their narrative and representational
characteristics has done much to shape and delineate what is adaptation.
Commercial and franchise works and assorted ephemera play a key role in
reinforcing a work’s iconography and have the power to reach audiences in
venues unavailable to more conventional adaptations. I posit that print-
based modes are equally and differently adaptive and engage in activities
that correspond to and expand the range of those identified in existing
concepts of adaptation. Far from being peripheral, these modes contribute
to the establishment of what “counts” as a particular work in academic and
popular understanding.
Though a seemingly eclectic group, the print-based modes addressed in
this book share several characteristics. Each, for example, has been posi-
tioned as a tool for promoting a comparatively more valuable cultural
artifact, namely its nominal source. Just as teachers follow a common
practice of introducing students to literary works via film adaptations,
print-based modes serve a similar function in attracting hesitant readers
with their novelty.3 Such practices imply that the goal or job of adaptation
is to prepare readers to master the “real” text. The universe of intermedial
adaptation stands in opposition to such an outcome, however, in its
relentless reminders that there is no single source to master, and that the
experience of a range of versions and iterations may be more valuable to
16 K. NEWELL
inspiring a reluctant reader or critical thinker than the experience of a

single work. Each of the modes discussed in this book is geared in part to
an audience that wants more, an audience that is not satisfied by experien-
cing a work in only one iteration and medium. Additionally, each of the
modes considered in this book has been theorized as hybrid and in terms
of competing or collaborative media, and adopts medial characteristics of a
mode characterized as its binary opposite. For example, ekphrasis uses
words to convey images, books use paper to convey sound, illustration
uses line to convey movement. Such “borrowing” invites further inquiry
into how and why media and medial modes are distinguished. Each of the
book’s chapters focuses on a specific mode of adaptation and examines
several examples of that mode to draw attention to intermodal patterns
and practices of adaptation, and then considers how and what that mode
contributes to the larger adaptation network.
Chapter Two addresses novelization as a mode of adaptation. Most
novelizations adapt the screenplays of their nominal films, rather than the
nominal film itself, yet they are marketed as novelizations of films—as the
book of the movie—and readers read them as such. Novelization offers a
unique site for delving into issues of iconography, categorization (e.g., why
some works are read as adaptations and others are not), the influence of
industry practices on the development and reception of adaptations, and the
role of audience response in determining the authority of particular versions
of a work. I focus primarily on commercial novelizations that form part of a
larger franchise network designed to bolster interest in an upcoming film or
series. Looking at examples as diverse as Basic Instinct (1992), Pretty in Pink
(1986), and Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Chosen (2003), the chapter considers
novelization’s ability to rewrite a work, to enlarge its scope through point of
view, character psychology, and histories of place, and to contribute alternate
and expanded scenes and iconography to a work’s adaptation network. This
chapter also considers the role of novelization in developing various literacy
skills. By providing readers with familiar, high-interest reading material,
novelizations help develop readers’ vocabulary, and, by providing readers
with a familiar narrative, novelizations help develop generic awareness and
attention to narrative patterns. Novelizations’ exposition of character and
setting also provides readers with social and historical context, which helps to
develop their cultural literacy skills. In alerting readers to narrative patterns
and the possibilities of adaptive rewriting, novelization and other modes of
print-based adaptation inspire readers to tackle the rewriting themselves,
as the range of fan fiction can attest.
Chapter Three also addresses adaptation’s ability to enlarge readers’

understanding of a work, as well as its ability to inscribe a particular vision
and version of that work through an examination of illustrations in illu-
strated novels. Illustrated editions, I argue, play a significant role in a given
work’s adaptation network and in establishing a work’s iconography and
visual legacy. The aspects of a work illustrators opt to visualize determines
which aspects will be reinforced and remembered. I argue that, far from
being decorative, illustrations deploy strategies to engage readers and to
guide them toward specific interpretations and conclusions. In effect,
illustrations teach readers how to read them and, in turn, how to read
the prose text. Looking to representative illustrated editions of “classic”
works of fiction—Henry James’s Daisy Miller (1878) and Washington
Square (1880) and Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll
and Mr. Hyde (1886), among them—I examine the manner by which
illustrations can clarify ambiguous prose and, in so doing, solidify a
dominant impression of narrative that might differ from that offered by
the prose.
Chapter Four turns to adaptation’s ability to guide readers by situating
a work in a specific context and place through the genre of literary maps.
All adaptation involves processes of mapping, selecting, interpreting, and
representing material in a manner that guides audiences through specific
textual and narrative terrain. Likewise, all maps involve adaptation. In the
rendering of three-dimensional spatial information in a two-dimensional
medium, cartographers face similar issues of choice, interpretation, and
audience. Literary maps foreground their adaptive characteristics by pro-
viding a spatial-geographical context for a literary work or group of related
literary works and by attempting to recreate (and, in some cases, create)
the iconography and experience of a particular narrative landscape. This
chapter looks at two sets of maps as representative of two distinct types of
cartographic adaptation: the “Map-of-A-Book” calendars issued by the
Harris Company from 1953 to 1964 and the maps produced by the Aaron
Blake Company in the 1980s. The first are plot-centered maps with
polished illustrations that capture significant scenes and characters.
These maps are nostalgic in tone and foster audiences’ appreciation for
Great Literary Classics. The second group of maps is location-centered
and includes recognizable cartographic features that would enable readers
to use the maps to navigate particular spaces. In this way, they encourage
readers to experience literature through exploration of place—to be not
just readers of literature but also users of literature. As I see it, these two
18 K. NEWELL
modes of mapmaking suggest the spectrum of use value for all adaptations,
from access and appreciation, to interaction and expression. I conclude the
chapter with a look at contemporary digital mapping projects, which
provide a meeting ground for appreciation and interaction in their inevi-
table generation of reader-users and creation of platforms that allow for a
personal and self-directed experience of a work.
Adaptation is often perceived as a relationship between media: a work in
one medium is translated into a work in another medium. Chapters Five
and Six explore common assumptions about static and dynamic media
through the lenses of pop-up books and ekphrasis—two seemingly very
different modes of representation that come into being through a manip-
ulation of medial boundaries. The promise of pop-up books is the promise
of all adaptation: more of the same but differently. Like the modes dis-
cussed in previous chapters, pop-up books fulfill audiences’ desire to con-
tinue the experience of a work through increasingly more novel and
interactive iterations. Pop-up and moveable paper engineering challenges
audiences’ expectations for books and for print media by providing them
with a three-dimensional, interactive reading experience. Like illustrations
in illustrated novels, pop-up books are episodic, rendering only a few
representative scenes from a work. The cost of manufacturing a pop-up
book restricts the number of scenes dramatically which results in an even
more staccato-style adaptation and provides even more insight into what
“counts” in the cultural memory of a work. Using Alice’s Adventures in
Wonderland as a primary example, I focus on two types of pop-up adapta-
tion in particular, which I distinguish, borrowing from Tom Gunning’s
categories of early cinema, as “literature of attractions” and “pop-up of
narrative integration” (1986). The first type, I argue, uses classic literature
as a venue for the novelty of moveable mechanisms and the spectacular
possibilities of paper engineering. By contrast, the second type uses the
novelty of pop-ups as a venue for classic literature. This type strives for a
more seamless integration of narrative and mobility, using the paper engi-
neering to enhance, but not overshadow, narrative development. I con-
clude with a brief discussion of artisanal and do-it-yourself paper engineers
and the manner in which their work can expand the signifying field of
iconographic material in inventive ways.
Chapter Six focuses on ekphrasis, a mode of descriptive writing that
attempts to represent visual art in words. Illustrations, maps, and pop-up
books adapt words into images, whereas novelizations and ekphrastic
writing adapt images into words, and are theorized commonly in terms
of word/image binaries that associate particular characteristics of the writ-

ing with verbal arts and others with visual arts. Yet for both the word/
image engagement is illusory. Novelizations, as discussed in Chapter Two,
adapt screenplays and much ekphrastic writing adapts a memory of or a
mental conception of a work of art. Ekphrastic writing evokes an ima-
ginary meeting of verbal and visual elements that concretizes only with
readers’ compliance with the conceit. Given that much adaptation study
focuses on medial divisions, media categories, and media competitions,
I use ekphrasis to address the degree to which conceptions and under-
standing of the relationships between visual and verbal modes in adapta-
tion is perceptual. Chapter Six examines some well-known examples of
ekphrasis in prose before considering ekphrasis as a thematic conceit
in Gary Wolf’s novel Who Censored Roger Rabbit? (1981). I argue that
ekphrastic writing engages the dynamics of expansion common to all
modes of adaptation, as “[t]hrough the imaginative act of narrating
and reflecting on the ‘action’ of a painting or sculpture, the poet
may amplify and extend its meaning” (“Ekphrasis” 2016). Ekphrastic
moments within novels perform similar functions in allowing the
description of the art to reflect, refract, and reinforce themes of the
work, while simultaneously crystallizing its iconography.
Several questions have spurred this book: Which modes of textual and
artistic engagement “count” as adaptation? Which aspects of a work “count”
for its adaptations (that is, which are prioritized, which maintain currency in
the cultural climate)? How do adaptations engage and guide audiences via
multiple strategies? How do audiences interact with and use adaptations?
What are some theoretical and perceptual differences in media? Where are
the boundaries between media and what happens to them in the process of
adaptation? The book’s conclusion returns to The Wizard of Oz to consider
more comprehensively what an enlarged concept of adaptation and the
model of adaptation networks contribute to the fields of adaptation and of
visual studies. The conclusion also turns to adaptation practices in the
contemporary art world—specifically the collaborative art of Tim Rollins
and K.O.S. (Kids of Survival), and Tim Youd’s 100 Novels Project—to
illuminate the ramifications of broader concepts of adaptation. Through
literal and physical manipulations of literary works, these artists demonstrate
that adaptation is an act revisioning, to which reading and writing are central
at all stages and in all forms. The work of these artists makes clear that
adaptation is very much an action, an act of re-visioning that contributes
to and communicates with a larger network of similar actions.
20 K. NEWELL
NOTES
1. Paul Davis offers a useful distinction between the text that is “fixed” in an
author’s words and the culture text which reflects a cultural memory of a
work shaped by adaptations, revisions, and rereadings. The author’s text is
located in a particular time and place; the culture text is still being created,
“Retelling A Christmas Carol: Text and Culture Text,” The American
Scholar 59.1 (Winter 1990), 110.
2. The metaphor of the network has gained currency in adaptation studies in
recent decades. Simone Murray, for example, uses it to account for the
“multidirectional” flow of adaptation, noting that “any node in the network
may initiate an adaptation project in any direction,” “The Business of
Adaptation: Reading the Market,” in A Companion to Literature, Film, and
Adaptation, ed. Deborah Cartmell (West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012),
124. Presumably Murray’s model would include various textual and aesthetic
iterations, however her primary concern lies with the industry agents respon-
sible for bringing adaptations into being, and not the myriad permutations of
a given work. Kyle Meikle expands Murray’s concept of the network to
include textual networks in his analysis of two of Ishmael Reed’s unproduced
screenplay adaptations, asserting that they do not represent “failed films or
symptoms thereof,” but are “nodes in an adaptation network, texts in and of
themselves,” “Towards an Adaptation Network,” Adaptation 6.3 (Sept.
2013): 262. My own use of the metaphor places greater emphasis on reitera-
tive practices of textual networks and the contributions of individual modes of
adaptation to those networks.
3. While an assumption has been that teachers use adaptations in place of
literary works to the detriment of students’ education, recent essay collec-
tions highlight the myriad, fruitful uses of adaptation in the literature
classroom. See Deborah Cartmell and Imelda Whelehan, eds., Teaching
Adaptations (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014) and Dennis Cutchins,
Laurence Raw, and James M. Welsh, eds. The Pedagogy of Adaptation
(Lanham: Scarecrow Press, 2010).
REFERENCES
Andrew, Dudley. Concepts in Film Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984.
Basic Instinct. Written by Richard Osborne. New York: Penguin, 1992.
Baum, L. Frank. The Marvelous Land of Oz. Illustrated by John R. Neill. Chicago:
Reilly & Britton, 1904.
———. Ozma of Oz. Illustrated by John R. Neill. Chicago: Reilly & Britton, 1907.
———. The Patchwork Girl of Oz. Illustrated by John R. Neill. Chicago: Reilly &
Britton, 1913.
———. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Illustrated by W.W. Denslow. Chicago:

George M. Hill Company, 1900.
———. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Illustrated by Barry Moser. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1986.
———. The [Wonderful] Wizard of Oz. Illustrated by Lisbeth Zwerger. New
York: North-South Books, 1996.
———. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Illustrated by Robert Ingpen. New York:
Sterling Children’s Books, 2011.
———. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Illustrated by Michael Sieben. New York:
Harper Design, 2013.
Beeder, Amy. Burn the Field. Pittsburgh: Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2006.
Beja, Morris. Film & Literature: An Introduction. New York: Longman, 1979.
Bevington, David, Anne Marie Welsh, and Michael Greenwald. Shakespeare:
Script, Stage, Screen. New York: Pearson, 2006.
Bluestone, George. Novels Into Film. Berkeley: University of California Press,
1957.
Bryant, John. “Textual Identity and Adaptive Revision: Editing Adaptation as
a Fluid Text.” In Adaptation Studies: New Challenges, New Directions, edited
by Jørgen Bruhn, Anne Gjelsvik, and Eirik Frisvold Hanssen, 47–67. London:
Bloomsbury, 2013.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Chosen. Written by Nancy Holder. New York: Simon
Pulse, 2003.
Cardwell, Sarah. Adaptation Revisited: Television and the Classic Novel. Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 2002.
Carr, M.J. The Wizard of Oz. New York: Scholastic, 1993.
Cartmell, Deborah. Screen Adaptations: Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice: The
Relationship Between Text and Film. London: Methuen Drama, 2010.
Corrigan, Timothy. Film and Literature: An Introduction and Reader. Upper
Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 1999.
———. “Literature on Screen, a History: In the Gap.” In The Cambridge
Companion to Literature on Screen, edited by Deborah Cartmell and Imelda
Whelehan, 29–43. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
“Ekphrasis.” Poetry Foundation, last modified 2016. http://www.poetryfounda
tion.org/resources/learning/glossary-terms/detail/ekphrasis.
Emerald City. Directed by Tarsem Singh. Shaun Cassidy, 2017.
Fairylogue and Radio-Plays. Directed by Francis Boggs and Otis Turner. Written
by L. Frank Baum. Selig Polyscope, 1908.
Fish, Stanley. “Interpreting the ‘Variorum.” Critical Inquiry 2, no. 3 (Spring 1976):
465–485. JSTOR.
The Game of Life: Wizard of Oz. USAopoly, 2013.
Geraghty, Christine. Now A Major Motion Picture: Film Adaptations of Literature
and Drama. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008.
22 K. NEWELL
Gunning, Tom. “The Cinema of Attraction: Early Film, Its Spectator and the
Avant-Garde.” Wide Angle 8, no. 3/4 (Fall 1986): 63–70.
Hall, Stuart. “Introduction.” In Family Television: Cultural Power and Domestic
Leisure, edited by David Morley, v–viii. London: Routledge, 1986.
Hand, Richard, and Katja Krebs. “Editorial.” Journal of Adaptation in Film &
Performance 1, no. 1 (2007): 3–4.
Harrison, Stephanie. Adaptations: 35 Great Stories That Have Inspired Great
Films. New York: Three Rivers Press, 2005.
Hutcheon, Linda. A Theory of Adaptation. New York: Routledge, 2006.
Iser, Wolfgang. The Act of Reading. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,
1980.
James, Henry. Daisy Miller: A Study. 1878. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1879.
———. Washington Square. 1880. New York: Penguin, 1984.
Leitch, Thomas. Film Adaptation and Its Discontents: From Gone with the Wind
to The Passion of the Christ. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,
2007.
———. “Adaptation and Intertextuality, or, What Isn’t an Adaptation, and What
Does it Matter?” In A Companion to Literature, Film, and Adaptation, edited
by Deborah Cartmell, 87–104. West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012.
MacCabe, Colin. “Introduction: Bazinian Adaptation: The Butcher Boy as
Example.” In True to the Spirit: Film Adaptation and the Question of Fidelity,
edited by Colin MacCabe, Kathleen Murray, and Rick Warner, 3–25. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2011.
Maguire, Gregory. Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West.
New York: HarperCollins, 1995.
McFarlane, Brian. Novel to Film: An Introduction to the Theory of Adaptation.
Oxford: Clarendon, 1996.
The Muppets’ Wizard of Oz. Directed by Kirk Thatcher. The Muppets Studio,
2005.
Musser, Charles. “The Devil’s Parody: Horace McCoy’s Appropriation and
Refiguration of Two Hollywood Musicals.” In A Companion to Literature
and Film, edited by Robert Stam and Alessandra Raengo, 229–257. Malden:
Blackwell, 2008.
Newell, Kate. “‘We’re off to see the Wizard’ (Again): Oz Adaptations and the
Matter of Fidelity.” In Adaptation Studies: New Approaches, edited by Christa
Albrecht-Crane and Dennis Cutchins, 78–96. Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson
University Press, 2010.
Oz the Great and Powerful. Directed by Sam Raimi. Walt Disney, 2013.
Pretty in Pink. Written by H. B. Gilmour. Toronto: Bantam, 1986.
Rabinowitz, Peter. “The Turn of the Glass Key: Popular Fiction as Reading
Strategy.” Critical Inquiry 11, no. 3 (March 1985): 418–431. JSTOR.
Return to Oz. Directed by Walter Murch. Walt Disney, 1985.
Richardson, Robert. Literature and Film. Bloomington: Indiana University Press,

1969.
Rose, Brian. Jekyll and Hyde Adapted: Dramatizations of Cultural Anxiety.
Westport: Greenwood Press, 1996.
Rushdie, Salman. “At the Auction of the Ruby Slippers.” In East, West: Stories,
86–103. New York: Vintage, 1994.
Ryman, Geoff. Was. New York: Harper Collins, 1992.
Sanders, Julie. Adaptation and Appropriation. New York: Routledge, 2006.
Skal, David J. Hollywood Gothic: The Tangled Web of Dracula from Novel to Stage to
Screen. New York: Faber and Faber, 2004.
Stam, Robert. “Introduction: The Theory and Practice of Adaptation.” In Literature
and Film: A Guide to the Theory and Practice of Film Adaptation, edited by Robert
Stam and Alessandra Raengo, 1–52. Malden: Blackwell, 2005.
Stevenson, Robert Louis. Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. 1886. New
York: W. W. Norton, 2003.
Swartz, Mark Evan. Oz Before the Rainbow. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 2000.
Tin Man. Directed by Nick Willing. Sci Fi Channel, 2007.
Venuti, Lawrence. “Adaptation, Translation, Critique.” Journal of Visual Culture 6,
no. 1 (2007): 25–43.
Wicked. Music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz. Book by Winnie Holzman. 2003.
The Wiz. Directed by Sidney Lumet. Motown, 1978.
The Wizard of Oz. Directed by Larry Semon. Chadwick, 1925.
The Wizard of Oz. Directed by Ted Eshbaugh. Ted Eshbaugh Studios, 1933.
The Wizard of Oz. Directed by Victor Fleming. MGM, 1939.
“The Wizard of Oz.” Written by Adam Green and photographed by Annie
Leibovitz. Vogue 195, no. 12 (December 2005): 295–317.
The Wizard of Oz Game. Cadaco, 1974.
The Wizard of Oz Yellow Brick Road Game. Pressman Toy Corp., 1999.
The Wiz Live! Directed by Kenny Leon and Matthew Diamond. Universal
Television, 2015.
Wolf, Gary. Who Censored Roger Rabbit? New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1981.
The Wonderful Game of Oz. Parker Brothers, 1921.
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Directed by Otis Turner. Selig Polyscope, 1910.
CHAPTER 2
“It Wasn’t Like That in the Movie”:

Novelization and Expansion
In one of the most troubling scenes in the film Basic Instinct (1992),
an enraged Nick Curran (Michael Douglas) leaves a bar with his psy-
chiatrist, Beth Garner (Jeanne Tripplehorn), and returns to her apart-
ment with her. The sex that ensues seems initially consensual, but turns
less so as Nick’s advances become increasingly forceful against Beth’s
repeated “No.” As reflected in online discussions of the scene, many
viewers are uncertain as to whether Nick’s actions constitute rape. One
person posting in a forum on the Internet Movie Database sums up the
scene as one in which “Nick viciously rapes Beth,” whereas another calls
it “the most rugged and the most erotic” scene in the film (ironhorse_iv
2013; johnbernardbooks 2001). A third poster is less adamant, writing
that “[t]he sex scene involving [Jeanne Tripplehorn] was a little hard to
take,” but notably avoids classifying the scene as rape (Old Joe 2002).
Others describe Nick’s act as “semi-rape” and “date rape”—labels that
acknowledge but qualify Nick’s violence (Dr. Lenera 2011; Cohan
1998, 265).
Richard Osborne’s novelization, published concurrently with the film’s
release, offers audiences another view the scene. The reader is told that
Nick “was hard and rough and a wave of fear washed through [Beth’s]
body. She tried to push him away and felt his mean determination that she
would submit.” Beth responds, “Don’t—please, Nick—,” but he con-
tinues, tearing her clothes. The narrator describes Beth’s voice as “shot

K. Newell, Expanding Adaptation Networks: From Illustration to
Novelization, Palgrave Studies in Adaptation and Visual Culture,
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-56712-3_2
26 K. NEWELL
through with panic” as she repeats, “Please don’t—don’t—” to no avail.

The narrator confides that,
Beth Garner had no deeply hidden fantasies of rape. She felt not a flicker of
desire for Nick, but a sickening disgust and a building hatred.
He thrust and bucked and lunged, as if the mere force of his ardor could
soothe the pain he had caused her, as if he could somehow force her to
experience pleasure. But the torment and punishment he meted out with his
body far outstripped any gratification. She could only wait until he finished and
hope he would not harm her any more than he had already. (1992, 83–84)
Later in the chapter, Beth tells Nick that she had been interested in having sex
with him, but in “making love” and not in “that” (1992, 85). Whereas the
film’s erotic coding of the scene may complicate viewers’ understanding of
character motivations, the novelization’s rendition aims to be more straight-
forward. Osborne’s narrator’s limited omniscient point of view aligns with
Beth and casts Nick’s actions clearly as not consensual. For readers unfamiliar
with the film, the scene between Beth and Nick contributes to the noveliza-
tion’s development of Nick’s blind self-focus. For readers familiar with the
film, Osborne’s novelization provides an additional point of reference that can
impact their understanding of Beth and Nick and of Basic Instinct as a whole.
This chapter focuses on novelizations as they contribute to a work’s
adaptation network (i.e., the aggregate of narrative moments, reference
points, and iconography that comes to be associated with a particular
work through successive acts of adaptation) by expanding or establishing
new significations for its existing lexicon. I begin with a brief overview of
the history of novelization and its various subgenres, and address how
novelization aligns with other modes of adaptation and word-image
negotiation. Most novelizations adapt the screenplays of a film and not
the film itself; however, they are marketed as prose adaptations of films
and readers read them as such. With this practice in mind, I consider
what conversations about novelization tell us about medial biases and
audiences’ expectations for adaptation. The second half of the chapter
focuses on processes by which novelizations can complicate readers’
understanding of particular works by providing alternate endings, as is
the case in the novelizations of My Girl (1991) and Pretty in Pink
(1986), or back-story and social context, as in the case of the noveliza-
tion of Basic Instinct (1992). In an examination of Buffy the Vampire
Slayer: Chosen (2003), the novelization of the show’s seventh season,
“IT WASN’T LIKE THAT IN THE MOVIE”: NOVELIZATION AND EXPANSION 27
I look also at the manner in which novelization can expand the range of
intertexts through which a given work or franchise is viewed. Novelizations
are written for films in all genres. Using novelizations of Grease (1978) and
The Wizard of Oz (1993) as test cases, I consider some challenges posed
by the seemingly “unwritable” genre of the musical. I conclude with an
examination of fan-produced writing on films and consider the role of these
contributions to the adaptation network.
WHAT IS NOVELIZATION?
Novelization is a subgenre of “tie-in” writing, defined broadly as “licensed
works . . . written with the permission and supervision of the creators,
studios, or other rights-holders of the original characters” (International
2015). Generally, novelizations are “works of fiction (usually paperback
novels) based on big-budget films whose publication ties in (more or less)
with the release of the film” (Mahlknecht 2012, 138). The genre is varied
and has a complex history that predates film, as the earliest examples were
based on plays (Baetens 2007; Van Parys 2009; Singer 1993; Larson
1995). These “dramatized novels,” most of which were published by the
publishing house of Grosset and Dunlap, had their heyday between 1910
and 1915 (Davis 2002, 3). Jan Baetens reasons that, “[i]f one accepts that
each narrative based on a filmic source-text can be considered a form of
novelization,” film-based novelization may have its origins in the “catalog
descriptions” early film companies used to market their offerings to dis-
tributors and exhibitors (2007, 228). Such descriptions, which Thomas
Van Parys dubs “protonovelizations,” provided exhibitors with a synopsis
of the film and its primary features (2009, 305). Commonly, though, the
genre as we know it today is said to have developed with magazine serials
and digests in the decade following the advent of film, as films themselves
became increasingly more narrative and story-based.
In the United States, novelization exploded during the second decade
of the twentieth century in magazine form (Singer 1993, 494; McLean
2003; Baetens 2007; Koszarski 2008; Musser 2008; Van Parys 2009).
Between 1910 and 1917 many films were released simultaneously with
prose adaptations printed in mainstream newspapers and popular maga-
zines (Singer 1993, 489). Through what we might think of as tandem or
complementary serialization “the audience could keep up with the story,
as it played out concurrently in theatres and newspapers,” Van Parys
explains (2009, 306). Such arrangements were mutually beneficial: films
28 K. NEWELL
earned additional publicity from newspapers and magazines, and the

newspapers and magazines acquired new material and, in turn, increased
circulation (Singer 1993, 491). The first of these, The Motion Picture Story
Magazine, a monthly publication developed by Vitagraph’s founder
J. Stuart Blackton in 1911, included in each issue approximately fifteen
stories illustrated with stills from the films (Singer 1993, 492; Koszarski
2008, 198; Van Parys 2009, 310). The Motion Picture Story Magazine was
immensely popular and additional magazines emerged in the wake of its
success—Motion Picture Classic, Moving Picture Stories, and Photoplay,
among them. Those involved in the film industry realized that they
could reel in repeat audiences with serial films that focused on the exploits
of a recurring character. What Happened to Mary (Edison, 1912–1913),
the first of the film serials, was simultaneously novelized serially in the
popular The Ladies’ World and also published by Grosset and Dunlap in an
edition featuring images from the stage and film versions (Davis 2002, 4).
The formula was so successful that other serials followed quickly, includ-
ing The Adventures of Kathlyn (Selig Polyscope, 1914), and The Perils of
Pauline (Eclectic, 1914) and The Exploits of Elaine (Pathé, 1914), both of
which starred Pearl White in the title role, and all of which were later
published as book editions by either Grosset and Dunlap or Hearst
International (Davis 2002, 4; Van Parys 2009, 306). Occasionally the
writers of the film treatment wrote the short stories; oftentimes, different
writers wrote them (Koszarski 2008). In the United States, magazines
devoted to short story versions of current films gradually morphed into
celebrity tabloids, which scholars suggest reflects the industry’s turn
toward a “star” model of marketing and increased focus on female specta-
torship (Dyer 1998; Fuller 1997; McLean 2003).
The popularity of novelization did not abate in the years surrounding
the transition to sound; indeed, Adrienne L. McLean refers to the studio
years of the 1930s–1950s as the “heyday of the movie story magazine,”
with the inauguration of popular titles such as Movie Digest and
Romantic Movie Stories. Many of these titles continued to be produced
into the 1960s and 1970s. These magazines included digests of films
within a broad range of genres released by Hollywood studios, along
with the names of those in the cast and involved in the production, as
well as photographs and production stills. Additional features might
include “behind the scenes” and gossip columns, film reviews, and
columns offering general fashion and domestic advice (McLean 2003,
4). McLean’s study points to the manner in which film digests written
during the years of the Motion Picture Production Code (the set of
guidelines that delineated acceptable motion picture content) could
offer allusions, innuendo, and non-normative perspectives unavailable
to the filmmakers, who were subject to greater censure. We might
attribute the marked decrease in the magazines’ circulation numbers in
the post-Code years as related, in part, to films’ abilities to render explicit
content they would have only implied under the Code (McLean 2003,
19). In other words, once films were able to explore grittier topics more
explicitly and with more explicit visuals, audiences turned to magazines
less and less.
Some variations on the magazine form further vary the genre and are
thus worthy of note, among them some Surrealist experiments which
resulted in poetry based on or inspired by film and novelizations of screen-
plays that had not been made into films (Baetens 2007, 229–30). Baetens
explains that the “status” of such writing
is not always clear: whereas some texts had the ambition to recreate within
the field of literary writing the newly discovered aesthetics of film montage,
others tried to give a more literary twist to the emerging genre of script-
writing, while the position of a third group remained somewhat ambiguous,
oscillating between the literary reworking of filmic language and the filmic
realization of literature. (2007, 229)
The post-sound, post-World War II decades saw additional experiments

with novelization informed by auteur theory, such as the cinéromans,
a broad subcategory that includes the auteurs’ novelizations as well as
books that juxtapose prose adaptations of the film’s story and images from
the film and novelizations released to accompany the films (Baetens 2007,
230; Van Parys 2009, 307–08). François Truffaut’s L’Homme qui aimait
les femmes (1977) provides an example of this form. The film’s story,
which centers on Bertrand Morane’s (Charles Denner) attempt to write
his autobiography, is based on a story co-written by Truffaut, Suzanne
Schiffman, and Michel Fermaud, and was later written as a cinéroman by
Truffaut (Nagib 2013, 530; Hutcheon 2006, 36).
By the second half of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first,
novelization had become a mainstay of Hollywood’s “marketing machinery”
(Mahlknecht 2012, 138), largely as a result of changing printing technolo-
gies and practices and the influence of New Hollywood structural changes.
Van Parys addresses the impact of the paperback boom of the 1940s on
30 K. NEWELL
novelization, explaining that this material transition had a profound impact

on its form, reception, and perceived value as a cultural product:
the reputation of the novelization—in comparison to the early photoplay

edition—has apparently dwindled since the rise of mass-market publishing.
For the collectors, the novelization is robbed of some of its exalted
uniqueness, but for the critics it seems to be the potential of the film tie-
in to become a bestseller that has further nourished their despising of the
genre. (2009, 315)
Novelization and tie-ins abound in the 1960s–1980s (Larson 1995),

largely in line with Hollywood’s turn toward franchise marketing, giving
the impression of a book for virtually every film released—an impression
supported by some curious choices for novelization, among them Deep
Throat (1972) and Taxi Driver (1976). In keeping with the magazines’
and photoplays’ practices of including photographs and film stills, mass-
market novelizations include a gallery of images at the book’s center and
an image from the film as the cover. The 1960s and 1970s also saw the
beginnings of television novelizations, which tend to fall into two cate-
gories: those that develop new narratives based on the characters, settings,
and/or events of the show, and those based on a specific teleplay or set of
teleplays (Van Parys 2009, 314).
I would like to highlight a few features that emerge from this overview.
The history of novelization establishes as commonplace the expectation that
multiple versions of works circulate simultaneously (McLean 2003; Van Parys
2009, 312). As is the case with much novelization, writers of serial adaptation
often did not have access to the finished film during writing. Comparisons of a
given story in film and prose often reveal variations, as Richard Koszarski
demonstrates in his analysis of Stella Machefert’s 1912 The Girl and Her
Trust, a short story version of D.W. Griffith’s film of the same title. McLean
points to differences among novelizations of a work in her discussion of Gilda
(1946) and other films: “I soon found that several story versions of the same
film were likely to have been circulating simultaneously, with often substantial
differences among them; that the plots of the film and story versions fre-
quently differed, sometimes enormously” (2003, 6). Importantly, the simul-
taneous circulation of multiple (and potentially conflicting) versions of the
same work seems not to have produced audience debates over “correct” and
“wrong” versions; rather, it seems that audiences were able to apprehend
these versions simultaneously as versions.
WHAT NOVELIZATION IS NOT

At a very basic level, the novelizer’s job is to describe in words the
characters, settings, events, and so on that the film will show through
images and sound. In this way, novelizations might be described as “the
verbal representation of a visual representation,” or an extended ekphrasis
in prose (Heffernan 1998, 191). Indeed, the discourse generated by
ekphrasis and that generated by novelization overlaps at several points,
as is particularly evident in comments that refer to novelizations as descrip-
tions of their film sources or that praise novelizations for their ability to
bring to life the experience of the film. Yet, although novelization is
certainly a verbal representation, what it represents is not technically a
visual representation, but, rather, another verbal representation—the
screenplay—which, in turn, is represented by the visual (Mahlknecht
2012, 141). Van Parys’s distinction between the “ekphrastic relation” of
the early cinema catalogue descriptions (the protonovelizations) and con-
temporary novelization is helpful: whereas the protonovelizations
“described how the moving images actually showed the filmed objects,”
contemporary commercial novelizations “merely transcrib[e] the story”
(2009, 305–06). This distinction has prompted Baetens to label noveliza-
tion “anti-ekphrastic.” Although most novelization scholars assert that
novelizations are not ekphrastic, all concede that readers likely read them
as such (Baetens 2005; Van Parys 2009; Mahlknecht 2012, 141).
As difficult as it is to classify novelization as ekphrastic, it is equally
difficult to classify it as cinematographic adaptation. Writers certainly
enact strategies of adaptation in the novelization process, but it may be
misleading to think of novelizations as adaptations of films. For Baetens,
they lack “two characteristics indispensable for a cinematographic adap-
tation proper.” These are “intermediality or, more precisely, the trans-
medialization essential to the adaptation of a book in a cinematographic
process,” and the rigors of transfer and translation that are required by
book-to-film adaptations (2005, 46–47). These factors do not disqualify
novelization as adaptation, only as cinematographic adaptation: “the
genre can comfortably be an adaptation that skirts almost all the tradi-
tional problems of cinematographic adaptation” (Baetens 2005, 47).
Additionally, Baetens argues that the processes of adaptation and nove-
lization are very different: “Whereas the result of the filmic adaptation of
a book can be anything, to the extent that some of these adaptations
make such free use of their source material that the ‘original’ becomes
32 K. NEWELL
almost or totally unrecognizable, novelizations distinguish themselves,

some counterexamples notwithstanding, as narrations which remain very
close to the storyline of the novelized movie” (2007, 233–34). For this
reason, Baetens has labeled novelizations “anti-adaptation,” clarifying
that “[n]ovelization does not so much aspire to become the movie’s
other as it wants to be its double.” In this way, “[t]he imaginary regime
novelization fosters for itself is that of a copy (calque), that is, an immedi-
ate transfer” (2005, 50). Put succinctly, novelizations are “adaptations
very different from film adaptations” (Baetens 2005, 46).
Of equal importance to how novelizations are categorized by scholars is
how they are received by audiences. Both novelizations and traditional
book-to-film adaptations are based on screenplays, yet the reception of
both novelizations and film adaptations commonly ignores the interim
adapting process of the script and responds to novelizations as adaptations
of the films on which they are based and to films as adaptations on the novels
on which they are based. The novelization is marketed through the film and
coded as its supplement, in the Derridean simultaneity of supplement as “in
place of” and “in addition to” (1976). The cover ties the book to the film
through images and copy (e.g., “now a major motion picture”) that identify
the book in film terms. Many covers feature the director’s name prominently
and minimize the novelizer’s name or, in some cases, absent the writer’s
name altogether. This practice, Baetens points out, “inevitably classifies [the
novelization] as a cinematographic adaptation” (2005, 55). Mahlknecht
concurs: “With these aggressive methods of advertising the film via the
book, publishers and producers promote the impression that one is reading
not a novel but the film itself, as if it were possible to blur the inherent medial
difference between the two” (2012, 143). The ruse comes to an end,
however, with the first chapter of the book. The text of the novelization
forges no ties to the visual text on which it is based but, rather, aligns itself
strictly with the plot through its narrative voice and emphasis on exposition
(Baetens 2005, 55). Still, while this bait-and-switch may be acknowledged at
a theoretical level, the number of user reviews on sites such as Amazon.com
and Goodreads.com that respond to novelizations in terms of the films on
which they are based suggests that it is less evident at a practical level.
Readers do not make the distinction between a novel that describes
the film and a novel that describes the film’s plot (or, if they do make this
distinction on their own they do not find it significant enough to mention to
others). That audiences perceive novelizations as adaptations of films, rather
than as adaptations of screenplays, and respond to them as verbalizations of
visualizations, indicates that the marketing and packaging of novelizations

not only works but works to such a degree as to dilute of the boundaries
between the visual and the verbal.
Many readers who read novelizations have watched the films on which
they are based and undoubtedly recall the visuals of this film when reading
the novel (even in the absence of the ekphrastic cues). Others read the
novelization in preparation for seeing the film and undoubtedly filter the
novel through the anticipated visuals, themselves triggered by trailers and,
more immediately, the stills regularly included in novelizations’ photo gal-
leries. McLean’s comments on audiences’ pre-exposure to films via film
digests are relevant here: “If the story magazines appeared before films
were in wide release, then the ‘prereading’ of some of the films—not only
of their plots but their mise-en-scène, their ‘looks’—might easily have
affected spectator response to the films themselves” (2003, 6). Heidi
Peeters offers similar insights in her discussion of paratexual features of
novelization: “having encountered the illustrations and the cover picture,
the reader will, during the reading process, project them over (or under) the
text, so that the mental images that the text evokes will also be based upon
the illustrations” (2010, 126). Whether or not they have seen the film, it is
likely that still another group of readers call upon a mental storehouse of
images and visual signifiers from a myriad of films generically similar to the
nominal source. The relationship between novelizations and their film
counterparts is complex and rendered even more so by the manner and
order in which readers approach both, their personal histories with the
work or the medium, and the more general personal and cultural lexicons
from which they draw comparisons.
AND THE AWARD FOR BEST ADAPTATION

GOES TO . . . NOT THE NOVELIZATION
Despite the importance of novelization to the film and book publishing
industries and to adaptation studies, it remains a much-disparaged genre.
Unlike other ubiquitous forms of adaptation, novelizations are rarely reviewed
by mainstream newspapers and magazines and are rarely assigned and dis-
cussed in college- and graduate-level courses (with the exception of courses
centered on a particular franchise, such as Star Wars, Star Trek, The X-Files,
Buffy the Vampire Slayer, etc.). Novelizations face numerous setbacks at the
popularity poll. As Mahlknecht puts it: “While praise is regularly heaped on
34 K. NEWELL
the opposite form of adaptation—films based on novels—novels based on

films remain marginalized” (2012, 139; Hutcheon 2006, 88).
Novelizations are generally perceived as uninspired, profit-motivated
ancillary products written by hacks with little concern for the craft of
writing. James L. Sutter traces this bias to the fact that “a lot of tie-in is
bad—literary pap churned out by authors and editors who don’t care about
quality as long as the machine keeps turning” (2014; Kobel 2001). Robert
Leedham of The Guardian compares novelizations to “join-the-dots puz-
zles, with passages of description linking together the bits of dialogue
supplied by the scriptwriter” (1992). Peter Kobel describes novelizations
as the “illegitimate offspring of movies and novels,” noting they are “often
pulp fiction of the rawest sort” (2001). Many novelizers contribute to this
perception by referring to themselves as “hacks” and “whores”—pejoratives
that emphasize the economics of the writing process over the artistry and
reveal writers’ own discomfort with the genre, even when used affectio-
nately among the writers themselves (Sweeney 2015). Article titles like
“Yes, People Still Read Movie Novelizations . . . And Write Them, Too”
and “Top 10 Novelizations That Are Actually Worth Reading” help devalue
the cultural contributions of novelizations (Suskind 2014; Rouner 2012).
In the world of conventional novel writing, the author maintains creative
control throughout much of the process (albeit a control that is tempered by
the input and demands of editors and marketing teams), earns a sizeable
percentage of the book’s profits, enlarges her or his fan base and reputation
through book readings and signings, and has his or her work reviewed by
reputable critics who publish in reputable periodicals. Novelizations are a
subcategory of licensed fiction, meaning that the characters and storylines
that serve as their basis belong to copyright holders distinct from the writer,
and that the writer’s end product must conform to the limitations of pre-
existing characters and fictional worlds. They are typically written over com-
pressed time periods (four to six weeks is common) so that they can be on
bookshelves before or at the time of the film’s release. Novelizations are “work
for hire,” which means that, in most cases, the writers receive a one-off or
lump sum for their work and do not have claim to royalties or future monies
from the work should it be a success. Although many tie-in writers have
dedicated fan bases and attract attention at industry conventions, they are
largely professionally invisible. Their work is only in very rare cases reviewed or
acclaimed.1 Additionally, with few exceptions, the shelf life of a novelization is
brief—it appears before or coincident with the film’s release and is removed
when the film exits the theater. Novelizations are rarely ever reprinted.
However, the assumption that novelizers and tie-in writers are “hacks”
who can’t make a living with original work does not bear out consistently.
Steve Perry, whose vast writing credentials include the Matador series,
several original novels for the Alien and Conan series, and the noveliza-
tions Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire (1996) and Men in Black: A Novel
(1997), dispels this generalization by pointing out that a number of
novelizers are accomplished writers who also produce solid original work
and who have developed reputations for professionalism and an ability to
meet deadlines, which is how they get approached to write novelizations
in the first place (2015). Often these writers accept novelization jobs
because they are themselves fans of the movie or television show they are
asked to adapt and they are eager to explore the fictional world first hand.
The professionalization or industrialization of the genre has been per-
ceived as limiting writers’ creativity, as novelizers are expected to work
within a series of constraints, among them length and deadline require-
ments, setting and story continuity, fidelity, and market expectations.
However, as Baetens has illuminated, modes of writing with constraints
can invite writers and readers to think more insightfully about creative
processes (2010, 2015). Writer Nancy Holder, known for her original
horror novels as well as her tie-in fiction, would agree:
In my opinion, there is more creative room in tie-in work that is not always
present in non-tie-in. . . . we tie-in writers have a vaster field of emotional
depth and range to explore in print . . . we have opportunities to do funny
novels, capers, quests, short stories, novellas, and trilogies (to name a few of
the forms I have used for tie-ins) that other authors don’t. In addition,
because most readers already know the characters and their universe, we
have more real estate–more actual text space–to explore other things. I find
it tremendously freeing to write tie-in work, rather the converse. (2015)
Debates over the relative difficulty levels of writing a screenplay based on a

novel or writing a novel based on a screenplay surface regularly in discus-
sions of novelizations (though, I imagine, not as regularly in discussions of
screenplays). Alan Dean Foster, who has written many novelizations as
well as screenplays and other original work, weighs in on the subject:
It doesn’t make any sense to me why somebody should take a book like
Ben-Hur, write a screenplay based on it, and get Academy Awards and have
it touted as a terrific piece of writing, when the reverse is considered
36 K. NEWELL
hackwork. Having done a lot of both, I can say this: It’s much easier to
extract a screenplay from a book, because you have far more material, than
it is to take a screenplay and make a book out of it, because you have to add
a lot of stuff. If it’s a good job. (Foster quoted in Sloan 2014)
We might liken the tension between “a terrific piece of writing” and “hack-
work” with that between “adaptation” and “join-the-dots” puzzles. The
former signals media negotiations and problem solving as the adapter
determines which aspects of a work can be translated and which require
alternate strategies, whereas the latter signals a more automated approach.
Neither process, though, wholly defines a genre; the categories of “terrific
piece of writing” and “hackwork” might be exclusive, but they are not
exclusive to adapted screenplays and novelizations. The “sense” we might
make from the distinction is that one form, the screenplay, is conceptualized
as providing a necessary bridge between two culturally valued creative
forms—the novel and the film—whereas the other, the novelization, is
conceptualized as a substitute for a culturally valued form (film) or, in the
case of a novelization of a film adaptation of a novel, as a watered-down
version of a culturally valued form (original novel). While writers of screen-
plays and writers of novelizations engage in distinct activities, the formats
themselves do not ensure the originality of one or a lack of originality in the
other. Karl Tunberg won an Academy Award for Ben-Hur (1959), but
many screenwriters do not receive acclaim for the work some regard as just
one step in a larger process. Some novelizations are “literary pap,” while
others, such as Foster’s own various Star Wars and Star Trek novelizations,
are highly acclaimed.
WHO READS NOVELIZATIONS AND WHY?

The ways in which audiences use novelizations have changed over the years.
In addition to generating interest for upcoming attractions, early noveliza-
tions helped to clarify film action for viewers. Baetens explains that “[t]he
aim of these books was, on the whole, to offer what seemed to be missing in
the movies themselves: the dialogue, during the last years of the silent era,
and a strong narrative framework after that” (2007, 229). Ben Singer
reasons that filmmakers and audiences may have “relied on tie-ins to com-
pensate for the limitations of cinematic storytelling,” citing press material
from Pathé that suggests the same: “We can now, through the medium
of all these newspapers . . . tell the story of the picture in a satisfactorily
complete form” (1993, 495; Pathé quoted in Singer 1993, 496). Early
novelization provided dialogue and narrative information not included in
the silent films due to length and other constraints, such as not wanting to
slow a film’s pace with text-heavy intertitles. Singer explains that the dis-
jointedness of so many early films would likely have made them unintelligi-
ble “without an elucidating intertext,” an observation confirmed by
Van Parys drawing from Stéphane Benassi’s conclusion: “the novelization
in the silent era functioned as announcement, explanation, and completion
of the silent film” (Singer 1993, 496; Van Parys 2009, 307). Novelizations
also extended the life of their nominal films. Early film audiences had a
narrow window in which to screen films, which remained in local theaters
typically for a week or less and were limited to current releases. Audiences
wanting to extend their time with a film or who had missed the film
altogether could content themselves with the novelization (Baetens 2007,
228; Larson 1995, 40).
Contemporary novelization performs a different function than noveli-
zation in earlier decades. While in the decades preceding the advent of the
VCR and home movie rental franchises like Blockbuster and Hollywood
Video audiences might turn to novelizations as a way to experience or re-
experience a film no longer in the theaters, new home entertainment
technologies allowed audiences to watch and re-watch films as they
wished. Contemporary digital and mobile technologies have impacted
audiences’ ability to access media further. Such changes have resulted in
a reshaping of how readers use novelization, rather than in its extinction.
Instead of aiding in the reading of or standing in for a specific film,
contemporary novelizations expand readers’ understanding of the film
within a larger network. Readers who pick up a novelization are looking
for insight into character psychology and motivations, back-story, and
scenes that were not in the film, among other things (Hutcheon 2006,
119; Holmberg 1997). Like any adapter, novelizers are “first interpreters
and then creators” (Hutcheon 2006, 18), as they make sense of a screen-
play’s scenes and character dynamics and forge them into a narrative
structure, and, like film and other forms of adaptation, novelizations
tread a line between boring the audience with what it already knows and
angering the audience with what it doesn’t. Novelizations that read simply
as narrativized screenplays appear stale and uninteresting. For example,
Amazon.com reviews of Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Chosen, Nancy Holder’s
novelization of the show’s seventh season, consistently comment on
unfulfilled expectations. One reviewer complains that she bought the
38 K. NEWELL
novel to “finally know what the individuals are thinking,” but that the
writer “neglected to get inside everyone’s heads. Even my favorite epi-
sodes from the season were boring! I felt like I was reading a ‘how-to’
manual” (Brown 2004). Similarly, another writes: “The reason [I] like
reading books based on episodes of [B]uffy, is that you can get in to the
characters’ heads, know what they’re thinking, how they feel . . . but this
one didn’t have that” (Tracey 2004). Such comments point to readers’
desire for more. These readers did not pick up the novelization because
they wanted a prose experience of the television show but because they
wanted a different experience of the same.
Though no longer marketed explicitly as reading guides for films,
novelizations continue to aid in literacy acquisition by providing emer-
ging readers with high-interest works. Writer Will Sloan’s personal
anecdote touches on the universal appeal of the genre: “As a child,
I was drawn to novelizations for their comforting familiarity (a well-
known story is easier for a beginner reader to navigate), but also for
how they could expand the universe of a film” (2014). As is the case
with many forms of adaptation, including film, illustration, and graphic
novels, there is an assumption that readers find visual texts less daunt-
ing and more accessible than verbal texts and, as a result, visual texts
can function as a gateway to verbal texts. Reluctant readers find books
less intimidating if they have an existing referential touchstone in a
medium toward which they are less reluctant. Novelizer Mel Odom
explains that “[a] lot of media tie-in books are like primers for young
people who want to learn to read and imagine the things that go on in
a book. With tie-ins, they already know what the characters and the
sets look like—so they imagine the characters already there, and they
already have those assets” (2015). The novelization’s cover can be the
first step in attracting a reluctant reader. Mahlknecht hypothesizes the
increased likelihood that a young reader will read a book advertised
through a film, suggesting that “[t]he alluring paratextual link to a
novelization’s cinematic counterpart can thus provide a first step to an
appreciation of literature” (2012, 145–46; Hutcheon 2006, 118).
Peeters concurs: “An attractive cover tempts the potential reader into
becoming an actual reader, all the more so in the case of the noveliza-
tion, where it is actually the filmic connection . . . that cajoles the
potential reader into picking up the book” (2010, 125).
Indeed, publishers and educators recognize the power of novelization
to spark interest in young and/or reluctant readers. Junior novelizations,
a subgenre of novelizations, are geared specifically to young readers. The

films they novelize are those marketed to children and teenagers (e.g., Spy
Kids Storybook [Miramax Books for Kids, 2001], Frozen [Disney Press,
2013]), and the books themselves tend to be short, with short chapters
and large font (Hutcheon 2006, 118; Mahlknecht 2012, 147).
Recognizing the pedagogical usefulness (and economic benefit) of nove-
lizations, publishers often include information related to target literacy
levels on the copyright page of many novelizations marketed to juvenile
readers. Curricula for emergent readers follow a level system that ranks
books in terms of grade or interest level and sometimes both. Many
novelizations are classified as HI/LR or “Hi Interest/Low Reading
Level Books” or “Hi-Lo Books.” Such books “are written at lower read-
ing levels, but appeal to the reader’s interest level even though that might
not match their grade level.” The rationale follows that students “who are
reading below grade level are more likely to want to read a book if it is not
only at their reading level but also at their interest level.”2 For example,
Pretty In Pink (1986) designates a Reading Level of 6 and an Interest
Level of 11, which means that the content is appropriate for sixth grade
readers and that children in that age group (commonly eleven year-olds)
will most likely be interested in the story and the point of view.
For many readers of all ages novelizations provide opportunities to
learn more about character, setting, and time period, and, in the case of
“continuation” and series novelizations, more about the work’s larger
universe. Through an examination of a seemingly eclectic sample of nove-
lizations, the next section shows the diverse ways in which novelizations
can multiply the points of reference of a given work and, in doing so,
expand both audiences’ understanding of the work, and the network to
which that work belongs. Novelizations can affect audiences’ responses to
particular characters, contexts, and narrative events via exposition and
description, and by providing “hinge point” narrative outcomes that differ
from those of their nominal source films. Because studios and publishing
houses assume a significant overlap in markets for the film and the nove-
lization, novelizations can anticipate a reader who will fill in particular
narrative or stylistic “gaps.” I explore such strategies in considering nove-
lizations of musicals, which seem to anticipate readers who can supply
their own music. Novelization also offers fans opportunities to contribute
to adaptation networks their own hopes and visions regarding a particular
character or franchise, as I will show through looking at some examples of
fan fiction.
40 K. NEWELL
IT WASN’T LIKE THAT IN THE MOVIE: VARIATIONS,

ALTERNATIVES, AND EXPANSIONS
Patricia Hermes’s 1991 novelization of My Girl, based on the screenplay by
Laurice Elehwany, and H.B. Gilmour’s novelization of Pretty in Pink, based
on the screenplay by John Hughes, provide instructive examples of the
manner in which novelizations can deepen readers’ understanding of char-
acter and character motivation and complicate a work’s range of meanings.
Hermes’s My Girl follows a first-person narrative perspective, common for the
coming-of-age genre into which both the novelization and the film fall. The
story focuses on events that befall eleven-year-old Vada Sultenfuss (played by
Anna Chlumsky in the film) over the course of a summer. During this period,
her widower father, undertaker Harry Sultenfuss (Dan Aykroyd), meets and
falls in love with Shelly DeVoto (Jamie Lee Curtis), Vada confesses her crush
on her English teacher, she realizes her potential romantic feelings for her best
friend Thomas J. (Macaulay Culkin), and she experiences significant grief
and loss when Thomas J. dies. While these events follow those of the film,
Hermes’s novel offers a more developed sense of Vada’s character and her
thoughts on her family.
Both the film and the novelization indicate the depth of Vada’s relation-
ship with her grandmother, Gramoo (Ann Nelson), who had come to live
with Vada and her father after Vada’s mother died. At the time of the story,
Gramoo has already been sick for a period of time and is unaware of the
people around her. The film’s treatment of Vada’s sense of loneliness and
loss is largely in passing and inferred. The novelization, by contrast, conveys
Vada’s perspective more fully through paragraphs devoted to her mindset.
For example, Vada confesses in the opening chapter: “I wished I could talk
to Gramoo about it. Once I could have told her, but for the last few months
she acts like everyone is invisible, not just me. It’s like the only real people
are the ones she sees in her head, people she sings to—sometimes at the top
of her lungs—but that no one else sees” (1991, 3). Later Vada tries
repeatedly to get her grandmother to acknowledge her, saying “look at
me” and asking “can you hear me?” Vada wonders, “What was she thinking
about? Was she lonely in there?” (1991, 55).
Vada’s frequent health complaints and emergency visits to Dr. Welty’s
office are a defining feature of her character. While such instances are
curious and comical in both the film and the novelization, the film paints
Vada’s ailments as stemming more from the power of suggestion, particu-
larly the dead people her father embalms. For example, Vada confesses a
breast lump and prostate problem after learning that two of her father’s
clients had died from these issues. The novelization focuses more specifically
on one ailment—a chicken bone stuck in her throat, intended to symbolize
Vada’s inability to accept her grandmother’s rapid decline and to commu-
nicate to her father the guilt she feels over her mother’s death.
The ability for novelization to add backstory and psychological texture is
evident in Gilmour’s Pretty in Pink as well. The story’s protagonist, Andie
(played by Molly Ringwald in the film), also lives without her mother, who
abandoned the family when Andie was thirteen. Whereas the film contains
only a passing reference to this event, the novelization indicates its signifi-
cance throughout. The book opens with a dream sequence in which Andie’s
mother is still present, includes Andie’s thoughts on and comments to a
photograph of her mother, and draws numerous parallels between Andie’s
love of the color pink and her mother’s love of the same. Andie’s coming-
of-age involves, as does Vada’s, the recognition of and coming to terms with
her mother’s absence. The novel conveys this transition through a dream
Andie has the evening before the prom in which she assures her mother,
“Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine,” and her mother replies, “Of course
you will. You didn’t do anything wrong, baby” (1986, 150–51). This
realization is largely absent from the film, which frames Andie as always-
already confident and self-actualized, an inspiration and impetus for the
emotional maturation of those in her orbit, namely her father (Harry Dean
Stanton), Duckie (Jon Cryer), and Blane (Andrew McCarthy).
Both novelizations conclude with endings different from those of their
nominal films and, in doing so, suggest alternate interpretations of the story,
the characters, and the genre of the work. The film and novelization end-
ings of My Girl have significant ramifications for how audiences understand
Vada and how the experience of Thomas J.’s death and her father’s engage-
ment have impacted her outlook on her future. In the film’s final scene
Vada, wearing a dress for the first time in the film, enters her college poetry
class and receives a warm welcome from each classmate, many of whom hug
or touch her in a reassuring manner. She delivers “Weeping Willow,” a
poem she has written on the death of Thomas J. The shot then cuts to an
exterior shot of Judy (Cassi Abel), the town’s new girl, sitting on the steps
waiting for Vada. Vada exits the building and both girls mount their bikes.
The credits roll on the image of the girls riding their bikes down the street,
as the Temptations’ “My Girl” plays extradiegetically. In her closing
voiceover Vada says, “Things are a little better these days; I finally swal-
lowed that chicken bone, Judy and I are gonna be in the same home room
42 K. NEWELL
and the Republican Party just re-nominated Mr. Nixon.” Judy, who in a
previous scene had accompanied, albeit reluctantly, the mean girls as they
taunted Vada and Thomas J., has now replaced Thomas J. as Vada’s compa-
nion. Vada, in turn, has thrown off her t-shirt, shorts, and hat and replaced
them with a dress—a slightly too large dress. This resolution assures audi-
ences not only that Vada is beginning to recover emotionally from Thomas
J.’s death and that she no longer feels responsible for the death of her
mother, but that she has shed her tomboy ways and is on her way to being
assimilated into the cult of true womanhood, a process initiated by the arrival
of her first menstrual period a few scenes earlier and confirmed by the
patriarchic heteronormativeness of the film’s theme song.
The novelization’s Vada has yet to experience closure fully. She admits
that “it’s been bad—really bad,” but that she copes by “playing games
with myself, making believe Thomas J. is just away, like maybe at summer
camp.” She adds: “And it’s not all bad. I am writing. Judy’s going to be in
my homeroom in the fall. And Dad and Shelly are going to get married”
(1991, 177). As in the film, the novelization’s Vada “got dressed up, in a
dress, just like a grown-up” to go to the writing class, but here the class
does not hug Vada; rather, “[e]veryone looked at me” (1991, 178).
Vada thinks about Thomas J. on her walk home and finds his mother,
Mrs. Sennett, on the porch talking with her father. Mrs. Sennett returns
Vada’s mood ring, which Thomas J. had been holding when he died. The
novel concludes with Vada assuring Mrs. Sennett that Thomas J. “will be
all right” as her own mother will take care of him in heaven. Although
Vada wears a dress in the book’s concluding scene and alludes to a
blossoming friendship with Judy, these details do not cohere in a closing
statement on Vada’s gender assimilation. While the film conveys the
impression that Vada has lived through a horrible experience and has
come out on the other end, the book portrays Vada as still deeply grieving
over the loss of her friend and trying to reconcile that grief. This example
points to ways in which subtle differences impact audiences’ understand-
ing of character and narrative. Audiences familiar with only the film
version will likely come away from My Girl with a “happy ending” feeling,
a sense of tidy resolution. Audiences familiar with only Hermes’s version
will likely view Vada’s experience more introspectively—her coming to
terms with Thomas J.’s death involves coming to terms with her mother’s
death. Audiences familiar with both works can likely assimilate the two
endings and merge the behavioral implications of the film’s conclusion
and the introspective self-awareness of the novel.
Pretty in Pink offers an even more dramatic example of variation in

ending. Both the film and novelization iterations of Pretty in Pink depict
the social and emotional challenges of being a teenager through an amplified
class struggle between the “zoids,” a group of working-class and poverty-
level alternative, artsy kids and the “richies,” a group of upper-class, entitled
preppies. The story’s main conflict arises when zoid Andie becomes the focus
of the romantic attentions of richie Blane, much to the horror of Andie’s
best friend Duckie, who is in love with Andie, and Blane’s best friend Steff
(James Spader), whose own advances Andie has rebuffed. Both the film and
the novelization follow the same story trajectory of Andie and Blane’s failed
attempts to get their respective groups to accept them as a couple. In the
fashion of the teen drama, the action reaches its climax at the prom, an event
hosted and, traditionally, attended exclusively by richies. In both the film
and the novelization, Blane invites Andie to the prom, but then backs out.
Andie decides to go to the prom alone to demonstrate that the richies did
not get the best of her. When she arrives at the prom, her confidence wavers
and she reconsiders entering the ballroom, but then sees Duckie, who has
come to the prom to show his support for her, waiting. Andie and Duckie
enter the ballroom triumphantly.
The film and the novelization differ in what comes next. In the film,
Blane, who has come to the prom without a date and who the camera has
shown sitting alone at a banquet table, quickly approaches Andie and
Duckie. Blane apologizes to Andie for mistreating her, kisses her cheek
and tells her that he loves her before exiting the room. Duckie then admits
to Andie that he had misjudged Blane and insists that she go after Blane.
Andie runs out into the parking lot, and she and Blane kiss as the film’s
closing credits roll. In the novelization, Andie and Duckie enter the ball-
room and head to the dance floor; the crowd, which includes Blane and his
date, stops dancing to look at them. Blane approaches and shakes both
Duckie’s and Andie’s hands and walks away. Andie leads Duckie to the
dance floor, and the novelization concludes with the two dancing “around
and around, smiling at each other, then laughing, dancing around and
around and around, until they were one—one whirling, smiling, laughing
blur of pink” (Gilmour 1986, 165).
The novelization’s ending corresponds to that of John Hughes’s origi-
nal screenplay. The film was shot with this ending, but test audiences
responded negatively and Hughes reshot the ending with the revision.3
Jon Cryer commented in an interview that the new ending affirms
Hughes’ intended message for the film that class lines can be crossed,
44 K. NEWELL
whereas the initial ending suggests that they cannot (Bierly 2009). Many
fans of the film and novelization, however, lament the change and valorize
the novelization’s ending as the “true” ending, as it was the “intended
ending.” One Goodreads poster writes: “How can a novelization of a film
be better than the film itself? When it reflects the original ending of the
film and not the re-shot ending . . . YES! I’ve always hated Blane. He’s
dismissive and weak and Andie deserved better. Well, in this book she gets
better! She remains strong and shows up all the richies! And Blane can go
fly a kite!” (Kerry 2014). Another writes: “Can’t give this five stars b/c it
isn’t original and it’s not fabulously written, but it is definitely a must read
for any girl who stood up and screamed ‘No!’ in the theater when Andie
went off with Blane” (Tacey 2014). While the film’s ending may fulfill the
desires of the romantic idealists, it also weakens Andie’s character. Rather
than remain the confident, outsider role model needed for the teen genre,
she walks into the sunset with Blane, the fairly benign love interest with
whom she has yet to have a conversation of any length. The existence of
two endings (one in film and one in print) presents readers with options,
much in the way of a Choose Your Own Adventure book. With both
endings available, audiences can have it both ways. Romantic idealists can
have the Andie-Blane ending, and romantic realists can have the Andie-
Duckie ending.
In addition to expanding audiences’ experiences of a given work via
character development and alternate scenes, novelizations can also expand a
work by developing contextual information that a film might gloss or deem
unnecessary. The film Basic Instinct focuses primarily on detective Nick
Curran, who, along with his partner, Gus Moran (George Dzundza),
is investigating the murder of rock legend Johnny Boz. The investigation
leads the two to crime novelist Catherine Tramell (Sharon Stone), Boz’s
wealthy, bisexual girlfriend, whom they peg as the murderer. Curran and
Catherine begin a tumultuous affair, which causes various details from their
pasts to surface, adding complication to their already tangled game of cat-
and-mouse. The film is perhaps best known for its graphic nudity and explicit
sex scenes. Richard Osborne’s novelization downplays the erotic aspect,
however, and amplifies the detective and noir aspects, firmly rooting the
story in a changing world in which individuals fight and resist but ultimately
have little agency, as we see in the example cited in this chapter’s opening.
Osborne’s descriptions of Moran and Curran establish them as opposites,
much in keeping with the buddy cop genre: “The two men couldn’t have
been more different. Like the car he drove, Gus Moran could never have been
mistaken for anything but a piece of standard-issue San Francisco Police

Department equipment. But his eyes broadcast two decades worth of dis-
illusionment. The man was tired.” Curran, on the other hand, “was younger
and harder to figure. He wore a good suit, a garment just a touch too
fashionable to make him as a cop the minute you laid eyes on him. . . .
Unlike his burned-out partner, for Nick Curran the game still went on, the
rules changed daily . . . He hadn’t given up, he wasn’t about to—not yet,
anyway” (1992, 8). The film also establishes the partners as opposites in body
type and attitude, but Osborne’s descriptions reflect the work’s larger themes.
Differences in Gus’s and Nick’s ways of thinking and being initiate the story’s
tension between old and new ways of thinking and doing that are reinforced
further in Osborne’s descriptions of the city’s neighborhoods.
Osborne depicts San Francisco as a city undergoing steady social shifts, in
which the familiar links between a particular kind of place and a particular
kind of person have been upset. While the film is noted for its views of San
Francisco and the surrounding area, such views are rarely comprehensive and
tend to be tied to action involving Catherine or Nick. The camera lingers on
the Stinson Beach scenes, offering fetishistic visuals of the Lifestyles of the
Rich and Infamous, and courses through the hilly San Francisco landscape,
which is pummeled in the various car chases. Osborne’s take on Stinson
Beach is a bit less glamorous:
The town . . . wasn’t much to look at. A couple of grocery stores, a couple of
bars, a couple of arts-and-crafts places catering to the tourists. The popula-
tion was a funny combination of the rich, who had their Malibu-style beach
houses, some hippy types hanging on to treasured but slightly befuddled
memories of the sixties, and ordinary working-class folk who had been born
and raised there but didn’t fit in with either of the other groups. (1992, 21)
His description of The Ten-Four, the cop bar favored by the San Francisco
Police Department, offers a similar view of a world in flux:
Once it had been a typical big-city cop watering hole—you could find the
equivalent in New York, Detroit, Chicago, Boston—anywhere the police
were enclaves of second and third generation immigrants, conservative law-
and-order hardliners. Hard drinks, served in a place with no atmosphere,
with a kitchen that was a shrine to deep frying and grease.
But the makeup of the SFPD was changing. The older, old-fashioned cops
were retiring, the newer breed were coming up. So the Ten-Four served
margaritas and designer beers as well as Bud and boilermakers. The Looters,
46 K. NEWELL
the Movie Stars, Chris Isaak—hip San Francisco rockers—jostled Frank Sinatra
and Tony Bennett on the jukebox. There was even a fern. (1992, 75–76)
As does that of the South of Market area:
The new sobriety, nineties-style, had been born in San Francisco, but it
hadn’t yet infected all of the population. There was still a thriving club scene
in the city, where patrons got legally stoned on alcohol and music and
illicitly zonked on a variety of drugs purveyed in the streets and consumed
in club bathrooms.
. . . South of Market Street had once been a dilapidated neighborhood of
tumbledown warehouses and rusting industrial facilities, but no longer. . . .
Gentrification has been swift, if not all-encompassing . . . (Osborne 1992, 145)
These descriptions undergird the novel’s theme of shifting identities,

which is perhaps most evident in Catherine Tramell’s bisexuality, which
throws the police officers off their guard at numerous points, and Dr.
Garner’s shift from respected police psychiatrist to Lisa Hoberman, col-
lege student and potential stalker, to Beth Garner, potential murderer.
The film eroticizes these shifting personas and the fissures of identity,
explaining each in terms of deviant sexual predilections. The novelization,
however, places these shifts in the context of a shifting environment, so it
is not so much that the people are unstable but that the world is.
Criminality results less from individual motivations than from doomed
social systems that offer few other alternatives.
These few examples point to the range of contributions noveliza-
tions make to adaptation networks by providing additional and alter-
nate information and by funneling narrative information in specific
ways. Each of the novelizations considered here uses the same basic
narrative events as their nominal source films but points toward a
distinct reading of that information. Settings superficially fetishized
in the film version of Basic Instinct become grounds for social com-
mentary in the novelization. Vada’s recitation of her poem in My Girl
marks a stage in her grief process, and the film’s and novelization’s
different inflections of that hinge point invite subtly different readings
of its import and consequence to her development. The prom func-
tions as a hinge moment in Pretty in Pink—one that prompts drama-
tically different courses of action and consequences in the film and
novelization.
THE NON-MUSICAL MUSICAL

In some cases, a novelization’s viewpoint may differ dramatically from
that of its nominal film as a result of medial transposition. Aspects of the
soundtrack—dialogue, for example—might be conveyed in words on the
page; other aspects—diegetic and extradiegetic music, for example—
present more of a challenge. Linda Hutcheon notes a comparable chal-
lenge in the adaptation of certain performance modes such as opera
or musicals into film, and suggests that “[t]here seem to be two possible
ways to proceed. The artifice can be acknowledged and cinematic
realism sacrificed to self-reflexivity, or else the artifice can be ‘natura-
lized’” (2006, 46). Similar decisions must be made in novelizing what
Hutcheon refers to as “manifestly artificial performance forms” (2006,
46). In the case of novelizations of musicals, writers need to consider
what to do with song and dance numbers. Blogger Monty Ashley pro-
poses a few solutions in his response to Ron De Christoforo’s noveliza-
tion of Grease (1978):
First, you could pretend they didn’t happen. You know, “Then Danny
started talking up the car. He made it sound great. Now we were excited!”
Second, you could accept the singing and dancing and put it into the
narrative: “I saw Rizzo walking through the hall, singing about how there
were worse things she could do.” That sort of thing. As it turns out,
there’s a third option: you take the lyrics of the song and pretend they’re
dialogue. (2008)
De Christoforo’s novelization of the 1978 film musical Grease, which is

based on a 1971 stage musical written by Warren Casey and Jim Jacobs,
does attempt to incorporate some of the musical’s songs via dialogue,
but the adaptation is even more complicated than Ashley suggests. The
film includes approximately twenty-five song and dance numbers, some
of which are performed diegetically by the primary cast members and
some of which are performed by bands within the film. Additional music
filters in through radio programs. De Christoforo alludes to music and
the importance of music through the first person narrative perspective of
Sonny La Tierri, a minor character in the film, played by Michael Tucci.
The shift from musical to novel coincides with a generic shift from
romance to coming-of-age. While the film’s central focus is the relation-
ship between Danny Zuko (John Travolta) and Sandy Olsson/Ollson
(Olivia Newton-John), the novel’s focus is on growing up in the last two
48 K. NEWELL
years of the 1950s.4 This shift allows De Christoforo to replace actual

song-and-dance numbers with Sonny’s nostalgic reflections on the per-
iod’s wealth of popular music and his memories of listening to specific
songs during particular events. Such reflections tend to occur most
commonly during scenes invented for the novelization, which points
to a particular challenge of describing music to readers familiar with
the audio.
Although the novelization includes all of the major scenes readers
would expect from the film, it includes a number of new, minor
scenes, many of which focus on music or provide transitions between
or context for the musical numbers readers would find in the film.
In the novelization’s opening paragraph, Sonny explains: “Yeah, the
music—man, it kept us alive. It told our stories, our dreams, and our
heartaches. Our music understood us. Elvis, Chuck, Jerry Lee, Buddy,
The Drifters, The Coasters, The Moonglows—they cared. All you had
to do was slip a coin into the slot and you found somebody who knew
what it was really all about” (1978, 9). Similar lists appear throughout
the novel. During a scene in which Danny and Sandy go on their first date and
Sonny meets Marsha—a scene exclusive to the novelization—Sonny relates
that they “played just about everything on” the jukebox: “We picked some
slow numbers, like ‘Girl of My Dreams’ by The Crests and ‘I Only Have Eyes
For You’ by The Flamingos, and we hit a lot of hot numbers like ‘Tweedle
Dee’ by LaVern Baker, ‘Roll Over Beethoven’ by Chuck Berry, and a pack by
the Big El” (1978, 30). In this manner, De Christoforo associates music not
with the apparatus of the book, which would be difficult to achieve without an
imbedded sound chip, but with the specific character’s recollections of a
specific historical moment, and provides readers with a roster to measure
their own familiarity with rock ‘n’ roll and popular music of the period.
De Christoforo uses the listing technique to convey dancing as well.
Of the same scene, Sonny recalls:
We shimmied, short-stepped, flipped and turned, changed partners once

and then back again. We brought everybody in Cy’s to their feet and
dancing. The booths emptied and the dance floor filled. Skirts were swayin’,
bodies rockin’—the whole place was shakin’ and nothin’ could stop it.
Cy and Aunt Mil came in doing the jitterbug and everybody circled
around them, dancing and clapping. Danny cut in on Cy and took over
the floor with Aunt Mil. It was amazing. Danny held her by the waist
and swung her from side to side around his body. Marsha took Cy by the
hand and coaxed him back into the circle. Sandy and me started a line
dance going up and down both sides of the dance floor, with Danny
and Marsha and Cy and Aunt Mil in the middle. We couldn’t sit down.
(De Christoforo 1978, 30–31)
Given that the book was marketed as a tie-in, De Christoforo seems to have
felt obligated to incorporate several of the film’s more recognizable musical
numbers. To this end “Greased Lightnin’,” “Sandra Dee,” and “Beauty
School Dropout” all make awkward appearances via dialogue, as Ashley
suggests. “Greased Lightnin,’” is, of course, the name of Kenickie’s junker
of a car that he hopes to fix up and race at Thunder Road against the rival
gang, the Scorpions. In the film’s “Greased Lightnin’” scene, the T-Birds
wheel the car into the high school’s auto shop and begin to ridicule it,
conveying their doubt that it can be fixed up. To defend the car, Danny
Zuko bursts into a song that lists the various mechanical improvements they
will make—“overhead lifters and four barrel quads,” among others. Zuko’s
musical ekphrasis brings these changes to life (with the aid of the cinematic
apparatus) in a flashy sequence in which the junker is transfigured as a
greaser’s automotive fantasy, and thus allows the gang and the film’s
audience to envision the car’s potential. De Christoforo’s novelization
includes a token Greased Lightnin’ scene in which Kenickie lists his planned
improvements as he walks around and on top of the car, “snapping his
fingers and shaking his hips” and “laying his jive” on the T-Birds (1978,
71). Sonny relates that the T-Birds “were snapping our fingers in rhythm to
Kenick’s jukin’. He was going great” (1978, 72). These gestural descriptors
are the scene’s only indication that readers should read Kenickie’s dialogue
rhythmically, and, as “great” as Kenickie is “going,” his list of improve-
ments does not bring to life the image of the fully restored car in the mind
of the gang or the reader. Unlike the dancing scenes in which Sonny
provides ample descriptive details to allow readers to envision a scene not
depicted in the film, for this scene, De Christoforo seems to rely on readers’
memory of the film to envision the number as they read, a task made easier
by the inclusion of two images from the film’s “Greased Lightnin’” scene in
the book’s photo gallery. “Sandra Dee” and “Beauty School Dropout” are
folded into the narrative in a similar manner and with a similar expectation
of readers’ familiarity with the numbers from the film.
The novelization seems aware of its challenges and of the awkwardness of
adapting a musical into prose. With this struggle in mind, we might read the
character of Finn, Sonny’s cousin, who is particular to the novelization, as a
50 K. NEWELL
metaphor for the novel’s struggle to convey music. Finn is described as

confident, good-looking—“every girl’s dream”—and an able sports player,
whose “only frustrations were his musical failings” (1978, 40). What Finn
“wanted most but could never get was to be a sax-man.” To compensate for
this one failing, “he contented himself with an imaginary sax.” Sonny tries
to make the reader see and hear Finn: “truthfully, he played the best goddam
sax you ever seen, if only you could hear it. He could really lay out a nice
ballad or a bluesy-jazz number like ‘Take Five.’ Then he’d get kind of fluid
and rotate round his pelvis like his backbone was melting right there in front
of you. An actual horn would have taken something away from the total
effect” (1978, 40–41). Finn functions as a mirror for the novel itself: its only
frustration is its musical failings. In the absence of sound, the novel plays
imaginary music and dances imaginary dances that are the “best you ever
seen, if only you could hear” and see them. In this way, De Christoforo
implies that success or failure of the representation falls to readers and their
ability to see.
Another novelization of a musical, M.J. Carr’s 1993 novelization of the
1939 The Wizard of Oz, opts for a different approach. Carr omits songs from
the novelization but provides cues for several of the songs for readers familiar
with the film to allow them to fill in the song and dance numbers should they
desire (a connection facilitated by the edition’s inclusion of a gallery of stills
from the 1939 film). For example, Chapter Two begins with Dorothy’s
attempts to tell Aunt Em about her encounters with Miss Gulch, but her
aunt is busy and tells her to “find yourself a place where you won’t get into
any trouble” (1993, 6). The narrator explains that Dorothy “wished she
knew of such a place. It wouldn’t be a bit like Kansas, Dorothy thought.
It would have to be someplace far away. Someplace far from the dry lands
and dusty skies. Someplace over the rainbow . . . ” (1993, 6–7). The ellipsis
here serves several functions. It provides a visual marker for Dorothy’s
“dreaming,” confirmed by the next line, “While Dorothy was wishing that
she could find this place where there wasn’t any trouble, trouble was actually
pedaling her way” (1993, 7), and it cues the song “Somewhere Over the
Rainbow” for readers familiar with the scene from the film. Similarly, Carr
narrativizes the lengthy Munchkinland musical number that welcomes
Dorothy and Toto as “[t]he Munchkins began to sing and dance with joy”
(1993, 21). In this way the novel recounts the basic elements of the film’s
plot but with greater generic emphasis on the bildungsroman than the
musical. The novel includes the markers for readers interested in the diver-
sion, while continuing to propel Dorothy forward on her quest.
INTERTEXTUAL EXPANSION
Some novelizations, particularly those of a broad franchise or series that
operate in conjunction with an established network of adaptations, call
upon readers’ knowledge even more overtly through insider references
and in order to expand readers’ understanding of the work and the
adaptation network. Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Chosen (2003), the noveli-
zation of the show’s seventh season, provides a clear example of a work
that relies on and expands audiences’ existing cultural literacy through in-
references and external intertexts. Buffy the Vampire Slayer has had a
varied adaptation history. The first incarnation was the 1992 film written
by Joss Whedon and directed by Fran Rubel Kuzui, starring Kristy
Swanson as Buffy Summers. The film was fairly well received but differed
dramatically in tone from Whedon’s script. In 1997 Whedon reprised the
idea in the television series that aired until 2003. Unlike many Buffy
novelizations that adapt one or two episodes, Holder’s Chosen covers the
entire seventh season in twenty-two chapters that correspond to the
twenty-two episodes. Much of the novelization reads as a transcript of
the season’s shooting script, yet the novel also provides moments of
insight into characters’ emotions and motivations, and includes a series
of intraseries, pop culture, and intertextual references that enable readers
to understand the episode and the series more fully. I will address the
function of a few of these in the novelization’s “Storyteller” chapter,
which adapts the television episode of the same name.
Season Seven’s “Storyteller” stands out for several reasons. Rather than
follow the show’s traditional third-person narrative point of view, this
episode employs a first-person point of view in many scenes that is aligned
with Andrew (Tom Lenk), a fairly minor character. Andrew had been a
member of The Trio, the group of geeks-turned-wannabe-evil-master-
minds that plagued Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar) and her friends in
Season Six and were responsible for the death of Tara, Willow’s girlfriend
(Amber Benson, Alyson Hannigan). Earlier in Season Seven, Andrew,
operating under the guidance of The First Evil, kills his fellow Trio
member Jonathan (Danny Strong), which results in the opening of the
Seal of Danzalthar, which, in turn, opens the Hellmouth. Andrew spends
much of the early part of the season and three-quarters of this episode
rationalizing Jonathan’s murder as part of larger narrative of epic struggle
and personal redemption. The “Storyteller” episode focuses on Andrew’s
propensity for storytelling, as well as his tendency to ignore or revise
52 K. NEWELL
negative or unpleasant aspects of any given story. The episode’s intertexts

are numerous but might be divided into three categories: references that
would be funny to most viewers, references that would only be funny to
Buffy viewers, and references to texts and events beyond the Buffyverse
that might require additional research.
Perhaps the most obvious example of the first type of reference involves the
episode’s framing device. The episode opens in the style of Masterpiece
Theater in what appears to be a personal library with classical violin music
playing extradiegetically and a pan across several volumes of books to Andrew
seated in a club chair, wearing a smoking jacket and reading. Upon noticing
the camera, Andrew closes the book and addresses the viewer with “Oh! Hello
there, gentle viewers!” After some prologue, Andrew invites the audience to
join him “on a new voyage of the mind, a little tale I like to call: ‘Buffy,
A Slayer of the Vampires.’” The camera then cuts to a graveyard scene of Buffy
on patrol, accompanied by Andrew’s voiceover. Andrew’s narration is dis-
rupted by a banging noise and the scene then cuts to Andrew, seated on the
toilet in the bathroom in Buffy’s house. At this point viewers realize that they
have been viewing events through Andrew’s idealized lens and that he has
“really” been hiding in the bathroom, narrating to his home movie camera.
Much of the humor of the television episode stems from the visual contrast
between Andrew’s idealized documentary vision and the reality. The noveli-
zation effects corollary humor by including various camera and setting notes
from Andrew’s novice point of view. For example, the chapter opens with the
direction “INT. MY ELEGANT STUDY—NIGHT” (2003, 360). This
direction follows some aspects of script convention in noting “INT” for
“interior,” yet later directions such as “Me,” “ME SOME MORE” and
“AND YET MORE ME” and “CUT! BAD LIGHTING!” draw attention
to the divide between Andrew’s vision of himself as filmmaker/scriptwriter
and the reality (2003, 360–61, 376). For readers unfamiliar with the episode,
the typographical markers might be confusing but would nevertheless still
cause the chapter to stand out as irregular against the book’s other chapters.
The novelization includes a number of intraseries references as well, as “in
jokes” and rewards for dedicated fans, some of which are also present in the
television episode and others that are specific to the novelization. In both the
novelization and the episode Andrew refers to the Bezoar eggs from Season
Two’s Episode 12, “Bad Egg,” Anya and Spike’s (Emma Caufield and James
Marsters) sexual encounter from Season Six, Episode 18, and a previous
confrontation between he and Willow that took place in Season Six’s episode
“Two to Go.” In both the chapter and the episode this last recollection is
followed by a flashback in which Andrew and Jonathan have a run-in with

Willow at The Magic Box, the town’s magic shop, and she attempts to kill
them both with magic. According to Andrew’s version of this event, he
protects himself and Jonathan with a counter-spell and they escape. For the
television episode, the humor of this scene relies on audience’s recollection
of what actually happened during the previous scene. Contrary to Andrew’s
account, it is Anya who saves Andrew and Jonathan by chanting a protection
spell that prevents Willow from harming Andrew and Jonathan, while
Andrew remains stunned, frightened, and unable to act during the scene.
Whereas the episode uses visuals to convey the depth of Andrew’s delusions,
the novelization uses textual cues, such as “PRODUCTION NOTE: SEE
IF MAGIC BOX SECURITY CAMERA CAUGHT ANY OF THIS. IT
WAS WHEN SHE CAME AFTER US LAST YEAR” (2003, 368).
The novelization also includes several references to texts outside of the
Buffyverse, many of which align with Andrew’s personal cultural lexicon,
but that that might not be apparent to the average viewer. For example,
after Xander (Nicholas Brendon) and Anya have sex they are described as
“speaking in tones vaguely reminiscent of the poignant scene in Stephen
King’s The Shining as Wendy recalls her lovemaking with Jack” (2003,
389). In explaining his and Jonathan’s confusion regarding the super-
natural message they continued to hear while on the run in Mexico,
“desme abajo tay devorah” (translated within the show as “from beneath
you it devours”), Andrew relates: “For a while, they had guessed that it
had been part of the lost footage of Klaatu’s speech in The Day the Earth
Stood Still, which has been excised because the censors thought it was
blasphemous and was certain to upset the American audience” (2003,
379). Describing his vision of the mystical reward he expected to receive
for killing Jonathan, Andrew explains that “[h]e saw them in his mind’s
eye in the Elysian Fields, as presented in Young Hercules, or rather, Fern
Gully . . . a unicorn flitted past and it was all very Loreena McKennitt, or
maybe the cover of the Kenny Loggins CD” (2003, 383).
Such references do more than confirm that Buffy’s celebrated inter-
texuality can carry across modes and medial formats. They position Chosen
as both an affirming and a learning work. Readers familiar with the tele-
vision show or comics or graphic iterations of the series have their knowl-
edge reinforced and also encounter new intertexts that broaden that
knowledge. Readers unfamiliar with the show or Buffy in other formats
can experience the series from a range of positions in this novelization and
develop a sense of the series’ format, lexicon, and iconography.
54 K. NEWELL
DO IT YOURSELF: FAN FICTION

Although much fan fiction falls more squarely into the general category of
tie-in writing than into that of novelization, its ability to impact a work’s
adaptation network is similar to that of novelization and warrants at least a
brief mention. Fan-fiction can be loosely defined as “a fictional account
written by a fan of a show, movie, book, or video game to explore themes
and ideas that will not or cannot be explored via the originating medium”
(“Fan Fiction” 2016). The phrasing “will not or cannot” is crucial for fan
fiction, much of which involves a “sort of radical revisioning of social
roles,” in McLean’s words (2003, 19; Jenkins 1992, 215). Such revision-
ing, Henry Jenkins suggests, is inevitable: “Media texts . . . can and must
be remade by their viewers so that potentially significant materials can
better speak to the audience’s cultural interests and more fully address
their desires” (2013, 279). At the surface fan fiction may appear to be
highly individualistic in its catering to and expression of specific interests
and desires, but the majority of fan-produced writing operates within an
implicit set of norms, much as any other form of adaptation, preserving
recognizable narrative hinge points and iconography. That fan-produced
fiction makes a valuable contribution to a work’s larger adaptation net-
work has been a hard pill for some scholars to swallow, as fan productions
tend to be “not read as the artifacts of a larger cultural community but as
the material traces of personal interpretations” (Jenkins 1992, 209).
Additionally, the culture industry as a whole tends to dismiss works of
art produced outside of sanctioned institutions (e.g., publishers, galleries),
at least until such works are assimilated by those institutions.
At its best, fan fiction allows fans to explore and expand the universe of their
favorite characters and narratives in ways that are often unavailable to the work
or franchise in its mainstream format, either due to cancellation (as is the case
for fans of Buffy the Vampire Slayer) or to conservative or normative ideolo-
gical underpinnings. A common practice in fan fiction (as well as in all
fan productions) is to “dra[w] on materials from the dominant media and
emplo[y] them in ways that serve their own interests and facilitate their own
pleasures” (Jenkins 1992, 214). Such motivations are explicit in “slash” fiction
(i.e., fiction that explores same-sex relationships between characters identified
as heterosexual), a subgenre of fan-generated fiction. Many Star Trek or
Sherlock Holmes fans and non-fans, for example, are aware of homosexual
reworkings of the Kirk/Spock or Holmes/Watson relationship. Another
common exercise for fan fiction is the revision of characters’ gender. Female
characters are recast as male, male characters are cast as female, male and
female characters are cast as gender neutral, and so on. Despite the “anything
goes” vibe associated with fan fiction, the lion’s share conforms to practices
consistent with more conventional modes of adaptation and contributes to
adaptation networks in very specific ways. “Fandom,” Jenkins explains,
“involves a particular set of critical and interpretive practices. Part of the
process of becoming a fan involves learning the community’s preferred read-
ing practices” (2013, 278). The balance of the familiar and the new, of
“repetition” and “variation,” guides fan fiction just as it guides other forms
of adaptation (Hutcheon 2006, 4).
Blainderson’s “Pretty in Plaid” (2012), a fan fiction mash-up of
John Hughes’s Pretty in Pink and the millennial television show Glee
(2009–2015), provides an apt example. The story draws its pace and
plot from Hughes but uses characters from Glee. Glee’s Kurt Hummel
and Blaine Anderson are cast in the roles of Pretty in Pink’s Andie Walsh
and Blane McDonough. The story opens with Kurt admiring his latest
fashion creation in the mirror (Andie also designs and makes her own
clothes). In the next scene he wakes his father and reminds him of a
scheduled interview (the dialogue is almost verbatim that of the corollary
scene in Hughes’s film). Kurt arrives at school and finds “richie” James
waiting for him in the parking lot (just as Andie had found Steph, played
by James Spader, waiting for her). The story continues in this way, aligning
Kurt’s trajectory with that of Andie’s in Hughes’s film and incorporating
much of the dialogue. Blainderson’s story does not follow Hughes’s through
the ups and downs of the couple’s relationship, which culminates in the
prom, but concludes with Kurt’s run-in with Blaine at the record shop.
“Pretty in Plaid” can be found under the “TV Shows” heading on the
Fanfiction.net site, and then under the subheading “Glee,” and the page
on which the story appears identifies Pretty in Pink as a source. Thus, most
readers would be looking for Glee fan fiction specifically, though they
could come to the page via “Glee,” “Pretty in Pink,” or “TV Show”
searches. How readers respond to the work will depend upon the range
of other texts with which they are familiar. Readers coming to the story as
a result of its Pretty in Pink association would recognize the narrative
parallels but perhaps not those from Glee. Readers coming to the story
through Glee may not be familiar with Pretty in Pink but would likely read
story’s budding romance between Kurt Hummel and Blaine Anderson
through the lens of the characters’ romance on the show, which develops
differently than Andie and Blane’s but similarly to that of romances in
56 K. NEWELL
John Hughes films generally, as well as those in most works in the teen
genre. Glee’s working class Kurt (Chris Colfer) meets “richie” Blaine
(Darren Criss) at a rival school, and Blaine helps Kurt confront another
student who has been bullying him for being gay. Blaine then enlists
Kurt’s help in wooing his crush, Jeremiah (Alexander Nifong), who
snubs his efforts. Kurt confesses his love to Blaine, who responds tepidly
at first and then experiences an epiphany during a regional singing com-
petition and realizes his love for Kurt. Kurt then invites Blaine to his prom,
where he is subsequently crowned Prom Queen, and the two dance. The
combination of the two works highlights generic and thematic parallels
and points to the fluidity of the iconography. Readers familiar with
Hughes but unfamiliar with Glee can accept this work as a Pretty in Pink
version because so many of the markers are maintained. Likewise, readers
familiar with Glee but not Pretty in Pink can accept it as a Glee version
because it maintains those markers as well.
As in the “Pretty in Plaid” example, another common tactic is to com-
bine properties: Wizard of Oz set in the world of Harry Potter, Pokémon,
Smallville or Buffy the Vampire Slayer, or told from the perspective of The
Catcher in the Rye’s Holden Caufield.5 Still another is to use a property as
the architecture for another vision, as in the case of E.L. James’ best selling
and much-discussed Fifty Shades of Grey (2011), which began as a fan sequel
to Stephenie Meyer’s vampire series, Twilight (2004–2008). James was so
inspired by the characters and plot lines of Meyer’s series that she ultimately
wrote two Twilight-inspired novels under the name Snowqueens Icedragon
and the title “Masters of the Universe.” These evolved into Fifty Shades of
Grey, which James published through The Writer’s Coffee Shop. Meyer’s
Twilight series has inspired countless works of fan fiction, each with the
potential to inspire other writers to other variations. Likewise, Fifty Shades of
Grey has provided the basis for numerous iterations—the majority of which
have little to no discernable connection to Twilight. These examples
demonstrate the transformation of reader-into-writer through adaptation.
Fan fiction is the embodiment of adaptation-in-action, adaptation as both a
reading and a writing strategy.
WHAT’S SO GREAT ABOUT NOVELIZATION?

One of the main charges against novelization is unoriginality. Novelizations,
the argument goes, do not bring anything new to the table. They rehash
someone else’s work. Yet the issue of originality seems to matter little to the
critical reception of other works. In a discussion of professional and medial

hierarchies David Sweeney compares the celebrity status afforded to comic
book writers working on an established property and the comparative lack of
status afforded tie-in writers, and argues that all writers are tie-in writers in
some fashion: “Writers working in a primary medium may generate the source
material but they are nevertheless obliged to ‘tie-in’ to the continuity of an
established fictional world. Their work, then, can only ever be ‘original’ within
this context” (2015). Sweeney’s perspective, which is informed in equal parts
by T.S. Eliot’s “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” Roland Barthes’s
“Death of the Author,” and Harold Bloom’s Anxiety of Influence is shared
by Jonathan Blum, who comments that “[p]eople are prejudiced against tie-
ins because they figure that it’s cheating if you write stories about characters
you didn’t create. Well, there goes a huge swathe of literature from
Shakespeare to Jasper Fforde. If you can write something as lovely and
enduring as The Night Before Christmas as a tie-in with a pre-existing fantasy
character, there’s no reason you can’t do something as good with Doctor Who”
(Blum quoted in Juddery 2005).
Charges of derivativeness and unoriginality are not what ruffle the
feathers of novelization’s defenders; rather, it is the equating of deriva-
tiveness with negligible cultural value that prompts staunch defenses.
Novelization invites us to see the derivativeness of all cultural products.
The sticking point, though, is distinctions between works created for so-
called intellectual and aesthetic betterment and those created for commer-
cial and mass interest. Such distinctions, so apparent to Eliot, are less so in
the contemporary climate of popular literary culture. Central to Jim
Collins’s thesis in Bring on the Books for Everybody: How Literary Culture
Became Popular Culture (2010) is that changes in how we access and
consume literature and what literature means to us result in reconfigura-
tions of literary culture that erode highbrow/lowbrow distinctions (or, at
minimum, stake new boundaries).
A curious and inevitable consequence of such changes is that audiences
inevitably lose track of which cultural product came first and which falls into
which category. Audiences mistake films for adaptations (e.g., Campion’s
The Piano [1993]), adaptations for originals (e.g., Hitchcock’s Psycho
[1960]), and novelizations for originals. As Baetens points out, “when
confronted with ‘the book of the film,’ we no longer know which came
first, the book or the movie, and we no longer know which reading strategy
to adopt” (2007, 236). Mahlknecht also addresses this slippage, observing
that the practice of publishing novelization with an image of the film and of
58 K. NEWELL
likewise publishing adapted novels with an image of the film can cause confu-
sion: “With the film poster as the cover . . . original novels by lesser-known
authors may easily be mistaken for novelizations” (2012, 144). Additional
confusion can arise when novelizations are published at the same time as
rereleases of an original novel with film art on the cover, as occurred with
Bram Stoker’s Dracula (Coppola, 1992), which was released simultaneously
with Fred Saberhagen’s novelization and reprints of Stoker’s 1897 novel
(Montalbano 2008, 386; Mahlknecht 2012, 145). Furthermore, with so
many contemporary writers writing with an eye to their work being adapted
to the big or small screen, it is not a huge jump to think of their work as
prenovelizations or, as Baetens has suggested, “the contemporary novel tends
to be read as itself already a novelization, albeit an imaginary one” (2005, 56).
That these examples are even positioned as cautionary warnings, anec-
dotes of possibility, suggests that the erosion of boundaries dividing cultural
products is occurring or has occurred. Are all novelizations worth reading,
study, and cultural notice? Maybe not, but then neither are all ostensibly
original works. Considering novelizations as nodes within an adaptation
network changes their value and what we value in them. How and what they
contribute to that network, what they reinforce and challenge in previous
and subsequent adaptations becomes indistinguishable from the derivative-
ness and repetition of other modes of adaptation within that network. The
commercialization and mass appeal of novelization no doubt undercuts
their cultural value for some audiences. To my thinking, their ability to
attract reluctant readers, to expand readers’ understanding of characters, to
provide concrete contextual information on setting and time period, to
provide alternative versions of a work’s narrative and outcome, and to affirm
and contribute to a work’s range of textual reference points—as the nove-
lizations discussed in this chapter most definitely do—makes clear the range
of specific functions they perform in a given work’s adaptation network and
in the more general network of cultural production.
NOTES
1. To my knowledge, the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers is
the only organization that offers an award for novelizations. The Scribe
Awards “acknowledge and celebrate excellence in licensed tie-in writing—
novels based on TV shows, movies, and games” (“International”).
2. See “High Interest / Low Reading Level Book List,” School on Wheels,
n.d. http://www.schoolonwheels.org/pdfs/3328/Hi-Lo-Book-List.pdf.
3. Simone Murray addresses the role that test audiences and other such processes
play in shaping adaptation, The Adaptation Industry: The Cultural Economy of
Contemporary Literary Adaptation (New York: Routledge, 2012).
4. Sandy’s surname is spelled Olsson in the film and Ollson in the novelization.
5. FosseHoneyVelma, “Harry Potter, Wizard of Oz,” Fanfiction.net, June 24,
2003; The Alter Ego, “The Wizard of Oz,” Fanfiction.net, May 6, 2002;
Rodmeister, “Wizard of Oz,” Fanfiction.net, June 22, 2008; Angel Phreak,
“The Wizard Named Oz,” Fanfiction.net, November 4, 2001; Writer
Writing, “Wizard of Oz,” Fanfiction.net, May 16, 2007.
REFERENCES
Adventures of Kathlyn. Directed by Francis J. Grandon. Selig Polyscope, 1914.
Ashley, Monty. “Grease: The Novel.” Monty on Movies (blog), last modified
December 15, 2008. http://montyonmovies.blogspot.com/2008/12/
grease-novel.html
Baetens, Jan. “Novelizations, a Contaminated Genre?” Critical Inquiry 32, no. 1
(Autumn 2005): 43–60. JSTOR.
———. “From Screen to Text: Novelization, the Hidden Continent.” In The
Cambridge Companion to Literature on Screen, edited by Deborah Cartmell
and Imelda Whelehan, 226–238. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
———. “Expanding the Field of Constraint: Novelization as an Example of
Multiply Constrained Writing.” Poetics Today 31, no. 1 (Spring 2010): 51–79,
doi: 10.1215/03335372-2009-014.
———. “Creation and Novelization.” WikiCreation (May 2015): 2–11. http://
www.soft-avenue.com/wikicreation_new/readArticle.php?articleId=19.
Basic Instinct. Directed by Paul Verhoeven. TriStar, 1992.
Ben-Hur. Directed by William Wyler. MGM, 1959.
Bierly, Mandi. “Remembering John Hughes: Jon Cryer Delivers ‘Pretty in Pink’
Trivia (from the EW archives).” Entertainment Weekly, August 7, 2009.
http://www.ew.com/article/2009/08/07/john-hughes-movie-trivia.
Blainderson. “Pretty in Plaid.” Fanfiction.net, December 7, 2012. Web. https://
www.fanfiction.net/s/8773555/1/Pretty-in-Plaid.
Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Directed by Francis Ford Coppola. Columbia, 1992.
Brown, Summer R. “Disappointing.” Review of Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Chosen,
by Nancy Holder. Amazon.com, November 5, 2004. http://www.amazon.
com/Buffy-Vampire-Slayer-Nancy-Holder/product-reviews/0689866259/.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer. “Storyteller.” Episode 16, Season Seven. Directed
Marita Grabiak. UPN, February 25, 2003.
Carr, M.J. The Wizard of Oz. New York: Scholastic, 1993.
Cohan, Steven. “Censorship and Narrative Indeterminacy in Basic Instinct: ‘You Won’t
Learn Anything From Me I Don’t Want You To Know’.” In Contemporary
60 K. NEWELL
Hollywood Cinema, edited by Steve Neale and Murray Smith, 263–279. London:
Routledge, 1998.
Collins, Jim. Bring on the Books for Everybody: How Literary Culture Became
Popular Culture. Durham: Duke University Press, 2010.
Davis, Arnie. Photoplay Editions and other Movie Tie-In Books: The Golden Years.
East Waterboro: Mainely Books, 2002.
De Christoforo, Ron. Grease. New York: Pocket Books, 1978.
Deep Throat. Directed by Jerry Gerard. Bryanston Pictures, 1972.
Derrida, Jacques. Of Grammatology. Trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak.
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976.
Dr. Lenera. “Basic Instinct [1992] [Guilty Pleasures].” Horror Cult Films, May
17, 2011. http://horrorcultfilms.co.uk/2011/05/basic-instinct-1992/.
Dyer, Richard. Stars. London: British Film Institute, 1998.
The Exploits of Elaine. Directed by Louis J. Gasnier, George B. Seitz, and Leopold
Wharton. Pathé, 1914.
“Fan Fiction.” Dictionary.com. 2016. http://www.dictionary.com/browse/
fan-fiction?s=t.
Frozen: the Junior Novelization. New York: Disney Press, 2013.
Fuller, Kathryn H. “Motion Picture Story Magazine and the Gendered Construction
of the Movie Fan.” In In the Eye of the Beholder: Critical Perspectives in Popular
Film and Television, edited by Gary R. Edgerton, Michael T. Marsden, and Jack
Nachbar, 97–112. Bowling Green: Bowling Green State University Popular
Press, 1997.
Gilda. Directed by Charles Vidor. Columbia Pictures, 1946.
Gilmour, H.B. Pretty in Pink. Toronto: Bantam, 1986.
Grease. Directed by Randal Kleiser. Paramount Pictures, 1978.
Heffernan, James A. W. “Entering the Museum of Words: Ashbery’s ‘Self-Portrait
in a Convex Mirror’.” In Pictures Into Words: Theoretical and Descriptive
Approaches to Ekphrasis, edited by Valerie Robillard and Els Jongeneel, 189–
211. Amsterdam: VU University Press, 1998.
Hermes, Patricia. My Girl. New York: Archway, 1991.
Holder, Nancy. “Are Tie-In Writers Hacks?” I Am a Tie-in Writer, 2015. http://
iamtw.org/articles/are-tie-in-writers-hacks/.
———. Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Chosen. New York: Simon Pulse, 2003.
Holmberg, Claes-Göran. “Extra-Terrestrial Novels.” In Interart Poetics: Essays on
the Interrelations of the Arts and Media, edited by Ulla-Britta Lagerroth, Hans
Lund, and Erik Hedling, 109–114. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1997.
L’Homme qui aimait les femmes. Directed by François Truffaut. United Artists, 1977.
International Association of Media Tie-In Writers, 2015. http://iamtw.org/.
ironhorse_iv. “Bill Hicks and My Basic Instinct Was Right, It’s an Unpleasant Film.”
Review of Basic Instinct, directed by Paul Verhoeven. Internet Movie Database,
February 7, 2013. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103772/reviews-308.
James, E.L. Fifty Shades of Grey. New York: Vintage, 2011.

Jenkins, Henry. “‘Strangers No More, We Sing’: Filking and the Science Fiction
Fan Community.” In The Adoring Audience: Fan Culture and Popular Media,
edited by Lisa A. Lewis, 208–236. London: Routledge, 1992.
———. Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture. 2nd ed. New York:
Routledge, 2013.
johnbernardbooks.“Thriller Which Achieves Screen Magic of the Golden Age.”
Review of Basic Instinct, directed by Paul Verhoeven. Internet Movie Database,
September 27, 2001. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103772/.
Juddery, Mark. “The Spin-off Doctors.” Sydney Morning Herald, January 1, 2005.
International Association of Media Tie-In Writers. http://iamtw.org/articles/
the-spin-off-doctors/.
Kerry. Review of Pretty in Pink, by H.B. Gilmour. Goodreads, July 20, 2014.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/550052.Pretty_in_Pink.
Kobel, Peter. “To Some, a Movie is Just An Outline for a Book.” New York Times,
April 1, 2001. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/01/movies/film-to-
some-a-movie-is-just-an-outline-for-a-book.html?pagewanted=all.
Koszarski, Richard. “The Girl and Her Trust: Film into Fiction.” Film History 20
(2008): 198–201. Project Muse.
Larson, Randall D. Films Into Books: An Analytical Bibliography of Film
Novelizations, Movie, and TV Tie-Ins. Metuchen: Scarecrow Press, 1995.
Leedham, Robert. “Novelisations; Bestsellers.” The Guardian, November 23,
1992. LexisNexis Academic.
Mahlknecht, Johannes. “The Hollywood Novelization: Film as Literature or
Literature as Film Promotion?” Poetics Today 33, no. 2 (Summer 2012):
137–168.
McLean, Adrienne L. “‘New Films in Story Form’: Movie Story Magazines and
Spectatorship.” Cinema Journal 42, no. 3 (Spring 2003): 3–26.
Montalbano, Margaret. “From Bram Stoker’s Dracula to Bram Stoker’s
‘Dracula’.” In A Companion to Literature and Film, edited by Robert Stam
and Alessandra Raengo, 385–398. Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2008.
Musser, Charles. “The Devil’s Parody: Horace McCoy’s Appropriation and
Refiguration of Two Hollywood Musicals.” In A Companion to Literature
and Film, edited by Robert Stam and Alessandra Raengo, 229–257. Malden:
Blackwell, 2008.
My Girl. Directed by Howard Zieff. Columbia Pictures, 1991.
Nagib, Lúcia. “Film as Literature, or the Truffaldian Malaise (L’Homme qui aimait
les femmes).” In A Companion to François Truffaut, edited by Dudley Andrew
and Anne Gillain, 530–545. Malden: Blackwell, 2013.
Odom, Mel. “Mel Odom on Tie-In Writing.” International Association of Tie-In
Writers, 2015. http://iamtw.org/articles/mel-odom-on-tie-in-writing/.
Old Joe. “A Brutal Murder. A Brilliant Killer. A Cop Who Can’t Resist the
Danger.” Review of Basic Instinct, directed by Paul Verhoeven. Internet
62 K. NEWELL
Movie Database, January 31, 2002. http://www.imdb.com/title/

tt0103772/reviews?ref_=tt_urv.
Osborne, Richard. Basic Instinct. New York: Penguin, 1992.
Peeters, Heidi. “Multimodality and Its Modes in Novelization.” Image &
Narrative 11, no. 1 (2010): 118–129. http://www.imageandnarrative.be/
index.php/imagenarrative/article/view/59.
Perry, Steve. Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire. New York: Bantam, 1996.
———. Men in Black: A Novel. New York: Bantam, 1997.
———. “Are Tie-In Writers Hacks?” International Association of Tie-In Writers,
2015. http://iamtw.org/articles/are-tie-in-writers-hacks/.
The Piano. Directed by Jane Campion. Miramax, 1993.
Pretty in Pink. Directed by John Hughes. Paramount Pictures, 1986.
Psycho. Directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Paramount, 1960.
Rouner, Jef. “Top 10 Novelizations that are Actually Worth Reading.” Houston Press,
March 22, 2012. http://www.houstonpress.com/arts/top-10-novelizations-
that-are-actually-worth-reading-6373838.
Singer, Ben. “Fiction Tie-Ins and Narrative Intelligibility.” Film History 5, no. 4
(December 1993): 489–504. JSTOR.
Sloan, Will. “The Endangered Art of the Movie Novelization.” Hazlitt, February
20, 2014. http://hazlitt.net/feature/endangered-art-movie-novelization.
Spy Kids Storybook. Written by Robert Rodriguez. New York: Miramax Books for
Kids, 2001.
Suskind, Alex. “Yes, People Still Read Movie Novelizations . . . And Write Them,
Too.” Vanity Fair, August 27, 2014. http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/
2014/08/movie-novelizations-still-exist.
Sutter, James L. “Another Word: Reclaiming the Tie-In Novel.” Clarkesworld:
Hugo Award-Winning Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine 94 (July 2014).
http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/another_word_07_14/.
Sweeney, David. “Licensed Fiction and the Expansion of Fictional Worlds.”
International Association of Tie-In Writers, 2015. http://iamtw.org/articles/
licensed-fiction/.
Tacey. Review of Pretty in Pink, by H.B. Gilmour. Goodreads, August 6, 2014.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/550052.Pretty_in_Pink.
Taxi Driver. Directed by Martin Scorsese. Columbia, 1976.
Tracey, “Little Dissapointment . . . [sic.].” Review of Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
Chosen, by Nancy Holder. Amazon.com, January 14, 2004. https://www.
amazon.com/Buffy-Vampire-Slayer-Nancy-Holder/product-reviews/
0689866259/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_paging_btm_2?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=
1&sortBy=recent&pageNumber=2.
Van Parys, Thomas. “The Commercial Novelization: Research, History,
Differentiation.” Literature/Film Quarterly 37, no. 4 (2009): 305–317.
The Wizard of Oz. Directed by Victor Fleming. MGM, 1939.
CHAPTER 3
Imagining the Unimaginable: Illustration

as Gateway
Gris Grimly’s Frankenstein (2013), a graphic novel adaptation of Mary

Shelley’s novel, features a foreword by Bernie Wrightson in which he tells
Grimly’s readers of his challenge in reading Frankenstein as a youth: “I was
twelve or thirteen before I got all the way through . . . . My mental image was of
rolling up my sleeves and going at it with a pick and shovel. Hard work.” Later
in life, Wrightson illustrated Frankenstein for Marvel Comics (1983): “Just my
own visual interpretation, one more in the long line of interpretations—on
stage, on film and in print.” He relates that, since the publication of his edition,
I’ve been told by many people that it was my pictures that drew them into
the book, that got them to read it cover to cover, and that they wouldn’t
have been able to read it at all had it not been for my illustrations pulling
them along. I realized that I had done something much more than just
decorate a favorite story: I had created a gateway into the book for the
reader. (Grimly 2013, x–xi)
For Wrightson, Grimly fulfills a similar role: “Gris Grimly, like all the great
illustrators, knows his responsibility. He stands at the gateway, the key that
unlocks the heart of the story in his hand, ready to help you unearth the
treasure that lies within” (Grimly 2013, xi). This praise for Grimly echoes
that bestowed upon Wrightson himself by Stephen King, who, in the
introduction to Wrightson’s Marvel edition, relates his difficulty in reading
Shelley’s novel in his youth and speculates that Wrightson’s readers will

64 K. NEWELL
have no such difficulty: “I think that many readers will find the harder
edge of horror and mystery the movies have led them to expect, and these
readers will actually finish the novel, instead of laying it aside, as I laid aside
the unillustrated edition I had purchased” (1983, 9).
Wrightson’s and King’s comments reflect common and not-so-com-
mon views of illustration. First, illustrations make difficult reading easier.
Wrightson and King depict themselves as slogging through Shelley’s
novel, quitting, and taking up again the toilsome task, all with the idea
that Frankenstein is a book one should read, with or without pictures.
Second, and central to this chapter, is that illustrations provide a “gate-
way” for readers to enter a work. In the context of their introductions
Wrightson and King use gateway as a metaphor for a point of access, yet
the metaphor has additional implications for the role of illustration.
Among its definitions for gateway, the Oxford English Dictionary offers
“passage” and “a means of egress or ingress,” both of which align with and
extend Wrightson’s and King’s meaning. Illustration can bring readers
into a text (ingress) in generating interest and curiosity, and it can pull
them out of a text (egress) in breaking reading rhythm or in offering
information inconsistent with that of the prose. In addition to bringing
readers into a book, illustration can also provide passage for a seemingly
monomodal work to multimodality. Heidi Peeters describes the manner in
which illustrations “turn out to be gates through which different multi-
modality types are able to infiltrate in the text and in the reader’s mind”
(2010, 125). Gateway refers also, in modern usage, to “a device that
connects two or more separate computer systems, networks, or programs,
and which typically provides services such as routeing data, handling user
access, and enabling communication between networks which use differ-
ent protocols” (“Gateway” 2016). Illustration can function in this manner
as well, as it fosters connections between readers and prose, as well as
between versions of a given work. Wrightson and King posit illustrated
editions as but one mode of adaptation among many. Wrightson identifies
his version as “one more in a long line,” and King situates Wrightson’s
version in the context of the film adaptations. King and Wrightson posi-
tion illustrated editions as nodes in a work’s larger adaptation network,
each offering a distinct interpretation that informs and is itself informed by
other network participants.
This chapter considers illustration in each of these varied roles.
Illustration, I argue, contributes to a given work’s adaptation network by
establishing distinctive iconography and by distilling a work to representative
IMAGINING THE UNIMAGINABLE: ILLUSTRATION AS GATEWAY 65
scenes, moments, and elements. The aspects of a prose work that illustrators
depict (and how they do so) determines the aspects of the prose that will be
reinforced for readers. Often such aspects correspond to those similarly
reinforced in other illustrated editions as well as in film adaptations.1 This
chapter examines some ways in which illustrations in illustrated novels are
coded to elicit particular readings that can impact readers’ interpretations of
a work through the resolution of ambiguities. Looking to several sets of
illustrations of Henry James’s novellas Daisy Miller and Washington Square
and Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,
I consider how similarities in content and tone among the sets suggest
a consensus on what “counts” in the work and how it should be depicted.
BUT ARE IMAGES REALLY EASIER?

Wrightson’s and King’s comments on illustrated editions of Frankenstein
indicate that images help readers make sense of difficult works: they “pull
them along,” they provide a “gateway into the book.” Public consensus
has long been that pictures are easier to read than words. The majority of
illustrated editions incorporate representational images, and the informa-
tion contained in such images corresponds to what readers see every day
(e.g., people look like people, buildings look like buildings). Thus, they
appear “natural” and their meaning transparent. Words, by contrast,
require decoding. Their meaning needs to be made. The path by which
readers acquire literacy seems to support the bias. Books for infants and
toddlers are comprised almost entirely of pictures and alphabet letters.
These are followed by picture books with a few words, which are followed
by books with fewer pictures and more words and so on until the young
reader is able to read books comprised of words exclusively (Nodelman
1988). This trajectory fosters an impression that movement toward lit-
eracy is movement away from images. Such views are shortsighted, of
course, and overlook the ideological and aesthetic codes that shape
images, image selection, framing, juxtaposition, and a host of related
factors. That the alphabet and its image-laden primers are themselves
ideologically loaded and inculcate children in hegemonic practices of
recognition and distinction is likewise overlooked (Crain 2000).
The view that images are easier has grounding in historical debates
regarding the relative value and role of words and images. Such debates
tend to identify fundamental differences between the two and organize
them in a series of binary “truths,” such as images are natural/words are
66 K. NEWELL
arbitrary, images are spatial/words are temporal, images are perceptual/

words are conceptual, and so on. This practice thus posits words and
images as opposites, which, in turn, necessitates the theorization of their
meeting in composite or hybrid works as either collaborative or competi-
tive.2 Support for the collaborative nature of words and images evolves
from Horace’s concept of ut pictura poesis (“as is painting, so is poetry”),
which holds that visual arts (in his case, painting) and verbal arts (poetry)
are comparable in expressive value and should be given the same critical
attention. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s Laocoön: An Essay Upon the Limits
of Painting and Poetry (1766) voices perhaps the most often-cited critique
of this “sister arts” view, asserting instead the essential differences in words
and images. Words are temporal and dynamic, for example, whereas
images are spatial and static. These theoretical poles have inspired decades
of expansion, clarification, and challenge, which has, in turn, provided the
foundation for how we view and respond to intermedial and intermodal
works (e.g., comics, web pages, illustrated novels, advertisements). Writers
in recent decades have challenged dyadic theorization of this relationship
by drawing attention to the manner in which characteristics thought
specific to images are evident in words, and vice versa (Mitchell 1986,
1994, 83–91; Elliott 2003). Still, collaboration and competition remain
the dominant relationships available to words and images in illustrated
novels.
The collaborative view of words and images in the illustrated novel
often positions illustration as supportive. Charles Congdon’s claim that
the “ordinary purpose of an illustration is to explain, to elucidate, to
render clear what is obscure or abstruse” is representative of this perspec-
tive (1884, 484). For Edward Hodnett, “the primary function of the
illustration of literature is to realize significant aspects of the text, and it
must be judged first of all as it succeeds in this function” (1982, 13). Alan
Male articulates a similar view: “The drawing should distinguish between
important details and unnecessary anomalies, and utilize the most appro-
priate visual language to represent the subject matter faithfully” (2007,
39). The collaborative view, as summed up by Perry Nodelman, is that
“pictures in picture books . . . exist primarily so that they can assist in the
telling of stories” (1988, vii). Collaboration is often framed as illustra-
tion’s conversation with or commentary on the prose. Michael Steig
comments that Hablot K. Browne’s (“Phiz”) illustrations for Charles
Dickens’s The Pickwick Papers “provide a running commentary, in visual
language, upon the verbal text” (1978, 34). For Judith Fisher illustrations
can “add metaphorical comment, extend the story, alert the reader to
significant patterns, and supply visual types of the characters” (1995, 61).
Writers on illustration might point to the manner in which illustrations
challenge or compete with the words on the page, but the most serious
attacks against illustration have come from authors themselves. J. Hillis
Miller sums up the fear of those for which illustration stands as a threat:
“A book, it seems, has only so much magic energy. An illustration will
drain this power off, leaving the book a dead letter, short-circuited by the
superior power of the illustration to make something present” (1992, 67).
This fear is evident in Henry James’s preface to The Golden Bowl in which
he refers to illustrations as “a competitive process” (1934, 331). For
James, “Anything that relieves responsible prose of the duty of being,
while placed before us, good enough, interesting enough and, if the
question be of picture, pictorial enough, above all in itself, does it the
worst of services” (1934, 332). Miller offers a more neutral way of think-
ing about the juxtaposition: “Each sign, whether graphic or verbal, brings
something of its own into the light rather than copying, commenting on,
or elucidating some other sign” (1992, 110).
When not rooted in authorial territorialism, theories on the collabora-
tion or competition of images and words in illustrated novels are based on
how readers read and whether the strategies they deploy in reading images
and words are compatible. Using Nelson Goodman’s example of the
thermometer in Languages of Art (1976), W.J.T. Mitchell highlights
differences between how we read images and words: “A picture is normally
‘read’ in something like the way we read an ungraduated thermometer.
Every mark, every modification, every curve or swelling of a line, every
modification of texture or color is loaded with semantic potential.” Lines
and marks are not interpreted individually but attain meaning through
“relations with all the other marks in a dense, continuous field” (1986,
67). By contrast, “a differentiated symbolic system,” like the alphabet,
“works by gaps and discontinuities” and “on the assumption that every
character is distinguishable from every other (syntactic differentiation),
and each has a compliant that is unique and proper to that character”
(Mitchell 1986, 67–68). In comparing alphabetic letters and lines in a
drawing, Mitchell avers that the former is more distinguishable in the
sense that “a” is both visually and phonetically distinguishable from “b.”
Readers also distinguish between thin and thick lines and have associations
with each independent of pictorial context, despite the fact that a picture’s
lines and marks may not have “a compliant that is unique and proper” to
68 K. NEWELL
that specific type of line in all its uses. As Mitchell contends, lines in a
drawing and alphabetic letters are not fully comprehensible until they are
placed in relation to other images, concepts, and letters.
Coding, in the form of context and gesture, is crucial to how we read
images. “We can understand pictures,” Nodelman explains, “only in terms
of the depth and subtlety of the contexts we are able to apply to them”
(1988, 106). Nodelman offers the example of a person and a dog standing
on a staircase, noting that our response to this image differs based on
whether it appears in a person’s biography, a real estate advertisement, or a
book about dogs (1988, 104). We understand the content of the image
largely because illustrators use familiar cultural codes to aid reading, “an
established vocabulary of bodily movements and gestures” (Alpers 1983,
212). Some codes operate at more literal levels of signification in which an
image of an object signifies that object, whereas others operate at com-
paratively symbolic or connotative levels (e.g., thick glasses signify limited
perception, darkness signifies the unknown) (Mitchell 1986, 41). Artists
code images through the manipulation of objects and features already
present in the reader’s visual grammar and that readers can apprehend
via context and association. The degree to which readers interpret an
image’s codes depends largely on their visual literacy skills and the choices
they make in reading—choices guided by the vocabularies readers have
developed from other visual experiences, from the plurality of their indi-
vidual lexicons (Barthes 1977, 46–47). When reading an image by itself,
readers rely on this vocabulary to help them make sense of any new visual
codes generated from the new image or context. When images and words
are placed in relation to each other, significations shift and alter, as readers
determine their relationship (if any).
Wrightson and King posit images as access points to prose, whereas
Roland Barthes suggests that it is the written text that acts as a key for
reading the image. The image for Barthes is “polysemous,” evocative of “a
‘floating chain’ of signifieds.” Words, the “linguistic message,” anchor
specific meaning and help readers “to choose the correct level of perception,”
permitting them “to focus not simply [their] gaze but also [their] under-
standing” (1977, 39). As Kamilla Elliott has pointed out, Barthes’s “rhetoric
continues the long-standing favoring of words over pictures and subjugates
pictorial signs to linguistic paradigms” (2003, 28). Rather than settle on
which has more power to direct readers—images or words—we might agree
that the peculiar function of each rests more on the power the reader assigns
to each, and that their functions and this power are situational. The more
abstract the image, the more words provide a gateway for interpretation; the
more abstract the prose, the more images fulfill this function.
Visual and verbal codes combine in the illustrated novel to guide the
reader toward particular meanings, but they do not resolve all ambiguities.
Take the following description of a black-and-white illustration:
The setting appears to be a drawing room. Judging from the figures’

clothing and what we can see of the room’s decoration and furniture, the
time period might be late Victorian. A baby grand piano occupies the
center of the composition, around which four figures are positioned. To
the left of the composition, a male figure is seated at the piano. To the
right, another male figure, older than the first, stands against the piano
with his right arm resting on it. Still in the right half of the composition but
more toward its center are two female figures: one who drapes herself
along the piano who gazes admiringly at the piano player, and another
who is seated with her back to the reader, facing the piano player. Overall,
the illustration appears to depict a common scene of middle-class domestic
entertainment.
The information I have pulled from this image is based on its representa-
tional features and a particular visual lexicon (e.g., “Victorian era” reflects a
more specialized lexicon than distinctions between “older” and “younger”).
But the image raises a number of questions that it cannot answer. For
example, what is the exact relationship between the characters? Do they
know each other? Are they two couples? Are they a family?
These questions are easily answered by the prose text on which the image
is based. The illustration I have described is one in a set by George du
Maurier for Henry James’s novella Washington Square (1880), titled “He
had a Sweet, Light Tenor Voice.”3 When read against James’s depiction of
the scene, we can identify the characters in Du Maurier’s illustration and
infer their motives. The man at the piano is Morris Townsend and the
woman draped across the piano is Lavinia, Catherine Sloper’s aunt. This
posture coupled with her rapturous gaze play up the narrative’s impression
that she views Morris as a romantic object for herself. Compositionally she is
placed between Catherine and Morris thus foreshadowing that she will
prove an obstacle for the couple. Dr. Sloper leans on the piano, a posture
that underscores his connection to and protection of his material property.
That he is compositionally opposite Morris highlights his opposition
to Morris as a son-in-law. Catherine appears to be seated between her
father and her aunt, which alludes to her dependence on both. Although
70 K. NEWELL
Catherine’s face is the least visible of the four, her white gown sets her apart
from the rest of the company. Furthermore, Catherine is the only object in
the composition not modeled by cross-hatching. This distinction not only
draws attention to her but also suggests that she is the only figure whose
motives are not at cross-purposes.
Having both the image and the prose before us answers a number of
questions, but not all. James’s narrator, for example, relates that Morris
“sung two or three songs at Catherine’s timid request” but says nothing of
him playing the piano or of the relative positions of the characters in the
scene. In addition to the many textual, artistic, and historical codes that
imbue an illustration with meaning, each is also informed by the illustra-
tor’s own reading experience, which, in turn, becomes part of readers’
reading experiences (Kooistra 1995, 4). Readers are never simply reading
the illustration or the prose or the juxtaposition between them. Reading is
always inflected by factors external to the reading moment. “[W]hat
allows a text to mean for an individual user,” Stephen P. Witte contends,
“is its link, mediated vis-à-vis any shared symbol system, to an underlying
and necessarily internalized semantic network” (1992, 256). Illustrations
may provide a gateway into the prose for some readers, but they also
provide a gateway for potentially unauthorized meanings and interpreta-
tions. As noted by Julia Thomas, “[i]llustration exposes the fact that texts
are never in the author’s control, nor are their meanings singular or fixed:
an illustration is an interpretation or ‘reading’ of the text, and, as such, can
conflict with other readings” (2004, 14; Kooistra 1995, 66; Miller 1992,
101–03; Skilton 1988, 304).
Rather than being easier or harder to read, images and words are simply
different to read (Mitchell 1986, 85), and this difference becomes significant
when images and words are juxtaposed, as in the illustrated novel. Wrightson
relates that fans have told him that his illustrations “drew them into”
Shelley’s novel and “got them to read it cover to cover.” King speculates
that his initial attempt at reading Frankenstein would have turned out
differently had his edition had illustrations. What is it about images that
educe this reaction? Wrightson’s illustrations are extremely detailed and
dynamic, much like his work for The Swamp Thing (1972) and his various
horror and mystery publications. Each composition is framed from a high- or
low-angle to maximize tensions as appropriate to the scene. Shelley’s prose,
by contrast, is “extravagant and convoluted,” in Wrightson’s words, and in a
voice that King describes as “low-pitched and even” (Grimly 2013, x; King
1983, 7). The book itself is, for Wrightson, “a book of ideas, not melodrama
(despite is many melodramatic moments),” and, for King, includes “creaky

plot devices and eye-popping coincidences” (Grimly 2013, x; King 1983, 7).
A good number of readers opt to read Frankenstein because of its status as a
classic work of horror. As King explains, “[t]he expectations most readers
have for the book have been formed by half a hundred lurid movies . . . . And
they are, for the most part disappointed. Good God, are they disappointed”
(King 1983, 7). Wrightson’s illustrations emphasize the overwhelming
physicality of the Creature, and he renders the conflict between Victor and
the Creature as explicitly epic through perspective and modeling cues more
commonly associated with superhero comics than early-nineteenth-century
novels. We might infer, then, that Wrightson’s illustrations function as a
gateway to Shelley’s prose not because they are easier and Shelley’s words are
harder, but because they are coded in a manner that allows them to corre-
spond more fully with what readers expect from the prose: horror over
sentimentality, action over meditation.
DIALOGUE AND DISCORD: ILLUSTRATING DAISY MILLER

Henry James was notoriously opposed to illustrated editions. For James,
“[t]he essence of any representational work is of course to bristle with
immediate images,” and the inclusion of illustration in an already repre-
sentational work is akin to “graft[ing] or grow[ing], at whatever point, a
picture by another hand on my own picture—this being always, to my
sense, a lawless incident” (1934, 331–32). Despite his objections, several
of his works were published with illustrations during his lifetime and
several more in posthumously published editions, Daisy Miller among
them. Daisy Miller first appeared in the 1878 June–July issue of Cornhill
Magazine, and readers were unsure of how they should read the actions of
James’s titular character. Is she a “dangerous, terrible woman,” as her
rejection of propriety and willingness to scamper about Europe unchaper-
oned suggests, or a “pretty, American flirt,” as is suggested by her general
naïveté and lack of guile? Rather than provide an explicit statement of her
innocence, the novel turns the question back on the society that would
demand one. The novella’s conclusion is less a critique of a particular
interpretation of Daisy than of the limited nature of the interpretive
models applied to her. In a letter to Eliza Lynn Linton James explains
his project for Daisy: “The whole idea of the story is the little tragedy of a
light, thin, natural, unsuspecting creature being sacrificed as it were to a
social rumpus that went on quite over her head and to which she stood in
72 K. NEWELL
no measurable relation” (Horne 1999, 122). While the 1878 version

of Daisy Miller may have seemed ambiguous in its evaluation of
Daisy’s character, visual adaptations of the novel are not; most paint
Daisy as the innocent victim of rigid and arbitrary social conventions
and prejudices.
Harry W. McVickar’s illustrations for the 1892 Harper & Brothers edition
establish Daisy’s innocence less through depictions of the heroine (she appears
in only two of forty-two illustrations) than through the ironic or suggestive
placement of illustrations that allude to or evoke social authority or the
hypocrisy of social customs.4 For example, the passage in the novella in
which Daisy’s suitor, Winterbourne, tells her mother, Mrs. Miller, of his
intention to escort Daisy to Château de Chillon un-chaperoned is framed by
an illustration (Fig. 3.1). The upper portion of the page includes large, orna-
mental script spelling “Geneva,” and the lower portion includes a vignette of a
Geneva street. Although Geneva is not mentioned in this particular scene,
earlier the narrator reveals that Winterbourne is “extremely devoted” to a
“foreign lady” whom he visits in Geneva and “about whom there were some
significant stories” (1892, 6). The allusion to Geneva in this scene draws
attention to the gross double standard of the society that sanctions
Winterbourne’s dalliances but not Daisy’s. As Mrs. Costello, Winterbourne’s
aunt, announces, “Of course a man may know every one. Men are welcome to
the privilege” (1892, 64).
Geneva is evoked again in McVickar’s “Crest of Switzerland,” which
adorns a later scene in which Daisy questions Winterbourne on the reason
he must return to Geneva, and speculates that he is meeting a woman. The
narrator relates that, in her questions “[s]he seemed to [Winterbourne] . . .
an extraordinary mixture of innocence and crudity” (1892, 59).
McVickar includes a number of crests, scrolls, and flags in his Daisy
Miller illustrations, many of which are suggestively placed. Readers famil-
iar with his earlier work, which satirizes bourgeois social conventions and
their implicit regulatory functions, and is likewise populated with crests
and banners and other markers of status, would likely read his social
commentary into his illustrations for Daisy Miller.5 One such illustration,
which appears in McVickar’s Society: The Greatest Show On Earth (1892),
is titled “Some of the Coats of Arms Belonging to the 400.” The
illustration depicts a tree with branches laden with crests and banners,
the roots of which wrap around coins. The banners include phrases such
as “They Toil Not, Neither Do They Spin,” “Ye Are the Clay & We Are
the Potters,” and “Let Us Prey,” each of which points to social and
Fig. 3.1 Harry W. McVickar, “Geneva,” Daisy Miller & An International

Episode, Harper & Brothers, 1892
74 K. NEWELL
economic inequalities, as well as society’s predatory characteristics.

McVickar’s “Crest of Switzerland” thus placed in Daisy Miller acts as a
signifier both of Winterbourne’s destination and of the double standard
that allows him to marvel at Daisy’s public audacity while he behaves even
more audaciously privately.
Gustave Nebel’s illustrations for the 1969 Heritage Press edition also
underscore the “social rumpus” to which Daisy is sacrificed by steadily
increasing the compositional weight of the environment over the course of
the series of illustrations. Many of Nebel’s illustrations feature Daisy as an
object of speculation, and invite readers to simultaneously consider the
environment that fosters such “study.” In the first image of Daisy in the
garden of the Trois Couronnes, she dominates the composition, occupy-
ing the foreground and more than half of the left portion of the frame
(Fig. 3.2). The juxtaposition of blue, pink, and red establishes a comple-
mentary color relationship that draws readers’ eyes to her. As the novel
develops and Daisy’s behavior becomes the subject of scrutiny, environ-
ment, not character, dominates the composition. For example, the scene
in which Daisy descends the hotel staircase en route to her Chillon outing
with Winterbourne positions Daisy on equal footing with her environ-
ment, compositionally, but the complimentary color palette and saturated
background draw attention to the encroaching influence of the environ-
ment. Subsequent illustrations suggest Daisy’s gradual submersion. The
illustration depicting Daisy and Giovanelli’s tête-à-tête at Mrs. Walker’s
spans two pages and shows the ballroom and the library. The brightness of
the ballroom that occupies the entire left-side page draws our attention
away from the smaller, right-side half-page of Daisy and Giovanelli and
toward the society that rejects her. Daisy’s hair coloring and the color of
her clothes in this image align so closely with the palette of the library that
she all but disappears in the image. In the illustration that depicts her
fateful visit to the Colosseum, Daisy is completely enveloped by her
environment. Nebel includes an enlarged arch of the Colosseum in the
foreground; two barely discernable figures appear in the distance, coded as
male and female by their clothing and, by implication, as Giovanelli and
Daisy. (Fig. 3.3).
The 1974 Westvaco edition of Daisy Miller uses sizing, placement, and
repetition of images to suggest social hypocrisies. This edition includes
reproductions of James McNeill Whistler’s and John Singer Sargent’s
paintings to establish a tone for the edition and meet the book designer’s
aim “to project an aura of elegance suitable to the Victorian period”
Fig. 3.2 Gustave Nebel, illustration of Daisy in the garden of the Trois
Couronnes, Daisy Miller, Heritage Press, 1969
76 K. NEWELL
Fig. 3.3 Gustave Nebel, illustration of Daisy in the Colosseum, Daisy Miller,
Heritage Press, 1969
(James 1974, 18). The book’s end pages include black-and-white enlarge-
ments of Whistler’s Cremorne Gardens No. 2 (1875), selected, the editor
explains, as it “illustrates the fashions of the time and the milieu in which
the unfortunate Daisy found herself,” as well as reproductions of his
Arrangement in Black and White: The Young American (1874), as “[i]n
the eyes of the designer, the subject” of the painting “is Daisy Miller,” and
Whistler’s Arrangement in Black: Portrait of F. R. Leyland (1873), as it
“pictures a cultured young man with the traits and certainly the style of
Daisy’s erstwhile suitor, Frederick Winterbourne” (James 1974, 20–21).
The edition includes at least one full-page reproduction of each painting
and at least one enlarged detail of each painting. The “repetition with
variation,” to use Linda Hutcheon’s phrase (2006), creates an echo for
each image that resonates throughout the volume, colliding with the echo
of another image and thus increasing the range of each image’s significations.
For example, the prefatory pages include a small, 4.5 × 2 inch, black-
and-white reproduction of Arrangement in Black and White: The Young
American. The next page includes an enlargement of the figure’s face and
torso that is also 4.5 × 2 inches. A subsequent page includes a full-page
enlargement of the figure’s lower body. The following page presents a full-
page reproduction of the image in full. In this way, the same image is
presented for view from multiple perspectives. We see the female figure in
her entirety, first diminutive compared to the page and then dominating the
page. We also see her fragmented, reduced to distinct halves. This image of
The Young American appears again after the foreword, at the opening of
“Part one: Les Trois Couronnes,” which features a full-page enlargement of
the figure’s face and upper torso. This page’s opposite side features a full-
page black-and-white reproduction of Portrait of F. R. Leyland, thus sug-
gesting the meeting of Daisy and Winterbourne in spatial terms, as well as
the implication that Daisy and Winterbourne are somehow “flip sides” of
each other: he is the outward propriety and inward transgression to her
outward transgression and inward propriety.
Enlarged details from Portrait of F. R. Leyland introduce “Part two:
Rome,” which begins with a full-page enlargement of his torso. The figure’s
details blur in the reproduction, as his suit is black and loses details in
enlargement. Thus the figure’s white cravat and pale hand become the
emphasis. These details connote the link between social convention and
artifice, as suggested by the cravat, and action, as suggested by the hand.
Small reproductions of the full image of Arrangement in Black: Portrait of
F. R. Leyland and the enlargement of the hand detail also close the edition,
78 K. NEWELL
providing not only a complementary bookend to the images of The Young

American that open the edition but also a commentary on Winterbourne’s
role in the outcome of the narrative. Additionally, the close-up of the hand
echoes the enlargement of James’s hand from John Singer Sargent’s
Portrait of Henry James (1913) reproduced in the edition’s preliminary
pages. This echo suggests a link between James and Winterbourne as agents
of action, as responsible for the manipulation of Daisy.
The assessment of Daisy put forth by the illustrated editions corre-
sponds to that of Peter Bogdanovich’s 1974 film adaptation, which like-
wise “clarifies to a greater degree than the novella the question of Daisy’s
innocence,” according to Peggy McCormack (2002, 51), largely through
point of view. The film allows viewers to understand Daisy as innocent
through shot-reverse-shot sequences that draw attention to characters’
responses to her behavior. This technique serves two functions. Many
writers have read the point-of-view shots as stand-ins for James’ detached
narrator and as instrumental in establishing Winterbourne’s subjectivity
(McFarlane 1996; McCormack 2002; Cross 2000). David Cross, for
example, finds these sequences “[m]ost suggestive of the primacy of the
hero’s perspective,” as viewers see “Winterbourne scrutini[ze] Daisy’s face
in an attempt to ‘read’ significance in her features” (2000, 132). However,
these sequences also allow viewers to occupy Daisy’s point of view, how-
ever briefly, which is something James’s novella does not invite. If viewers
are allowed to scrutinize Daisy’s face in one shot, they are, likewise, invited
to scrutinize Winterbourne’s in the reverse-shot. These sequences thus
invite viewers to identify with Daisy, and, in doing so, help to neutralize
negative estimations of her behavior. Like the illustrations, the film also
mocks superfluous social conventions, most notably in the scene in which
Winterbourne and his aunt discuss Daisy while taking tea in the baths. The
bathers’ attempt to maintain decorum while drinking tea, chest high in
water, draws attention to their unrelenting conformity to social custom, as
well as the absurdity of that conformity.
Considered together, these adaptations point to an interest in main-
taining the Daisy/society binary and in settling the question of whether
Daisy is a “dangerous, terrible woman” or a “pretty, American flirt.”
Curiously, no adaptation resolves the question by inverting the binary
and characterizing Daisy as a calculating coquette, nor do any adaptations
leave the question unresolved. Rather, the adaptations all establish Daisy’s
innocence unequivocally. As gateways, the three sets of illustrations pull
readers into the prose (ingress), inviting their curiosity and directing their
attention, but they also pull readers away from the prose (egress) in the
sense that they provide definitive visual details for characters and scenes
and invite readers toward specific interpretations of characters. Though
the illustration styles are all very different, the styles are similar in their use
of spatial and proportional cues to suggest the tension between character
and environment and, in doing so, underscore that between Daisy and the
society that seeks to control her. Additionally, the illustrations draw
attention to the manner in which reading is always inflected by numerous
intertexts, among them the artist’s other works, or, in the case of the 1974
Westavco edition, the meanings and significations a reproduced work has
accumulated from previous contexts and reproductions.
DEPICTING THE OMITTED: WASHINGTON SQUARE

Illustrations can open up a prose text by visualizing aspects of the narrative
that a writer has not included or has rendered ambiguous. Like any adapter,
illustrators face decisions regarding whether and how to depict narrative
events that might be absent from or not explicit in the prose text, but that
seem essential to plot development. Morris Townsend’s marriage proposal
to Catherine Sloper in James’s Washington Square serves as an instructive
example of a situation of this type. James’s Townsend does not explicitly
propose to Catherine. He declares his love to her and speaks of “tak[ing] a
line,” but the reader never witnesses him frame the proposal as a question
(1984, 78). Adapters of the novella need to decide whether to clarify
Morris’s proposal or simply imply it as James does. The two Washington
Square-inspired film adaptations, William Wyler’s The Heiress (1949), an
adaptation of Ruth and Augustus Goetz’s 1947 stage play adaptation of
James’s novel, and Agnieska Holland’s Washington Square (1997), handle
the proposal differently. The 1949 film opts to include a proposal. In the
scene following Morris’s dinner at Washington Square, Wyler’s Morris
(Montgomery Clift) asks Catherine (Olivia de Havilland), “Will you
marry me?” Holland’s film, taking cues from James’s unfolding of the
event, does not include an explicit proposal scene. Rather, the film includes
a scene in which the lovers kiss passionately in the front parlor of
Washington Square and Morris (Ben Chaplin) declares his love and devo-
tion to Catherine (Jennifer Jason Leigh) explicitly and dramatically.
Through this and over several subsequent scenes it becomes understood
that Morris and Catherine are engaged, and that Dr. Sloper (Albert Finney)
opposes this union. During a meeting between Morris and Catherine,
80 K. NEWELL
Catherine tells Morris that her father has promised to withhold his fortune
should she marry without his consent. Morris asserts that he does not care
for the money and demands “Marry me” (compared to his more requesting
tone in James’s, “Will you marry me to-morrow?” [1984, 132]).
Washington Square’s illustrators face similar decisions regarding the pro-
posal. Given that illustrators are typically commissioned for a certain number
of images, they could simply elect to not include the proposal in the set, as
does George du Maurier, for example. Lawrence Beall Smith depicts not the
proposal but Morris’s entrance into the house at the scene’s start. The
narrator describes Morris as “passing his hand through his hair and giving
a glance at the long, narrow mirror which adorned the space between the
two windows and which had at its base a little gilded bracket covered by a
thin slab of white marble” (1971, 56). Smith’s illustration depicts Morris
glancing at himself in the mirror. The image is oriented over Morris’s
shoulder so that the viewer is behind Morris, observing him observe himself.
In depicting the scene from this angle rather than another, Smith under-
scores Morris’s vanity and suggests his duplicitousness. Smith’s next illustra-
tion depicts Catherine discussing her engagement with her father. Smith’s
illustration, “I was afraid you didn’t like Mr. Townsend,” corresponds to the
latter portion of the scene: “She stood before the fire with her hands lightly
clasped in front of her; and her father, leaning back in his chair and looking
up at her, made this remark with a placidity that might have been irritating”
(1971, 64). Dr. Sloper is clearly leaning forward in Smith’s illustration, as the
shadow behind his head emphasizes. James relates that Dr. Sloper is “curious
and impatient” to hear what Catherine has to say but that he “let her take her
own time.” Smith’s illustration betrays to the reader the impatience the
Doctor conceals from Catherine. In representing a moment before the
proposal and a moment after, Smith draws attention to the importance of
this event and what it signifies for both Catherine and Morris: an unimagin-
able future, materially different from anything either has hitherto known.
Additionally, in depicting the event as before-and-after Smith highlights the
moment as a hinge point, germane to the narrative’s subsequent trajectory.
Finally, Smith’s decision to leave the specific proposal unrepresented signals
a visual aesthetic aligned with that of James in allowing readers to fill in their
own image of the event.
In contrast to Smith, Lynton Lamb opts to represent the proposal
explicitly in an illustration titled “The Proposal,” and in so doing forces
readers to acknowledge that this proposal has taken place, despite its
absence from James’s narrative (Fig. 3.4). Curiously, Lamb’s Catherine
Fig. 3.4 Lynton Lamb, “The Proposal,” Washington Square, The Folio Society,
1963
82 K. NEWELL
does not seem all that receptive to this proposal, nor does she seem to
be someone whose passions prevent her from seeing “her situation all
clearly before her” (1963, 58). Rather, her facial expression is staid,
almost vacant. Morris stands behind her, looking at her, while
Catherine looks out at the reader. In depicting the scene in this manner,
Lamb seems to provide several degrees of resistance. In including this
moment Lamb signals an unwillingness to be confined to James’s
narrative and asserts his artistic right to impose his own interpretation
on the text. Yet in depicting Catherine as seemingly nonplussed by the
proposal he denies readers the experience of witnessing her passion and
pleasure—of seeing her react in a manner that challenges James’s char-
acterization of her. Lamb’s illustration, like Smith’s, also exposes the
ways in which readers unquestioningly fill in narrative gaps.
IMAGINING THE UNIMAGINABLE: STRANGE CASE

OF DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE
Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
presents a similar challenge of representation to illustrators but one
with very different hurdles and consequences than those presented by
Washington Square. While Stevenson provides ample description of set-
ting and character relationships for his novella, he is famously vague in
his description of Hyde. His ambiguity on the particulars of Hyde’s
appearance has sparked numerous interpretations on the part of visual
adapters. In relating the particulars of his encounter with Hyde to
Mr. Utterson, Mr. Enfield speaks indirectly, unable to reify Hyde: “It
wasn’t like a man; it was like some damned Juggernaut” (2003, 9). Enfield
tells Utterson,
He is not easy to describe. There is something wrong with his appearance;

something displeasing, something downright detestable. I never saw a man I
so disliked, and yet I scarce know why. He must be deformed somewhere;
he gives a strong feeling of deformity, although I couldn’t specify the point.
He’s an extraordinary looking man, and yet I really can name nothing out of
the way. No, sir; I can make no hand of it; I can’t describe him. And it’s not
want of memory; for I declare I can see him this moment. (2003, 11–12)
Despite Enfield’s inability to describe Hyde clearly, he can affirm, “I had

taken a loathing to my gentleman at first sight” (2003, 9). Utterson,
too, finds himself unable to describe Hyde after his own encounter at
the door. He reflects:
Mr. Hyde was pale and dwarfish, he gave an impression of deformity with-
out any nameable malformation, he had a displeasing smile, he had borne
himself to the lawyer with a sort of murderous mixture of timidity and
boldness, and he spoke with a husky, whispering and somewhat broken
voice; all these were points against him, but not all of these together
could explain the hitherto unknown disgust, loathing and fear with which
Mr. Utterson regarded him. (2003, 17)
In his struggle to narrow the description of the man who bears “Satan’s
signature upon [his] face,” Utterson offers, “Something troglodytic, shall we
say?” (2003, 17). Enfield and Utterson are not alone in their inability to
describe Hyde. In the wake of Danvers Carew’s murder, Utterson and the
police officer discover that “the few who could describe him differed widely,
as common observers will. Only on one point, were they agreed; and that was
the haunting sense of unexpressed deformity with which the fugitive
impressed his beholders” (2003, 24). Lanyon suffers the same failing of
language when he encounters Hyde in his office: “Rather, as there was
something abnormal and misbegotten in the very essence of the creature
that now faced me—something seizing, surprising and revolting” (2003, 45).
These descriptions, vague as they are individually, posit an indecipherable
collective impression of one of the novel’s main characters. While descriptors
such as “pale and dwarfish” and “troglodytic” provide some visual informa-
tion, “strong feeling of deformity,” “impression of deformity,” and “unex-
pressed deformity” do not. The ambiguity of Stevenson’s description allows
for broad interpretations of what precisely it is about Hyde that sparks such
repulsion in all who encounter him (all but Jekyll, that is).6 Hyde’s resistance to
description reflects his resistance to categorization. Monica Germanà has
drawn attention to the border-blurring in Stevenson’s narrative landscape
and Hyde’s relative mobility and license: “The various narratives that Jekyll
comprises do not exist autonomously, but rely on the cross references that each
presents to the others for aesthetic and narrative purposes. The effect is one of
saturation, excess, and grotesque amplification: bleeding into each of the
stories, Hyde, by definition, exceeds boundaries” (2011, 98). For Germanà,
“The discrepancies in the responses all characters in the story have to their
vision of Hyde are suggestive of all that is unutterable about Hyde; he is a black
hole, a sublime abyss, a missing link in a chain of knowledge” (2011, 108–09).
84 K. NEWELL
Such ambiguities pose a challenge for visual adaptations, many of which

opt for concrete signifiers of malformation over sublime suggestions of the
unutterable. Film adaptations have resolved the challenge in a number of
ways, choosing to depict Jekyll-Hyde as visually, morally, and behaviorally
polarized—the refined, conservative Jekyll and the ape-like, evil Hyde—or
more subtly as two variations of self (Germanà 2011). Illustrated editions
of Stevenson’s novel and graphic novel adaptations reflect a similar bifur-
cation: some illustrators opt for polarized characterizations of Jekyll and
Hyde, while others opt for subtler characterizations. An even smaller
group opts against depicting Hyde at all.
Richard Mansfield’s interpretation of Jekyll-Hyde for the stage adaptation
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1887) set the tone for subsequent cinematic and
print-based representations in depicting the characters as polar opposites.
A well-known double-exposure photograph of Mansfield as Jekyll-Hyde
demonstrates the extremes of his performance. Mansfield’s well-groomed
Jekyll stands upright, his right arm and gaze raised to the sky. Meanwhile
Mansfield’s Hyde crouches contortedly, emerging from Jekyll translucent in
the double exposure. Mansfield’s Hyde is bent over, rising only to Jekyll’s
waist. His features are shadowed and his hair disheveled. This bifurcated
visual coding sets the tone for early film adaptations. Lucius J. Henderson’s
1912, John S. Robertson’s 1920, and Rouben Mamoulian’s 1931 film
adaptations, for example, all take cues from Utterson’s description of Hyde
as “something troglodytic” and shape Hyde with stooped posture, a pro-
nounced forehead and heavy brow, and generally exaggerated features.
Many illustrated editions follow this practice. Edmund J. Sullivan, for
example, depicts Jekyll as tall with erect posture and white hair in his 1928
illustrations. Hyde, by contrast, is hunched and scowling. He has dark hair
and a heavy brow. Hyde’s deformity is suggested in the awkward angles of his
limbs. His arms appear both too long and too angular for his broad chest. His
head appears too small. This duality is evident in Sullivan’s depiction of the
transformation, titled “The Features Seemed to Melt and Alter.” This image
shows a single figure split into the two halves of Jekyll and Hyde, and the
Hyde half to have disproportionate head to shoulder space—the shoulder
seems to emerge from the head. The mouth is contorted and open, and the
eyes are dramatically slanted upward. S.G. Hulme Beaman’s 1930 illustra-
tions also depict Hyde’s deformity in terms of posture. Beaman’s Hyde is
small and hunched, his knees bent and buckled, his hands contorted in
arthritic claws. Beaman includes an illustration of the transformation also
titled “The Features Seemed to Melt and Alter” (Fig. 3.5). Beaman uses
Fig. 3.5 S.G. Hulme Beaman, “The Features Seemed to Melt and Alter,” The
Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, John Lane and the Bodley Head, 1930
86 K. NEWELL
superimposition to achieve this effect—layering an almost translucent image

of Jekyll over that of the reeling Hyde (a nod, perhaps, to the double-
exposure photograph of Richard Mansfield). This is the first image in which
Beaman develops Hyde’s facial features. Hyde has dark, straight hair of
medium length that jaggedly frames his gaunt face. His mouth in this
image is open, revealing many missing teeth. His eyes are large and wild in
expression and his nose pointed but, in the image, not very different from
Jekyll’s own nose and eyes. A subsequent image, “I Saw For the First Time
the Appearance of Edward Hyde,” depicts Hyde more clearly and locates his
deformity in a small head and irregularly sized features. Edward Wilson’s
1952 depiction of Hyde for the Heritage Press also corresponds more closely
to that of the hunched, troglodytic vision common to many other adapta-
tions, as does Cam Kennedy’s for the graphic novel adaptation in 2008, and
Andrzej Klimowski and Danusia Schejbal’s in 2009.
Other visual representations of Hyde have been less heavy-handed and
rooted more in Stevenson’s suggestion of an ambiguous source of misgiving
and horror associated with Hyde. For this type, Germanà has noted, “[t]he
shift between respectable Jekyll and ‘evil’ Hyde is imperceptible, evoking
the sense of uncanny unease which emerges from Stevenson’s text” (2011,
101). Victor Fleming’s 1941 film adaptation provides an early example
of a more subtle interpretation of the Jekyll-Hyde duality. The physical
differences between Jekyll and Hyde are evident but not so extremely
coded as in the 1912 (Thanhouser), 1920 (Paramount/Artcraft), and 1931
(Paramount) adaptations. Fleming’s Hyde has darker hair and more protrud-
ing teeth than Jekyll, but his posture is not coded as ape-like. Illustrated
editions have also opted for more subtle depiction. W. A. Dwiggins’s 1929
illustrations make little distinction between the physicality of Hyde and any of
the other male characters. In Dwiggins’s first image of Hyde he stands at the
door, key in hand. Dwiggins’s Hyde is tall and slender with straight posture—
certainly neither physically deformed or troglodytic (Fig. 3.6). Were it not for
the key he holds to the door, readers might not know him as Hyde.
Dwiggins’s depiction of Hyde conforms to Stevenson’s suggestion that the
deformity people assign to Hyde results more from interaction than his
physical presence. In depicting Hyde as not demonstrably different from
other characters physically, Dwiggins’s illustrations draw attention to the
perceptual and psychological impact of Hyde on others. This focus is most
evident in an illustration that accompanies the scene in which Jekyll transforms
into Hyde without the elixir, and, unable to return home for fear of being
turned over to the police, enters a hotel to write to Lanyon to request the
Fig. 3.6 W. A. Dwiggins, illustration of Hyde at the door, Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll
and Mr. Hyde, Random House, 1929
chemicals. Jekyll’s confession explains, “At the inn, as I entered, I looked

about me with so black a countenance as made the attendants tremble; not a
look did they exchange in my presence; but obsequiously took my orders”
(1929, 154). Dwiggins’s illustration depicts Hyde walking into the hotel and
he orients the perspective from behind Hyde and over his shoulder, so the
emphasis is the horrified reactions of the Inn’s employees.
Illustrated editions have an advantage over cinematic adaptations in
that they can also choose to not represent Hyde at all and thus continue
88 K. NEWELL
the ambiguity set up in the novel, and resist the impulse of illustration as
“bringing to light, as a spelunker lights up a cave,” to borrow from J. Hillis
Miller (1992, 61), and deny the reader’s scopophilic desire to see Hyde.
Barry Moser’s 1990 illustrations, for example, leave Hyde’s physical appear-
ance ambiguous. Moser chooses instead to allude to Hyde indirectly in
“Hyde’s Signature,” “Hyde’s Hand,” “Hyde on the Street,” “Misgiving of
the Flesh,” “Edward Hyde,” “Hyde’s Fancy,” and, as Hyde is the agent of
the destruction, “The Destroyed Portrait of Jekyll’s Father.” Though lar-
gely absent visually, such titles and their corresponding images evoke
Hyde’s presence obliquely. Of his decision to not show Hyde’s face,
Moser explains in the edition’s afterword: “It was more important to stay
in keeping with the text and, like Stevenson, not show Hyde’s face. Easy
and exciting as it is for me to create sensational and grotesque pictures,
I chose finally to show the reader only that Hyde carries a heavy cane, that
he is ‘deformed and decayed,’ and that he moves in darkness.” Like
Dwiggins, Moser suggests the impact of Hyde’s physical presence through
others’ reactions to Hyde. The illustration titled “Misgivings of the Flesh”
depicts an unidentified man looking out at the reader. The man holds a
raised lantern in the manner of someone trying to see something more
clearly. His furrowed brow and wide-open eyes suggest emotions ranging
from surprise to horror to worry to anguish. The exact emotion becomes
less important than the pronounced reaction. The image is placed in the
scene in which Lanyon witnesses Hyde’s transformation into Jekyll. The
title, however, is taken from the passage of Jekyll’s “Confession” in which
he relates that “I have observed that when I wore the semblance of Edward
Hyde, none could come near to me at first without a visible misgiving of the
flesh.” Thus placed the illlustration foreshadows Lanyon’s own horror,
which he experiences on the next page. Interestingly, juxtaposed against
the passage that includes the phrase “misgivings of the flesh” is the illustra-
tion “Edward Hyde”—Moser’s only full-body portrait of Hyde (Fig. 3.7).
As Moser indicates in his afterword, his Hyde is visibly deformed and
decayed, but Hyde’s heavy outer clothes and the shadow cast over his face
by his top hat obscure the exact nature of that deformity and degree of
decay.
Some adapters align Hyde’s deformity and abnormality with specific
bestial and socially aberrant behaviors. Moser’s illustration, “Hyde’s
Fancy,” arguably his most troubling and abstract woodcut in the series,
is a montage of body parts that includes a woman’s naked torso, a child’s
face, a naked, prepubescent lower body with one leg covered in a stocking,
Fig. 3.7 Barry Moser, “Edward Hyde,” The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and
Mr. Hyde, Pennyroyal Press, 1990
90 K. NEWELL
and a skull (Fig. 3.8). Moser explains that, in this illustration, “I mean to
suggest ‘pure evil’—rape, murder, pedophilia” (1990). Stevenson does
not associate specific acts with Hyde and refers to Hyde’s predilections
only indirectly through Jekyll’s confession. Jekyll admits to “a certain
gaiety of disposition” and tendency toward “irregularities.” After the
first transformation: “I was conscious of a heady recklessness, a current
of disordered sensual images running like a millrace in my fancy, a solution
of the bonds of obligation, an unknown but not an innocent freedom of
the soul. I knew myself, at the first breath of this new life, to be more
wicked, tenfold more wicked, sold a slave to my original evil” (1990, 126).
Jekyll confesses that
The pleasures which I made haste to seek in my disguise were, as I have said,
undignified; I would scarce use a harder term. But in the hands of Edward
Hyde, they soon began to turn toward the monstrous. When I would come
back from these excursions, I was often plunged into a kind of wonder at my
vicarious depravity. This familiar that I called out of my own soul, and sent
forth alone to do his good pleasure, was a being inherently malign and
villainous; his every act and thought centered on self; drinking pleasure with
bestial avidity from any degree of torture to another; relentless like a man of
stone. (1990, 133–34)
Joyce Carol Oates writes in her foreword to the edition: “That Hyde’s
frenzied pleasures are even in part specifically sexual is never confirmed,
given the Victorian cast of the narrative itself, but, to extrapolate from an
incident recounted by an eye-witness, one is led to suspect they are.”
Oates then draws attention to the scene in which Hyde “tramples” the
young girl and that “[m]uch is made subsequently of the girl’s ‘scream-
ing’: and of the fact that money is paid to her family as recompense for her
violation” (1990).
Lorenzo Mattotti and Jerry Kramsky also opt for a vague visual treatment
of Hyde for their graphic novel adaptation Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
(2002). Their Hyde appears elongated and expressionist, always in motion.
Like that of other adapters, their Hyde takes shape from the horror of his
actions rather than from specific physical details. Mattotti and Kramsky
also indicate Hyde’s pedophilic predilections in their portrayal of the scene
in which he tramples the girl, as well as in other scenes exclusive to
the graphic novel. Upon colliding with Hyde, the girl, identified as
“Innocent,” pleads, “Oh! Who are you? Please let me through. Daddy’s
not well. I must fetch the doctor.” Hyde, depicted in the same frame,
Fig. 3.8 Barry Moser, “Hyde’s Fancy,” The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and
Mr. Hyde, Pennyroyal Press, 1990
92 K. NEWELL
replies, “Oh, what a pity . . . and you were sent out all alone?” Hyde’s
mimicking of the girl’s “oh” coupled with his comment on her being
“alone” sets up his predatory intention, which is confirmed in the next two
frames in which he beats the girl with his cane. In the first of the two
frames Hyde stands behind the girl, holding her by her hair as he raises the
cane against her protest, “Ouch! Let me go!” In the second, which shows
the same action but from a high angle, Hyde replies, “No. You stay right
here and play with me . . . let poor Hyde play!” The next frame depicts only
Hyde, still holding the cane and, the image implies, still beating the girl as
he urges “Haaa! Don’t cry like this, child, it breaks my heart.” In the next
few frames Hyde is interrupted by an approaching group and he runs off,
saying “I’m sorry, little one, but I must go.” The implication that the girl’s
molestation is both physical and sexual is reinforced by the scene’s closing
narration—“We are deformed, besieged by unanswered questions.
Nothing lives in us but fear and hatred”—and subsequent scenes that
depict Hyde’s deviant sexual behavior and misogyny more explicitly. The
last act depicted involves the vicious rape and murder of Frau Elda, the
wife of a diplomat with whom Jekyll has had business dealings, who
propositions him sexually during a party. The utter destruction of Frau
Elda’s body, which appears eviscerated and dismembered in the scene’s
final frame, may allude to the Jack the Ripper accusations that faced
Richard Mansfield when audiences felt his on-stage characterization of
Hyde was too convincing to be acting. The inclusion of this character and
scene recalls the added female characters in the film adaptations, who also
pose sexual threats that need to be controlled and subdued.
The casting of Hyde’s predilections in terms of sexual deviance and
presenting him as a sexual threat has basis in the early stage and film
adaptations. Although Stevenson’s novel includes few female characters,
many adapters, beginning with the 1887 stage adaptation, add a love
interest for Jekyll, who eventually becomes a target for Hyde’s sexual
threat (see also Germanà 2011, 99). The resulting power triangle is
often cast in terms of control and gender performance. Speaking of the
1887 stage play Martin Danahay explains:
Where Stevenson’s story represents male violence, the Mansfield version

turns the plot into one in which the woman must help the man ‘control
himself’; that is, she must civilize the ‘beast within’ of male sexuality. Hyde is
the beast opposite Agnes’s ‘angel’ . . . who threatens Agnes sexually, and her
task is to help Jekyll keep his alter ego under control. (2012, 63)
As Danahay points out, these changes “radically reorien[t] the play

towards questions of male sexuality and violence toward women. The
combination of sex and violence was from this point on incorporated
into all film versions of Jekyll and Hyde” (2012, 63). This threat is
incorporated into many subsequent adaptations, the 1931 and 1941
films among them.
THE BIG PICTURE: ILLUSTRATION AND ADAPTATION NETWORKS

Illustrated editions contribute to a work’s adaptation network multiple visual
interpretations that create (in collusion with film, television, and stage adap-
tations) a particular cultural impression of the work. Comparisons of succes-
sive sets of illustrations in illustrated editions of canonical works will quite
often show the same moment or scene being illustrated again and again. The
data from such comparisons indicates what “counts” in a particular work and
which aspects of a work mold the popular imagination. As is to be expected,
illustrations tend to represent “hinge” points. Thus, most illustrated editions
of Washington Square include the scene in which Catherine and Morris meet,
Morris’s “proposal,” Catherine’s grief over Morris’s abandonment, and
Catherine and Morris’s reunion at the novel’s conclusion. Similarly, most
illustrated editions of Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde include visual
references to the mysterious door on which Enfield remarks, Hyde’s tram-
pling of the young girl, the murder of Danvers Carew, Utterson and Enfield
talking with Jekyll at the window of his laboratory, Jekyll’s transformation
into Hyde (or Hyde’s into Jekyll), and Jekyll-Hyde seated on the bench in
Regent’s Park. However, an examination of iterations across a network
reveals other patterns as well. For example, most illustrated editions of
Washington Square also include an illustration of Aunt Penniman modeling
a cashmere shawl that Catherine brings home from her European tour.
Though a seemingly insignificant narrative event, du Maurier, Smith, and
Lamb each depict it. This inclusion is particularly noticeable in the case of
du Maurier’s and Lamb’s editions, for which illustrations are more limited
in number than in Smith’s. The scene becomes established as significant
through successive acts of adaptation.
Returning to James’s suggestion that the ubiquity of illustrated editions
of literary works might “inspire in the lover of literature certain lively
questions as to the future of that institution,” we might think instead of
the manner in which illustrated editions bolster the future of literature by
attracting the attention of new and prospective readers, by functioning as
94 K. NEWELL
their gateway into the work. Illustrated editions illuminate tensions and
nuances of a work not evident in a prose reading alone and, more impor-
tantly to my thinking, indicate the reiterative process by which the cultural
knowledge and memory of a particular work is constructed. In this way,
illustrated editions also function as gateways between distinct iterations of
a given work. For James, “[a]nything that relieves responsible prose of the
duty of being . . . good enough, interesting enough and, if the question be
of picture, pictorial enough, above all in itself, does it the worst of
services” (1934, 332). Adaptation networks speak more to audiences’
identifications, sympathies, questions, and frustrations than to problems
of inadequate prose, and suggest that no work is “all in itself” enough.
Audiences consistently want more: more explanation, as in the case of
James’s readers, more clarification, more expansion, more story—they
want more of the same but different, but not too different.
NOTES
1. I have explored these ideas elsewhere: see Newell, “‘You don’t know about
me without you have read a book’: Authenticity in Adaptations of Adventures
of Huckleberry Finn,” Literature/Film Quarterly 41.4 (2013): 303–16;
“Illustration, Adaptation and the Development of Frankenstein’s Visual
Lexicon,” in Adapting Frankenstein: The Monster’s Eternal Lives in Popular
Culture, edited by Dennis Cutchins and Dennis Perry (Manchester University
Press, Forthcoming); “Adaptation and Illustration: A Cross-Disciplinary
Approach,” in Oxford Handbook of Adaptation Studies, edited by Thomas
Leitch (Oxford University Press, Forthcoming); and “What We Talk About
When We Talk About Adaptation” (PhD diss., University of Delaware,
2006), 1–50.
2. Several writers provide comprehensive overviews of this tendency; see
Mitchell (1986) and Elliott (2003), particularly Chapters 1 and 2, which
offer a digest of dominant trends of theorizing words and images in interart
discourse.
3. Du Maurier’s illustrations first appeared in The Cornhill Magazine (June–
November, 1880).
4. Adam Sonstegard also addresses Daisy’s absence from McVickar’s illustra-
tions, but his assessment of the effect differs from my own. He finds that the
combination of James’s “tutelarly narration” and McVickar’s “exclusive
illustrations gently compel readers to side with” characters that embody
conservative social mores and “not with subversives” like Daisy Miller,
“Discreetly Depicting ‘an Outrage’: Graphic Illustration and ‘Daisy
Miller’’s Reputation,” Henry James Review 29, no. 1 (Winter 2008): 77.
5. McVickar’s 1905 novel, Reptiles, also includes numerous moments of

etiquette breaches, which suggests that he sought to further interrogate
Daisy Miller’s themes of control and social- and self-policing. With the
exception of protagonist Irene North, McVickar’s female characters are,
like Daisy, non-conforming, yet, unlike Daisy, they are highly calculating.
The contrast between their innocent appearance and covert transgressions
of etiquette and Daisy’s transgressive appearance and covert innocence
indicates McVickar’s interest in social lines and distinctions between
public and private etiquette, as does the advice he offers in his mock
etiquette manual Matrimonial Advice (New York: Geo. M. Allen
Company, 1893).
6. Charles King comments, “What is remarkable about Stevenson’s central plot
premise is that it allows any number of variant themes to be constructed on
its basic framework,” “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: A Filmography,” Journal of
Popular Film and Television 25, no. 1 (1997): 11. The same is true of Hyde.
The ambiguity of Stevenson’s characterization allows for any number of
variant characteristics to be grafted onto his basic armature.
REFERENCES
Alpers, Svetlana. The Art of Describing: Dutch Art in the Seventeenth Century.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983.
Barthes, Roland. Image—Music—Text. Translated by Stephen Heath. New York:
Hill and Wang, 1977.
Congdon, Charles T. “Over-Illustration.” North American Review 139 (1884):
480–491. JSTOR.
Crain, Patricia. Story of A: The Alphabetization of America from The New England
Primer to The Scarlet Letter. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000.
Cross, David. “Framing the ‘Sketch’: Bogdanovich’s Daisy Miller.” In Henry
James on Stage and Screen, edited by John R. Bradley, 127–142. New York:
Palgrave, 2000.
Daisy Miller. Directed by Peter Bogdanovich. Paramount, 1974.
Danahay, Martin. “Richard Mansfield, Jekyll and Hyde and the History of Special
Effects.” Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film 39, no. 2 (Winter 2012): 54–72.
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Written by Thomas Russell Sullivan. 1887.
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Directed by Lucius Henderson. Thanhouser, 1912.
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Directed by John S. Robertson. Paramount/Artcraft,
1920.
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Directed by Rouben Mamoulian. Paramount, 1931.
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Directed by Victor Fleming. MGM, 1941.
Elliott, Kamilla. Rethinking the Novel/Film Debate. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2003.
96 K. NEWELL
Fisher, Judith L. “Image versus Text in the Illustrated Novels of William Makepeace
Thackeray.” In Victorian Literature and the Victorian Visual Imagination,
edited by Carol T. Christ and John O. Jordan, 60–87. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1995.
“Gateway, n. 1.” OED Online. Oxford University Press, June 2016.
Germanà, Monica. “Becoming Hyde: Excess, Pleasure and Cloning.” Gothic
Studies 13, no. 2 (November 2011): 98–115.
Goodman, Nelson. Languages of Art. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1976.
Grimly, Gris. Gris Grimly’s Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus / assembled from
the original text by Mary Shelley in three volumes. New York: Balzer + Bray, 2013.
The Heiress. Directed by William Wyler. Paramount, 1949.
Hodnett, Edward. Image & Text: Studies in the Illustration of English Literature.
Aldershot: Scolar, 1982.
Horne, Philip, ed. Henry James: A Life in Letters. New York: Penguin, 1999.
James, Henry. Daisy Miller and An International Episode. Illustrated by H.
W. McVickar. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1892.
———. Daisy Miller: A Study. Illustrated by Gustave Nebel. New York: Heritage
Press, 1969.
———. Daisy Miller. N.p.: Westvaco, 1974.
———, ed. “Preface to The Golden Bowl.” In Art of the Novel: Critical Prefaces,
327–348. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1934.
———. Washington Square. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1880.
———. Washington Square. Illustrated by Lynton Lamb. London: The Folio
Society, 1963.
———. Washington Square. Illustrated by Lawrence Beall Smith. New York:
Heritage Press, 1971.
———. Washington Square. New York: Penguin, 1984.
———. Washington Square. Illustrated by George du Maurier. New York: Book-
of-the-Month Club, 1996.
King, Stephen. Introduction to Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley,
Illustrated by Bernie Wrightson. 6–9. New York: Marvel, 1983.
Kooistra, Lorraine Janzen. The Artist as Critic: Bitextuality in Fin-de-Siècle
Illustrated Books. Aldershot: Scolar, 1995.
Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim. Laocoön: An Essay Upon the Limits of Painting and Poetry
[1766]. Translated by Ellen Frothingham. Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1874.
Male, Alan. Illustration: A Theoretical & Contextual Perspective. Lausanne: AVA,
2007.
McCormack, Peggy. “Reexamining Bogdanovich’s Daisy Miller.” In Henry James
Goes to the Movies, edited by Susan M. Griffin, 34–59. Lexington: University
Press of Kentucky, 2002.

McVickar, H.W. Society: The Greatest Show On Earth: Society. New York: Harper &
Brothers, 1892.
Miller, Hillis, J. Illustration. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992.
Mitchell, W.J.T. Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1986.
———. Picture Theory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994.
Nodelman, Perry. Words About Pictures: The Narrative Art of Children’s Picture
Books. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1988.
Oates, Joyce Carol. Foreword to The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, by
Robert Louis Stevenson. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990.
Peeters, Heidi. “Multimodality and Its Modes in Novelization.” Image &
Narrative 11, no. 1 (2010): 118–129. http://www.imageandnarrative.be/
index.php/imagenarrative/article/view/59.
Skilton, David. “The Relation between Illustration and Text in the Victorian
Novel: A New Perspective.” In Word and Visual Imagination: Studies in the
Interaction of English Literature and the Visual Arts, edited by Karl Josef
Höltgen, Peter M. Daly, and Wolfgang Lottes, 303–325. Erlangen:
Universitätsbund Erlangen-Nürnberg, 1988.
Steig, Michael. Dickens and Phiz. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978.
Stevenson, Robert Louis. [The] Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
Illustrated by Edmund Sullivan. London: Macmillan, 1928.
———. [The] Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Illustrated by W. A.
Dwiggins. New York: Random House, 1929.
———. [The] Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Illustrated by S. G. Hulme
Beaman. London: Bodley Head, 1930.
———. [The] Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Illustrated by Edward A.
Wilson. Norwalk: Heritage Press, 1952.
———. [The] Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Illustrated by Barry Moser.
Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990.
———. [The Strange Case of] Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: A Graphic Novel.
Illustrated and adapted by Lorenzo Mattotti and Jerry Kramsky. New York:
NBM, 2002.
———. Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Edited by Katherine Linehan.
New York: W. W. Norton, 2003.
———. [The] Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Illustrated by Cam
Kennedy and adapted by Alan Grant. Waverley: Waverley Books, 2008.
———. [The Strange Case of ] Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: A Graphic Novel.
Illustrated and adapted by Andrzej Klimowksi and Danusia Schejbal. New
York: Sterling, 2009.
98 K. NEWELL
Thomas, Julia. Pictorial Victorians: The Inscription of Values in Word and Image.
Athens: Ohio University Press, 2004.
Washington Square. Directed by Agnieska Holland. Alchemy Filmworks, 1997.
Witte, Stephen.. “Context, Text, Intertext: Toward a Constructivist Semiotic of
Writing.” Written Communication 9 (1992): 237–308.
Wrightson, Berni[e], Illustrator. Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley.
York: Marvel, 1983.
CHAPTER 4
Literary Maps and the Creation of a Legend
In language evocative of a travel brochure, the copy advertising The Ernest

Hemingway Adventure Map of the World (Aaron Blake, 1986) promises
excitement:
Follow Hemingway through the backstreet Parisian haunts of his expatri-

ate years to the cafes he frequented with F. Scott Fitzgerald and Gertrude
Stein. Then travel to Pamplona to experience the dangerous running of the
bulls through the walled streets of the small Spanish town full of passion
and intrigue. The Adventure Map transports you all around the romantic
world of Papa’s fiction, as well as to the places where he lived, worked
and played, the places where he created and lived the ideal of the manliest
man of all.
The map’s blue, green, and beige color palette gives the impression of vast
expanses of ocean and land, and its figures and scenes—which include a
matador waving his red cape at a charging bull, a bird of prey swooping
toward the viewer, a leopard, and a zebra—collectively support this promise.
Like many forms of adaptation, however, what the Hemingway map pro-
mises differs from what it can deliver. Users cannot really “follow”
Hemingway nor can the map “transport” its readers any more than a film
can be a book or a theme park ride a movie. What the map offers is an
invitation to imagine that one could follow Hemingway, if only one could
follow Hemingway. What it delivers is a particular version of Hemingway: a
visual, cartographic interpretation of “Hemingway the Author-Adventurer.”

100 K. NEWELL
The slippage in the map cover’s language between imagination and

reality carries over into its legend, which, in turn, provides a glimpse of the
map’s intended audience:
We have shaped The Adventure Map to the geographical range of Hemingway’s

fiction, so that even armchair adventurers can visit the exotic, and even danger-
ous, places Papa wrote about. And, for the real Hemingway buffs, we’ve
included representative lists of Hemingway’s residences in the Americas and in
Paris, as well as the locations of a few of the “Lost Generation” hangouts of
his time.
As we see here, the publishers appear to have at least two distinct but related
audiences in mind: “armchair adventurers” for whom adventure, the exotic,
and danger trump Hemingway, and “the real Hemingway buffs,” for whom
Hemingway and his specific biographical details are paramount. Of course,
a good number of map-readers are likely to embody both categories. The
map offers both groups the opportunity to experience the familiar differ-
ently (e.g., to experience familiar geography through the lens of danger
and/or Hemingway; to experience what is familiar in Hemingway through
the lens of geography) and to have their understanding of the writer and his
world visually expanded by this new format.
Importantly, this map is The Ernest Hemingway Adventure Map of the
World, rather than just any adventure map, and, as such, it reorders the
world in a manner that reflects his life and achievements. Because it
configures Hemingway’s landscape in terms of both the geographic and
literary range of his work, the map includes only five of the seven con-
tinents: North and South America, Africa, Europe, and Asia—those on
which Hemingway’s adventures took place. The map features circular and
square insets around its perimeter that highlight regions of significance to
Hemingway’s life or writing (i.e., Michigan, Spain, Italy, Africa, Paris,
Cuba). The areas of the enlargement are freckled with numbers that
correspond to the numbers of the map’s legend, which, in turn, provides
information regarding that particular spot. Likewise, the map’s illustra-
tions support a very specific vision of Hemingway as “the manliest man of
all.” The central image shows him, rifle in hand, standing beside a rhino-
ceros. Other illustrations depict him kneeling with a rifle, standing beside a
recently caught marlin, measuring the span of a deer’s antlers, seated at a
typewriter, and posed beside Fidel Castro. Although a vision of the world
configured through Hemingway may be new, the vision of Hemingway is
LITERARY MAPS AND THE CREATION OF A LEGEND 101
less so, as many of the illustrations are based on well-known photographs

of the writer.
Cartography, like other modes of adaptation, is invested in the con-
struction of a dominant vision, and in creating the illusion that that vision
is somehow neutral or unmotivated (Wood 2010). Just as we may unwit-
tingly identify the first version (or first publicized version) of a work as the
“original” or “source,” we may mistakenly assume that a map is an
“accurate” representation of place. As discussed in previous chapters,
adaptation involves processes of interpretation, selection, and presenta-
tion. Often, the marketing of a particular adaptation fosters an impression
of the adaptation as a neutral presentation of the adapted work, minimally
effected by medial transformation (e.g., “Now a Major Motion Picture!”
“Coming to a Theater Near You”). Of course, all adaptation is shaped by
very specific visions and agendas. When we consider a work’s adaptation
network, we find particular aspects being singled out and repeated in each
iteration. The reiterative practice culls what “counts” from what does not
and in so doing shapes a particular vision of a work. Implicit in carto-
graphic practice is the preexistence of a dominant map against which
individual maps define themselves. Cartographers make decisions regard-
ing content and composition that are motivated by maps’ particular
agendas. The dominant map is evoked through the individual map’s
recasting of dominant iconography (Wood 2010, 39–44). In this case,
the iconography of cartographic representations of the world is recast to
support a vision of Hemingway. The dominant map evoked by literary
maps is not exclusively geographic, but includes the “map” of the literary
work, author, genre or period as cultural artifact. Readers make sense of
the Hemingway map by drawing on previous cartographic experiences, as
well as previous experiences with Hemingway’s works and other “adven-
ture” maps. In conveying three-dimensional spatial information in a two-
dimensional medium, all maps are adaptive; literary maps foreground their
adaptive characteristics through visual, pictorial, and spatial representa-
tions of writers, characters, settings, and scenes from preexisting creative
works, as well as in their attempt to recreate and, in some cases, create the
experience of a particular narrative landscape.
If illustrations function as gateways for a work, as discussed in Chapter
Three, we might think of literary maps as functioning as legends, in
multiple senses of the term. First, the maps offer their own versions or
“legends” of a story, be it the story of Hemingway’s adventures or of Sir
Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe or the story of literary Paris in the first decades of
102 K. NEWELL
the twentieth century. Second, the maps function as keys to explain works,
writers, or the creative output of a particular region or movement. The
view offered by the maps, however, is a tourist’s view in that they provide
only the highlights and only certain highlights. For example, while the
Hemingway map includes a picture of the writer and Castro superimposed
over Cuba, Cuba is not grouped with Paris and Pamplona in the copy,
likely because in 1986, the year the map was printed, relations between the
United States and Cuba were highly contentious. Similarly, the iconic
vision of white-bearded Hemingway is evident only in the small illustra-
tion of him and Castro. Hemingway’s four wives are also absent from the
map, though each lived and traveled with him throughout Europe, Africa,
Cuba and the United States. The Hemingway that loved boxing, boozing,
and polydactyl cats is also absent from this map. Of course, such selectivity
is common for all modes of adaptation, as we have seen in previous
chapters. Adaptation isolates particular scenes and moments and funnels
narrative through a particular point of view. The literary maps provide
readers with one view, one lens through which to read a particular subject,
and they corral all information according to that lens.
This chapter begins with an overview of the genre of literary maps and the
manner in which they organize information, as well as their target uses. I
then turn to examine two sets of literary maps as representative of two types
of cartographic adaptation: the “Map-of-A-Book” calendars issued by the
Harris-Seybold / Harris-Intertype Company from 1953 to 1964 and the
maps produced by the Aaron Blake Company in the 1980s. Both sets are
designed primarily for readers familiar with the subject matter and seconda-
rily for new readers.1 Like all forms of adaptation, these literary maps offer
users “the pleasure of repetition with variation” (Hutcheon 2006, 4). I
distinguish the two sets of maps in terms of their functionality, which, I
argue, operates at both literal and structural levels. They are functional in the
sense that many could be used to learn the basic plot of a story or gather the
tone of a particular genre or region, or to navigate specific geographic areas.
They are also functional in a structural sense, in that they visualize the
organizational mechanics of a particular collective vision of a work, author,
region, or genre. The narrative elements most commonly visualized in the
maps are what Roland Barthes refers to as “cardinal functions”—“hinge-
points of the narrative” in which something of consequence occurs—and
“catalysers” or “fill in” moments that set up those hinge-points (1977, 93).
This practice is particularly evident in the Harris-Seybold / Harris-Intertype
maps, each of which compiles moments of narrative consequence into a
comprehensive overview of a work in a manner that emphasizes literary

appreciation over critical engagement. These maps, I hold, reflect the
United States’ post-World War II investment in a literate, culturally
homogenous middle class and its vision of itself as an arbiter of literary
culture. The Aaron Blake maps incorporate recognizable iconography
and visualize “hinge-points” also, but foreground user interaction over
literary appreciation. Each map is location-centered and includes recog-
nizable cartographic features to enable readers to use the map to navigate
the particular space represented. I conclude the chapter with a brief look
at contemporary digital literary mapping projects and consider their
contribution to adaptation and adaptation networks.
WHAT ARE LITERARY MAPS?

The genre of pictorial literary maps encompasses a broad range of maps and
subgenres and reflects an equally broad range of adaptive activity. For
example, “literary maps” and “literary mapping” can refer to strategies for
visualizing, spatializing, and organizing data. This section, however, focuses
on pictorial literary maps. Many literary maps resemble conventional maps
visually, with “literary” features superimposed on a recognizable geographic
outline. Some maps, such as The Literary Map of England (Ginn &
Company, 1899) and the ambitiously titled Being a Literary Map of These
United States Depicting a Renaissance No Less Astonishing Than That of
Periclean Athens or Elizabethan London (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1942), focus
broadly on the literary output of a specific country. Others focus on a specific
region, such as The Literary Map of the American South (Aaron Blake, 1988),
The Literary Map of Southern Appalachia (Radford University, 1982),
and Literature of the Pacific Northwest (H.A. Thompson, 1950). Many
literary maps focus on specific states or cities, such as A Literary Map of
New Jersey (Moorestown Woman’s Club, 1927) and The Literary Map of
Paris (Aaron Blake, 1988). The majority of literary maps utilize the surface
of the map to share information about specific writers and their works.
A typical literary map will superimpose numbers over the surface of the city
or state represented to indicate points of interest. These numbers correspond
to numbers on a legend that provides relevant information. Some maps,
like Portraits of Literary Michigan (Library of Michigan, 1994), Modern
Mississippi Writers: A Map of Literary Mississippi (University Press of
Mississippi, 1992), and Literary History of New York 1650–1865 (Frank E.
Richards, 1959), superimpose illustrated portraits of writers and iconic
104 K. NEWELL
scenes from their works over an outline of the state. Another category of
literary map focuses on specific groups of writers or writing, such as Sisters in
Crime: Solving Mysteries Coast-to-Coast (Sisters in Crime, 1991), which
emphasizes the role of women writers in developing the mystery genre,
and Black Writers for Young America (1976), which was published by the
District of Columbia Council of Teachers of English in honor of the United
States Bicentennial. This map includes portraits of well-known Black writers
and paragraph-long overviews of their contributions to literary history over
an outline of the United States.
Other literary maps focus on specific writers. The John Steinbeck Map of
America (Aaron Blake, 1986) includes illustrations of memorable
moments in Steinbeck’s novels around its perimeter and detailed street
maps of specific areas relevant to Steinbeck’s work, such as Salinas and
Monterey, California. Similarly, The Jane Austen Map of England (Aaron
Blake, 1987) includes illustrations of key scenes from Austen’s novels,
such as Elizabeth Bennet’s visit to Pemberley with her aunt and uncle, and
stylized inset details of Bath and London—areas of significance to
Austen’s novels. Some maps bring the geographical area into focus via
the lens of a particular writer or work, often bringing into relief particular
areas of a broader geographic area. For example, Map of the London of
Dickens (Loomis, 1935) and London (Wolff, 1940), one of five maps in a
set devoted to the settings of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes
stories, present London in terms of the specific authors. The Country of So
Red the Rose by Stark Young (Scribners and Sons, 1934) superimposes
illustrations of the primary characters and settings of the Civil War-set
novel over an enlarged map of Mississippi.
Literary maps appeal to a broad audience and fulfill a variety of func-
tions. Some, such as the five map set for Sherlock Holmes developed
by Julian Wolff or M. Blackburn’s Middle Earth (Bruin, 1966), based on
J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, appeal to a specialized audience
seeking to deepen its experience of a work or franchise. Certainly, fans
comprise a substantial audience base for maps and other modes of adapta-
tion. Martha Hopkins addresses audience in distinguishing between lit-
erary maps and reference maps: “Whereas viewers of a general map may
lack knowledge of certain facts they hope to find by examining the map,
viewers of literary maps enjoy the maps more if they know the subject”
(1999, 2). Hopkins’s language recalls that of John Ellis, who observes that
“[a]daptation into another medium becomes a means of prolonging the
pleasure of the original presentation, and repeating the production of a
memory” (1982, 4). Maps provide fans with another way to spatialize a
work, visualize specific settings and landscapes, and delineate the bound-
aries of specific fictional worlds. With their power to imply truth, maps
make the imaginary “real.”
While all literary maps are educational to some degree, some are more
overtly so. Mary Ellen Snodgrass and Raymond M. Barrett Jr.’s Literary
Maps for Young Adult Literature (1995), for example, includes travel
information for primary characters of thirty-five titles, among them
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Call of the Wild, The Catcher in the
Rye, and Their Eyes Were Watching God. Each entry includes a plot sum-
mary, itinerary, and map with contextual information (Snodgrass 1995, ix).
The goal of this collection is to visualize for readers the journeys undergone
by specific characters and to teach them about geography and the impor-
tance of place to fiction. The collection also encourages interactivity:
As you peruse these summaries and follow the treks recorded on the maps,
select some titles you haven’t read. Pack your bags and join the character.
Along your way, get to know the countryside, its people and animals, and
the excitement of unanticipated encounters. Expect to be entertained and
informed every minute and for a lot less than the cost of a ticket to some of
the world’s most intriguing corners. (Snodgrass 1995, xi)
J.M. Dent’s “Everyman’s Library” book series also published three literary-
historical atlases designed to provide readers of literature with relevant
geographical and historical data on the series’ fictional volumes: A Literary
and Historical Atlas of North & South America (1911), A Literary and
Historical Atlas of Europe (1910), and A Literary and Historical Atlas of
Africa and Australasia (1913). The introduction to A Literary and
Historical Atlas of North & South America situates the volume as one of
three “meant to cover in turn the whole globe, and to do it in a way to
knit up geographical and historical knowledge with the facts of commerce
and the literary record of each land or region” (Bartholomew 1910, vii).
The atlases contain a number of maps of the same area to show changes
in geographical boundaries over time, as well as information about average
temperatures and rainfall, early highway systems, immigration statistics,
and select battles associated with “famous authors and their books”
(Bartholomew 1910, 117).
Literary maps have also been used as promotional materials and in the
marketing of specific products or to encourage tourism of a specific area.
106 K. NEWELL
Peter Pan’s Never Land, for example, doubles as a promotional tool for the
1953 Disney film as well as Colgate-Palmolive’s “Peter Pan Beauty Bar
With Chlorophyll.” The composition features a map at the center of the
page that is framed by a border featuring stills from the film. Often the line
between the educational and the commercial motivation for literary maps
is blurred, as we see in the 1960 Stratford-upon-Avon map produced for
the Travel Association of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, which also
includes a centralized map of the area bordered by images of representa-
tive scenes from select plays by Shakespeare, The Brontë Way (1993),
which illustrates information on tourist routes through the West
Yorkshire countryside from a Travel and Leisure magazine article pub-
lished in January 1994, and in The Jane Austen Map of England (Aaron
Blake, 1987), which envisions England as an Austen attraction (Hopkins
1999, 3, 190).
WHAT DO LITERARY MAPS DO?

Franco Moretti opens the “maps” section of Graphs, Maps, Trees: Abstract
Models for Literary History with the following: “There is a very simple
question about literary maps: what exactly do they do? What do they do
that cannot be done with words . . . . Do maps add anything, to our
knowledge of literature?” (2005, 35). If illustrations visualize the parti-
culars of a work and its internal landscape of characters and events, literary
maps visualize the broad, external landscape of settings and contexts. As a
tool, “literary mapping” allows for the visualization of specific sets of
information, such as the number of times a particular word appears,
variations in a character’s name, and the like. For Moretti, literary maps
“are a good way to prepare a text for analysis”:
You choose a unit—walks, lawsuits, luxury goods, whatever—find its occur-

rences, place them in space . . . or in other words: you reduce the text to a few
elements, and abstract them from the narrative flow and construct a new,
artificial object . . . . And with a little luck, these maps will be more than the
sum of their parts: they will possess “emerging” qualities, which were not
visible at the lower level. (2005, 53)
Moretti applies this theory to mapping the walks of Mary Mitford’s

narrator in her series of literary sketches, collectively titled Our Village
(1824–1832), which focus on the day-to-day events in a country village.
Once mapped, the narrator’s comings and goings reveal a circular

pattern that mimics the insularity of the village and underscores the
stories’ thematic focus on community. This more formal pattern,
Moretti finds, is not “visible at the lower level.” Likewise, Barbara
Piatti et al. assert that “literary maps are meant to be tools of interpreta-
tion, powerful analytical instruments” that “allo[w] [us] to see some-
thing which hasn’t been evident before” (2009, 184, 182). Mapping,
here, is not limited to representations of physical landscapes and
spatial relationships but includes systematic organizations of material—
processes by which “units” are singled out, prioritized, and, thus, made
to mean. Moretti’s and Piatti et al.’s comments highlight the manner by
which mapping gives readers mastery over fictional worlds. Pictorial literary
maps of the type discussed in this chapter utilize similar strategies in
rendering a particular version of a literary work, a particular content, in
cartographic form.
As with other forms of adaptation, mapping involves interpretation
of a source and selection of evidence to support that interpretation.
Maps balance fidelity to their source material with practical and aes-
thetic concerns. Unlike many conventional modes of adaptation for
which degrees of creative license are expected, the nature of maps as
reference tools fosters an illusion of objectivity, but one that falls apart
in the face of cartographic practices (Harley 2001, 35; Wood 2010).
Contemporary mapping discourse points to a distrust in the assumed
neutrality and objectivity of cartography: no two-dimensional visual
representation of space can replicate spatial relationships and topogra-
phical information exactly or without bias. As Denis Wood states
succinctly, “maps are propositions” (2010, 39). In How to Lie With
Maps Mark Monmonier reminds us that “a single map is but one of an
indefinitely large number of maps that might be produced for the
same situation or from the same data” (1996, 2). Put another way
by Phillip and Juliana Muehrcke, “No map . . . can be completely
‘true.’ It must always sacrifice truth in one dimension to show truth
in another” (1974, 329). The adaptive activity of each of these
maps involves processes of selection and omission, of evaluation and
ranking of information. Like any maps, literary maps synthesize and
refract data through recognizable cartographic codes. These codes
are, however, secondary in most literary maps and motivated less by
spatial or geographic accuracy than by a stylized representation of the
subject.
108 K. NEWELL
Inevitably, cartography involves what J.B. Harley calls a “hierarchi-

calization of space”; that is, the version of space constructed by maps
prioritizes certain features over others. Which features depends on the
agenda of a particular map. For example, architectural structures and
sites associated with well-known persons and events have greater visual
weight on a map, so that readers will read them as important. Named
places are read as more important than those for which no name has
been provided (Harley 2001, 158). We might think of geography as
largely objective and rather fixed, yet a comparison of cartographic
interpretations of the same area yield significant differences in emphasis
and interpretation of space, as “[e]very map codifies more than one
perspective on the world” (Harley 2001, 39; Wood 2010). A compar-
ison of a dozen modern maps of London, for example, would yield a
number of similarities. All would include Buckingham Palace, Hyde
Park, London Bridge, Tower of London, Westminster Abbey, and a
host of other expected landmarks. Yet they would differ in terms of
their depiction of landmarks (e.g., pictorial or typographical), the
number of street names indicted on the map (e.g., main streets only
or side streets also), as well decisions regarding other features that
might be of interest to tourists and residents, such as locations of
banks, restaurants, and hospitals.
To return to literary maps specifically, the worlds they present may vary
dramatically, but all hierarchicalize space to guide readers in reading the
map and, by extension, the work. Literary maps serve as interpretive tools,
as Moretti and Piatti et al. indicate, providing readers with a legend or key
for understanding a given work or a body of work, as well as the cultural
understanding of that work. That is, literary maps reflect as well as con-
tribute to the solidification of a particular cultural view of a work, writer,
or body of work by prioritizing some aspects over others. Many literary
maps depict the real-life terrain of fictional novels and reorder that terrain
to foreground significant elements of that work or writer, as we saw in the
Hemingway example. Others depict imaginary lands, such as Fairyland,
Oz, Middle Earth, and other areas that exist only in literature and the
imagination. Such maps often have greater flexibility in that that geo-
graphic and spatial relationships between places need not correspond to
those found in the real world, but the map of the fictional world must line
up with readers’ understanding of that spatial world. In coding fictional
worlds in real-world terms, map-makers grant the imaginary world a
materiality recognizable to readers.
HARRIS-SEYBOLD / HARRIS-INTERTYPE CALENDAR MAPS

AND THE MIDDLE-CLASS “CLASSICS” READER
As has been well documented, The Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944,

or “the GI Bill” as it is commonly known, and the Veteran’s Adjustment Act
(1952), provided support for returning United States servicemen and
women in a number of ways. In terms of educational opportunities, the
bill provided the incentive for large numbers of United States veterans and
their families to complete high school and attend colleges and trade schools.
Milton Greenberg estimates that millions of the American soldiers serving in
World War II had not completed high school or even elementary school and
only three percent had completed college. These numbers change dramati-
cally post war. Lisa R. Lattuca and Joan S. Stark estimate that “about 2.2
million veterans returned to college with the help of the GI Bill” (2009, 40).
The GI Bill “changed the meaning of higher education in public conscious-
ness from the 1950s onward,” Greenberg explains, from “private, liberal
arts, small-college, rural, residential, elitist, and often discriminatory” to
“occupational, technical, and scientific education, huge, urban-oriented,
suitable for commuter attendance, and highly democratic” (2008). This
shift had significant ramifications for Americans, as social and economic
status was no longer fixed as it had been for previous generations. The
swell in college enrollment produced a subsequent swell of skilled laborers
entering the workforce. In many cases, this new, literate middle class was
entering the work force with a shared body of knowledge shaped by national
trends toward universal and common core curricula.
The need for a shift from diversified to universal education during the
post-war period was put plainly in reports published by major universities
such as Columbia and Harvard.2 In 1943 Harvard’s president appointed a
committee to look into education trends. General Education in a Free
Society: Report of the Harvard Committee (1945), also called the Harvard
Redbook, is the result of their labors. One of the main threads of the study is
the relationship between education and democracy: “Democracy, however
much by ensuring the right to differ it may foster difference . . . yet depends
equally on the binding ties of common standards” (General 1950, 12).
A goal of education, the committee argues, is to “fit” individuals “so far as
it can for those common spheres which, as citizens and heirs of a joint
culture, they will share with others” (1950, 4). The committee is interested
in fostering “education in a common heritage and toward a common citizen-
ship” (1950, 5). Much of the Harvard document addresses a disjointed
110 K. NEWELL
educational model, divided in terms of what students learn and retain based
on location, economic and social discrepancies, intended careers, and other
factors. A general education model that begins in lower grades and continues
into secondary school and college, they feel, would bridge such divides. In
learning literature, students should have “direct access to the potentialities
and norms of living as they are presented to the mental eye by the best
authors” (1950, 107):
the books . . . which have been the great meeting points and have most influ-
enced the men who in turn have influenced others are those we can least afford
to neglect, if ways can be found of opening better access to them. It is a safe
assumption that a work which has delighted and instructed many generations
of ordinary readers and been to them a common possession, enriching and
enriched, is to be preferred to a product which is on its way to limbo and will
not link together even two school generations. (1950, 108–09)
The report postulates that books with longevity are the most valuable
without fully interrogating how that longevity may come about. That
students should read these books because readers have been reading them
for decades or centuries does not answer the question of how or why readers
continue to read these books in the first place. In all likelihood, “a work
which has delighted and instructed many generations of ordinary readers”
has done so because those generations have had access to that book via
educational settings, its existence in multiple editions, and various alternate
avenues that alert generations to the value of a particular work.
The Harris Company of Cleveland, Ohio, a printing equipment manufac-
turer, issued twelve calendars between 1953 and 1964 to promote their latest
printing process, each of which offered a pictorial map based on a classic
British or American novel, among them The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The
Adventures of Robin Hood and His Merry Men, Ivanhoe, Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn, The Virginian, The Red Badge of Courage, The Call of
the Wild, The Last of the Mohicans, and Robinson Crusoe.3 The “Map-of-A-
Book” calendars were distributed annually to graphic arts firms, schools, and
libraries.4 The company’s decision to use literary maps seems to have been
motivated by ideological shifts in the educational climate toward “common
heritage” and “common citizenship.” The copy attached to The Tale of
Ivanhoe from the Novel by Sir Walter Scott (1958) map asks viewers to
“Remember when you first read it? How you rode, fought and bled with
Ivanhoe and the Black Knight? . . . You ate it up . . . you and every red-blooded
boy in the English speaking world. Artist Everett Henry’s picture-map brings
it all back” (as quoted in Hopkins 1999, 13). To my thinking, the maps
promote the company’s skills, of course, but also reinforce a particular literary
canon and way of reading literature, and reflect the United States’ post-war
investment in a particular educational and cultural baseline.
The maps do not work in isolation to affirm and reinforce these works as
valuable. The decade of the Harris Company’s map production (1953–64)
saw illustrated editions of Moby-Dick and A Tale of Two Cities from the
Modern Library in 1950, illustrated by Rockwell Kent and Hablot Knight
Browne, respectively. The Modern Library published The Red Badge of
Courage in 1951, illustrated by Robert Wooster Stallman, as did the Folio
Society in 1964, featuring photographs of the Civil War. The Heritage Press
Limited Editions Club published Ivanhoe, illustrated by Edward A. Wilson,
and The Virginian, illustrated by William Moyers, in 1951. Grosset and
Dunlap also published The Virginian in 1963 with illustrations by Sol
Korby, as well as Adventures of Huckleberry Finn illustrated by Jo Polseno
in 1963, The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood illustrated by Lawrence Beall
Smith in 1952, and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer illustrated by Donald
McKay in 1946. Many of these works were published by subscription services
that shared the Harvard committee’s faith in a canon of time-tested literary
works. A 1960 advertisement for The Folio Society claims, “You will not find,
in The Folio Society’s list, any of last month’s best-sellers. Here, instead, are
the great books of the world, the books which have withstood the test of
centuries, the collapse of civilizations, the disappearance of old beliefs and the
relentless advance of new” (“Folio” 1960). The fortitude of these great books
is bolstered additionally by the film industry, which released adaptations of
almost all of these works during the same decade: The Red Badge of Courage
(MGM, 1951), Ivanhoe (MGM, 1952), Moby Dick (Warner Bros., 1956), A
Tale of Two Cities (Rank, 1958), The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (MGM,
1960), and, for television, The Virginian (Revue, 1962). Against this back-
drop, we might need to consider whether “great books” are great because
readers are naturally inclined to read them or because of the intricate and
repetitive networks that work together to reinforce their greatness.
WHAT COUNTS: SELECTION AND ADAPTATION

What is interesting to me about these maps is not just that they picture a book
for a reader in map form but that they transform the reader’s vision of the
world, and reinforce a specific reading of the work. The Harris Company
112 K. NEWELL
maps all adapt adventure-based books—those the company assumed would

be favorites of their largely male target audience. They yoke a spirit of
conquest to a spirit of cultural literacy, which is measured, in turn, by a
familiarity with particular works of the western literary canon. Artist E.
Everett Henry, who had experience as both a commercial and a fine artist,
designed nine of the twelve Harris maps.5 His commercial work for Dole and
other companies appeared in The Saturday Evening Post and other popular
publications. Additionally, he developed murals for the Ford Company
Building, the Pennsylvania Railroad’s club cars, and for the 1939–40 New
York World’s Fair (Hopkins 1999, 14). Henry’s calendar maps tend to fall
into two categories: those in which the action is localized to a city or town and
those in which action is linked to travel. For those in which travel is less
central, Henry includes more definite allusions to conventional cartographic
indicators of place, as in A Tale of Two Cities from the Book by Charles Dickens
(1957) and Here Took Place the Adventures of Tom Sawyer from the Book by
Mark Twain. For those in which travel is central (e.g., The Red Badge of
Courage from a Story of the War Between the States by Stephen Crane, The
Voyage of the Pequod from the Book Moby Dick by Herman Melville, and
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the Book by Mark Twain), Henry super-
imposes images of narrative events onto geographical markers and the maps
become visualizations of narrative structures—rendering visible the spatial
arrangement of narrative functions. Henry’s process of visualizing catalysers
and hinge-moments posits a linear, event-based mode of reading and remem-
bering a work and particular generic vision of that work, in keeping with that
of the “joint culture” model of literacy.
Henry’s process of selecting and spatially configuring narrative moments
corresponds to that identified by Moretti: “you reduce the text to a few
elements, and abstract from them the narrative flow and construct a new,
artificial object” (2005, 53). For each map, be it focused on place or travel,
Henry reduces narrative content to recognizable functions and recasts those
moments cartographically. The resulting “new object” bears many traces of
the old. The narrative events and primary characters fore-grounded in
Henry’s maps are given comparable prominence in illustrated editions, film
adaptations, and other modes of adaptation. In his map of Charles Dickens’s
A Tale of Two Cities, the illustrations identify as important many moments
previously so identified by Hablot Knight Brown’s 1859 illustrations, sub-
sequent sets of illustrations, and film adaptations, such as Rene Ben Sussan’s
1938 illustrations for the Heritage Press (reissued in 1951), Rafaello Busoni’s
1948 illustrations for Grosset and Dunlap, the 1935 MGM film, and the
1958 Rank film. Such moments include Lucie Manette’s reunion with her
father, the funeral for Roger Cly, and the Marquis St. Evrémonde’s crushing
of Gaspard’s child with his coach, to name a few. Henry’s maps are compo-
sitionally organized for ease of reading and recognition of familiar iconogra-
phy. This map is organized into vertical columns. The large, central
illustration depicts the storming of the Bastille. Other inset illustrations in
the central section include the king and the queen showing themselves, and
Monsignor’s reception, and the Marquis’s coach killing the child, thus estab-
lishing a cause and effect of events. The left portion of the map depicts the city
of London, populated with illustrations of significant events and landmarks,
and the right depicts the same for Paris. Henry incorporates London and
Paris topographically into the design, but recognizable city landmarks trump
other topographical information. Henry’s depiction of Paris, for example,
includes very few street names but does include Notre Dame and several
bridges. His rendition of London includes some streets and locations, such as
Temple, Blackfriars Bridge, Fleet Street, and Old Bailey, but, again, specific
street names and geographical markers remain vague.
Henry’s map of Here Took Place the Adventures of Tom Sawyer from
the Book By Mark Twain follows a similar pattern. This map is organized
into two large horizontal bands, each of which provides readers with a
different view of St. Petersburg. The largest, upper part of the map
depicts the town according to its street plan, with street names and
intersections clearly visible. To the left and right of the grid Henry has
included the graveyard and swimming hole and other locations on the
outskirts of the main town. The lower portion of the map presents the
same area from a distant, aerial perspective in the style of a conventional
landscape painting. This portion, as its subtitle, “St. Petersburg from the
River,” suggests, presents a romantic view of the river and the shoreline.
The map also includes an inset in the upper left corner that provides a
topographical map of Hannibal, Missouri and includes the statement
“Tom Sawyer’s St. Petersburg was Hannibal Missouri.” Thus we are
presented with at least three forms of information in three distinct
pictorial styles: the central “literary map” depicts characters and events
superimposed on a street grid; the “painting” provides an uninterrupted
view of St. Petersburg and functions essentially as an establishing shot;
and the reference map inset identifies the source text for Henry’s (and
Twain’s) geographic information and authenticates the information. As
in the map of A Tale of Two Cities, illustrations depicting significant
scenes are superimposed on the city’s grid.
114 K. NEWELL
Henry identifies locations and narrative events in his maps that imply a
reader familiar with the basic plot of the work—one who is able to “fill in”
missing information and make connections. For example, his Here Took
Place the Adventures of Tom Sawyer from the Book by Mark Twain map
identifies several characters’ houses, some accompanied by an image of the
structure and others by a scene as well. The illustration “Tom’s House”
depicts the house, as well as a group of children crowded along the fence
watching a member of the group paint it white. This allusion to novel’s
“white-washing” scene need not be labeled, as the scene is likely to be
familiar as it has been adapted numerous times, the most recognizable
being True Williams’s illustration for the 1876 edition, Norman
Rockwell’s for the 1936 Heritage Press illustrations, and the 1938 United
Artists’ film adaptation. For other well-known, but perhaps less iconographic
moments, Henry supplies a narrative label, as is the case in “The Master loses
his wig,” the scene associated with “The School,” and “The boys attend
their own funeral,” the scene associated with “The Church.”
Henry’s more travel-based maps follow a similar practice, de-emphasizing
geographical markers and amplifying narrative events. Henry’s Voyage of
the Pequod from the Book Moby Dick by Herman Melville (1956), represents
only those events that occur on the ship’s journey from Nantucket to
the South Seas, which is represented by the colorful line that weaves across
map, changing from yellow to orange to deep red (Fig. 4.1). The changing
colors serve the dual function of showing off the Harris-Seybold color
printing abilities and indicating the heightened action and increasing danger
and violence that threatens the Pequod’s crew as they progress. The yellow
portion marks the early events of the voyage, during which characters
and narrative context are introduced and relatively little action occurs.
The orange portion signals a rise in narrative action, marked by visual
representations of the scenes in which the crew captures and kills two whales
and encounters several ships whose crew members share increasingly violent
stories of the white whale. Not surprisingly, the line becomes its reddest with
Ahab’s sighting of Moby Dick and the three-day chase that culminates in the
deaths of all but Ishmael. Henry’s decision to foreground the “voyage”
aspect of the novel allows him to streamline a famously non-linear narrative;
the map’s colorful pathway provides the impression of linearity.
In Melville’s novel, the Pequod’s voyage is marked by numerous
digressions about whales, whaling, and a number of other topics, as well
as structural and tonal digressions. In a seeming nod to this characteristic,
Henry incorporates five insets near the map’s left margin, each of which
Fig. 4.1 The Voyage of the Pequod from the Book Moby Dick by Herman Melville,
Cleveland: Harris-Seybold, 1956
indicates a step in the whaling process: “harpooning,” “pitchpoling,”

“towing in the carcass,” “cutting in,” and “trying out blubber.” These
moments, important to the Pequod’s whaling mission, are presented in
the map as tangential to its “real” mission of revenge—signaled as such by
the central images of Ahab vowing revenge and that of the white whale
spouting blood. In addition, Henry incorporates into the Pequod’s color-
ful path two circular insets that depict scenes that cause narrative disrup-
tions in the novel: the meet with the Nantucket-bound whaling ship, the
Town-ho, and Queequeg saving Tashtego from the whale’s head during
the process of extracting the spermaceti. Henry’s representation of these
moments as digressive seems to depend on a reader familiar with the work,
as these moments are only visually distinct because of their circular frame.
In Melville’s novel, though, these moments are markedly digressive. The
Town-ho’s story, for example, disrupts the narrative temporally. Readers
learn that the ship had encountered the white whale, and that this encoun-
ter proved fatal to the ship’s stubborn and proud co-owner Radney.
116 K. NEWELL
Readers do not, however, receive this information directly. The Town-

ho’s story is conveyed through three narrative frames: an older Ishmael
tells the story in flashback that was told to him by Tashtego who heard it
from the Town-ho’s crew. The anecdote thus interrupts the forward
progress of the Pequod’s narrative by removing Ishmael and the reader
momentarily from the narrative and transporting them to some future
time after the voyage has ended with Ishmael’s survival. The second
circular inset, which refers to Queequeg saving Tashtego, does not disrupt
the narrative temporally but does disrupt the prose, as, in this moment of
the novel, Melville’s prose shifts from the language of whales to that of
obstetrics as he describes the process by which Queequeg delivers
Tashtego from the whale’s head:
And thus, through the courage and great skill in obstetrics of Queequeg, the
deliverance, or rather, delivery of Tashtego, was successfully accomplished,
in the teeth, too, of the most untoward and apparently hopeless impedi-
ments; which is a lesson by no means to be forgotten. Midwifery should be
taught in the same course with fencing and boxing, riding and rowing.
(Melville 1992, 376)
In this way, Henry’s map appeals to readers both familiar and unfamiliar
with the book. Those familiar with the novel are more likely to read the
insets as tools employed by Henry to mark digressive elements in his effort
to adapt the novel into a map. For those unfamiliar or merely acquainted
with the novel, the insets are not disruptive; they simply signal another of
the map’s frames and organizational strategies. In focusing primarily on
the “voyage” of the Pequod, Henry is able to “map” Melville’s complex
novel in a manageable way. One reader, Frank Jacobs, blogging about his
struggle to finish the novel, writes: “Fortunately, there is a map. And it
does what maps do best: it shows us the way, reassuring us that even the
longest voyages have an end as certainly as they have a beginning” (2014).
Henry underscores the beginning and the end visually in two square
insets, one to the left that features an image of the Massachusetts coastline
and one at the end that features the sinking Pequod.
Henry’s Voyage of the Pequod does not attempt to represent every narra-
tive moment of that voyage, yet those he does select share certain character-
istics and, considered cumulatively, underscore the novel’s adventure
aspects. Henry adopts a similar strategy for his map of The Adventures
of Huckleberry Finn from the Book by Mark Twain (1959) (Fig. 4.2). The
Fig. 4.2 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the Book by Mark Twain,
Cleveland: Harris-Intertype, 1959
primary cartographic focus of this map is the Mississippi River, which is

featured prominently in each of the map’s three sections. The map’s upper
third depicts moments that occur on the river, whereas the lower third
depicts moments that occur on land. The middle third depicts Huck, Jim,
the king, and the duke rehearsing on the raft. Henry also includes a more
conventional map as an inset that provides a comprehensive overview of the
states in which the novel’s action takes place. This inset becomes important
to orienting Huck and Jim’s movements as north and south, rather than east
and west, which is suggested by the map. As in his Voyage of the Pequod,
Henry does not attempt to represent every scene and action on the map. He
devotes three images to the Grangerford-Shepherdson feud, ten to events
involving the king and duke, and six to Huck and Tom’s “rescue” of Jim. If
the central image of Ahab in the Pequod map foregrounds a tale of revenge,
Huckleberry Finn’s central image of the duke, king, Huck, and Jim rehear-
sing Shakespeare on the raft forwards a tale of comedy and hijinks.
Importantly, the hijinks represented fit within a certain narrative of budding
masculinity.
118 K. NEWELL
It would be very difficult if not impossible for these maps to include all of
the narrative events of each story. Yet, in selecting certain scenes for inclusion
on the map and not others, the maps delineate which scenes “count.” For
example, Henry represents Queequeg engaging in idol worship but not
Queequeg and Ishmael sharing a bed. He represents the Grangerford-
Shepherdson feud but not Buck Grangerford’s death or Huck disguising
himself as a girl. The cartographic “hierarchialization of space” conveys a
hierarchialization of character and story events that distinguish important
from unimportant events. Understanding that these maps appeared on
calendars displayed in offices and libraries and schools, we can speculate
that, for the former group of adults, the maps remind readers of key plot
points, and for the latter group of emerging readers, they function as a précis,
a Cliffs Notes version, giving readers “just the facts” and letting them know
what to look for should they read the full book. Henry’s central images
identify the particular lens through which the work should be approached or
remembered. In the case of Moby-Dick, the central image of Ahab vowing
revenge helps to organize the map’s story—the voyage of the Pequod is
motivated by that revenge. But in advancing that portion of the narrative,
others are suppressed. While Moby-Dick is a story of revenge, it is also not a
story of revenge and its structure famously resists a single generic formula. In
the case of Huckleberry Finn, while many readers would cite the episodes set
near Cairo in which Huck apologizes to Jim for tricking him and resigns
himself to abetting Jim rather than turning him in as a fugitive slave as central
to Huckleberry Finn, Henry’s central image of Huck and Jim laughing as the
king falls off the raft and into the river during rehearsal advances a vision of
the novel narrowed almost exclusively on boyhood adventure. The map
avoids almost all references to events that lack adventure and/or comedy.
Such visions of the novels invite readers to reflect on the plot and characters,
to recall them from classroom readings, but not to engage with them too
critically. While virtually any plot point in any text can be problematized, plot
points that raise challenging questions and make for unconventional visual
representations for the novels are omitted from the maps, suggesting that the
homosocial or colonial underpinnings of either text can be separated from
the plot and are non-existent or not worth remembering.
These maps equate literacy with specific memories of key works (mem-
ories that align with those developed by other nodes in the adaptation
network) and forge a link between cultural literary and global conquest,
between the “common standard” and the United States’ position as a global
superpower, echoing the Harvard Redbook’s view that “[d]emocracy,
however much by ensuring the right to differ it may foster difference . . . yet
depends equally on the binding ties of common standards” (1950, 12). This
impulse is noticeable in Henry’s portrayal of London and Paris as homo-
genous, equivalent cities in his map of A Tale of Two Cities and in his
representation of the world as a mere backdrop for the drama of the
American novel in The Voyage of the Pequod. In each case, the vision and
brush of the American illustrator erases difference and shows readers what
“counts,” both in the literature and geographically.
AARON BLAKE AND THE MAPPING OF LITERARY EXPERIENCE

The Aaron Blake Company focuses less on what the map can do for its
user than on what users can do with maps. Unlike the Harris-Seybold /
Harris-Intertype maps, which offer a précis of a work and help readers to
“remember” literature through the maps, the Aaron Blake Company’s
maps aim to “revitalize treasured classics” (John Steinbeck). The Aaron
Blake Company published twelve maps during the 1980s, most of which
operate on educational and commercial levels simultaneously. Most
cover a broad geographic area—The Raymond Chandler Mystery Map of
Los Angeles (1985), The Literary Map of Latin America (1988), The Jane
Austen Map of England (1987), The John Steinbeck Map of America
(1986)—and combine pictorial and topological information. Each map
is produced by Molly Maguire and Aaron Silverman, designed by
Maguire, and illustrated by an artist whose style aligns with the tone or
genre most commonly associated with the area or author being
“mapped,” and each is housed in a jacket designed to resemble that of
a paperback book. The publisher advertises the maps as multi-use and
most include a version of the following statement:
Our well-researched maps display the actual geographic context of scenes in

your favorite novels—enhanced with original, dramatic illustrations in the
spirit of the original work. These Literary Maps revitalize treasured classics—
enjoy the maps for themselves, or use them while reading, while watching
videotapes, or for introducing your children and friends to your favorite
writers. You can even plan vacations with these maps! (John Steinbeck)
Such phrasing carries an expectation of usability and interactivity that differs

from that of literary maps that are predominantly pictorial or for which
cartographic cues are absent or blurred, and that exceeds the general
120 K. NEWELL
function identified by Hopkins of “record[ing] the location of places asso-

ciated with authors and their literary works or serv[ing] as a guide to their
imaginative worlds” (1999, 1). Importantly, Aaron Blake aligns the maps
with revitalization thus drawing attention to the need for works to be
continually renewed by adaptation and user engagement. The activities the
Aaron Blake Company proposes for the maps, however, warrant greater
scrutiny, as “enjoying,” “using,” “watching,” “introducing,” and “plan-
ning,” presented as comparable activities, connote very different levels of
engagement. The maps’ emphasis on usability (over, say, appreciation or
readability) also points to a meeting of adaptation as a verb and adaptation as
a noun (Hutcheon 2006), as well as of reader, viewer, and user.
The Aaron Blake Company suggests that readers use the maps “for
introducing [their] children and friends to [their] favorite writers.” How
might such introductions come about? What sort of introductions do
these maps allow or invite? Such questions are not so easily answered, as
it turns out. Some maps provide detailed author, character, and/or narra-
tive information, and some do not. For example, The Ian Fleming Thriller
Map (1987) provides information on James Bond’s character, including
his preferred automobile and tobacco blend, as well as his professional
details (Fig. 4.3). The map’s text also provides information on Fleming’s
inspiration for Bond, the titles of works in which Bond has appeared, and
important locations within those novels. In this way, the map provides an
“introductory” overview of the Bond universe. Mostly, though, the map
introduces users to specific Bond iconography. The most striking feature
of the map is its representation of women or “Bond Girls.” The central
woman wears a low-cut evening gown and adopts a provocative pose
(which includes a recently uncorked champagne bottle in her right
hand). Bond stands behind her, a martini in his left hand, and a gun in
his right. The two other women depicted on the map are gray-toned and
presented less as flesh-and-blood women than as visual types. Both are
naked and reclined along the lower portion of the map, and the map’s
legend is superimposed on their bodies. Like the martini and the gun, the
women are Bond’s accessories, literally forming a backdrop for his story.
The map thus fulfills two goals: it introduces readers to Ian Fleming and
his work and provides an overview of the Bond novels, and it also provides
a snapshot of Bond iconography—women, booze, cars, and danger (as
implied by the gun and the missile aimed at Bond’s head), present in every
node in the Bond network, regardless of medium.
Fig. 4.3 The Ian Fleming Thriller Map, Los Angeles: Aaron Blake, 1987
By contrast, the Literary Map of the American South (1988) offers little
introductory information, despite the publisher’s claim that “[w]e encou-
rage readers to use this Literary Map as an introduction to the world of
classic Southern writing.” The map’s index includes authors, titles of
selected works, and the names of southern cities relevant to the author
or the work. These cities are numbered and correspond to numbered
locations on the map, yet contextualizing details are non-existent. We
learn that Conrad Aiken was born in 1889 and died in 1973, that he
wrote The House of Dust, and that he lived most of his life in Savannah,
Georgia, retiring at 230 E. Oglethorpe Avenue, but we don’t learn that he
is a poet or anything about him as a writer or a southern writer. Most of
the index’s entries emphasize place over works. The entry Flannery
O’Connor, for example, lists one story, “A Good Man is Hard to Find,”
and three locations. As in The Ian Fleming Thriller Map, introducing
readers to southern iconography appears to be the goal. To this end, the
122 K. NEWELL
map is bordered by white lattice and a southern gothic architectural

column. The lower left portion of the map includes a table covered in a
multi-folded cloth, on which are displayed two photographs, one of
Martin Luther King, Jr. and one of the house on which Tara, the planta-
tion featured in Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind (1936), was
modeled, as well as other objects. Behind the table is a bust of William
Faulkner atop another gothic column. In the lower right corner of the
map, three figures rest against a lattice fence: Mark Twain, Robert Penn
Warren, and Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. Of all the southern writers
included in the map’s legend, Maguire singled these three out, likely for
their generic variety (i.e., humor, drama, young adult), as well as the range
of time period, and, even more likely, their cultural weight. Each of the
three had produced well-known and well-received works, which had been
adapted into well-known and well-received film adaptations.6 Tom Sawyer,
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and The Prince and the Pauper, for
example, have each been adapted a number of times. Warren and
Rawlings have each won Pulitzer Prizes: Warren in 1946 for All the
King’s Men (and, again, in 1958 and 1979 for poetry) and Rawlings in
1938 for The Yearling, both of which were adapted into Academy Award-
winning films—All the King’s Men in 1949 (Columbia) and The Yearling
in 1946 (MGM).
Any gaps or omissions in information provided by these maps is not
surprising given that the act of “introducing” implies two readers: one who
is informed and one who is not but soon will be. But even these roles
function differently for different maps. The Ian Fleming Thriller Map seems
designed primarily for the uninformed reader. The informed reader may
take pleasure in viewing familiar iconography in an unfamiliar format but is
not likely to learn anything new from the map. The Literary Map of the
American South seems designed for the informed reader, who understands
the larger significations of the shorthand identifications of authors and
works. Importantly, in introducing particular iconography, these maps
also introduce particular lenses for reading. Across the Bond network, for
example, women are objectified. This map contributes to that practice by
rendering women as objects, as writable and readable surfaces. Readers
being introduced to the worlds of Ian Fleming and James Bond have no
choice but to read those worlds through the departicularized bodies of the
reclined women. Furthermore, to read the map’s legend (which is inscribed
on the bodies), readers must see through the bodies and, in so doing,
discount them as unimportant to the world being represented.
Turning to another potential use suggested by the publisher, how

might a reader use the maps “while reading” or “watching videos”?
While presumably one could use any of these maps while reading any
book or watching any video related to the region, the expectation is that
one would refer to the map while reading a work or watching an adapta-
tion of the work depicted in the map. Several of the single author maps
make this type of comparative reading easier by indexing geographic
locations by story or novel. For example, The Ian Fleming Thriller
Map’s index is organized by novel, so presumably one could have
it handy while reading or watching a version of Live and Let Die or The
Spy Who Loved Me. The John Steinbeck, Hemingway, and Raymond
Chandler maps feature this publisher’s recommendation as well. While
comparative reading between map and work is certainly possible, the
number of works included in a single author’s map challenges the ease
of such reading. Readers might use the maps simply to confirm locations
mentioned in the novel, story, or film or to help conceptualize the relation
of one place to another, but the maps do not provide a concrete repre-
sentation of place or setting and do not privilege the setting of one work
over another. The Ernest Hemingway Adventure Map of the World,
for example, joins disparate locations and images under the shelter of
“Hemingway’s Adventures,” but refracted through a specific story,
novel, or film, these locations and images would have less meaning.
Curiously, Aaron Blake does not recommend that users use the location-
based maps (e.g., The Literary Map of the American South, The Literary
Map of Paris, The Literary Map of Los Angeles, and The Beat Generation
Map of America) while reading or watching videos. Though identifying a
number of adaptations for a single author’s works may be easier than
identifying the same for an entire city, the two map types are really not
all that different. Both aim for a comprehensive view of the subject’s
impact on a geographic area, and neither is very specific. In this way,
both types attempt to conjure the collective spirit of an author’s oeuvre
or a literary movement. In encouraging readers to use the maps while
reading or watching videotapes, the publishers situate the maps within a
larger adaptive universe. They anticipate a reader for which the map is not
an isolated or definitive work but is simply one iteration, one node in the
larger network.
The third use value identified by the publisher is “planning vacations.”
This idea evolves likely from Maguire and Silverman’s inspiration for the
maps, which, they claim, hit during a drive around Los Angeles in search
124 K. NEWELL
of locations mentioned in Raymond Chandler’s works. The couple found

that many of the sites “still existed” and were “little changed from when
Chandler described them” (Hopkins 1999, 17). The resulting The
Raymond Chandler Mystery Map of Los Angeles includes specific area,
street, and building information central to The Big Sleep (1939) and
other Chandler stories that would enable users to navigate the particular
areas of the cities depicted in the map and to plan a vacation based on this
information. Each of the maps designed by Maguire provides icono-
graphic markers of place that, more often than not, fetishize landmarks
in a manner similar to that of promotional travel materials. The Literary
Map of Paris, for example, includes many popular tourist sites, such as the
Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame. Other maps include information on spe-
cific locations, so that readers might plan their visit. For example, The Beat
Generation Map of America (1987) includes in the index headings for
“San Francisco Beat Hangouts,” “Los Angeles Beat Hangouts,” and
“New York City Beat Hangouts.” According to the map’s introduction:
With this map, you can identify the real-life characters in On the Road, The
Dharma Bums and other beat writing, and locate, or even visit, their homes,
hangouts, clubs and cafes. Of the many listed here, some addresses have
retained their original character and clientele, while others, in new incarna-
tions, still echo the wails of cool Zen hepcats.
The copy’s evocation of place, character, and “spirit” urges users toward a
temporary embodiment of a specific experience. The implication is not
simply that the reader is visiting a specific location but that the location
will in some way hold the spirit of the work. That in visiting locations in
Chandler’s cities, the reader-turned-medium will experience the story in a
way that is “more”—more fully, more authentically. In walking the routes
and inhabiting the spaces of the Beats, one can embody that culture in a
manner not available through the print experience. This experience is
heightened further in the implications of the activity of “enjoyment.”
The publishers invite readers to “enjoy” the maps “for themselves,”
though readers may wonder what that entails, particularly as “enjoying” is
distinguished from “use,” “introducing,” and “planning.” The maps can be
enjoyed as graphic objects and pictorial representations. Additionally, read-
ers can enjoy them for the familiarity or nostalgia, as they pick up on cues,
in-jokes, or references. The publishers, though, seem to push this enjoyment
aspect even further, suggesting that readers are able to project themselves
into the action of the map through phrases such as “experience high-voltage
thrills with Secret Agent James Bond,” “[e]mbrace the tangled, dreamy
sensibilities of Southern literary life,” “Follow Hemingway through the back-
street Parisian haunts . . . . Then travel to Pamplona to experience the dan-
gerous running of the bulls,” and “the original illustrations of The John
Steinbeck Map of America take you on a journey” [emphasis added]. The
impression is that in marking a geographical space in which action takes
place, one will be transported into that action—that in viewing the image of
Hemingway and the bull, readers can inject themselves into the image and
actually experience this adventure for themselves. Such experiential enjoy-
ment is complicated in The Sherlock Holmes Mystery Map (1987). The map’s
central image of two magnifying glasses crossed at the handles, one contain-
ing a map of London and one of England, is superimposed over a collage of
illustrations by Jim Wolnick, whose own interpretation of Holmes appears to
be a hybrid of illustrator Sidney Paget’s and actor Basil Rathbone’s. The
lower portion of the map includes the legend and index of locations by story.
The legend explains the map via comments such as “the prefix ‘L’ designates
London locations,” “Addresses to the right of the colon are those created by
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle; the addresses on the left are today’s actual loca-
tions,” “a dagger . . . designates specific locations which cannot be con-
firmed,” and “a double dagger . . . designates addresses identified in only a
general geographic area.” The text accompanying the map suggests that
readers can use the map to “[f]ollow in his footsteps through London streets
and the English countryside as he solves vicious crimes and human mys-
teries,” yet the map’s intricate coding really precludes readers from following
Holmes anywhere. In this way, the legend for reading the map actually
makes the map itself a mystery to be solved. The map places readers in the
position of sleuth as they attempt to decode the significance of particular
locations.
Like the other uses highlighted for these maps, this invitation to
interactivity seems to require a coordination of other textual and media
experiences. For example, if the “tangled, dreamy sensibilities of
Southern literary life,” can be “embraced,” this is likely to happen in
concert with writings, films, visual art, and other output of the area and
not from the map alone. The reader of the Ian Fleming map is unlikely to
“experience high-voltage thrills with Secret Agent James Bond” simply
through reading the map, which does little to isolate specific thrills.
Rather, such “experience,” if possible, is more likely to come about
through other forms as well. The maps themselves are openly adaptive,
126 K. NEWELL
drawing from numerous visual and pictorial sources and drawing from a
range of literary, biographical, and historical sources. Their “use” value is
perhaps the use value of all adaptations. Certainly, we use them in the
same way: to introduce writers and works, to use while reading and
watching, to plan our vacations (as evidenced by records of increased
tourism to Herfordshire, England, or Savannah, Georgia due to Pride
and Prejudice or Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil). They tell the
reader which people, which places, and which routes and landscapes
matter (mostly those that have been validated by a novel or other pub-
lished work).
The publisher’s proposed modes of interaction are not anomalous in
the millennial culture of interactive media, though they were perhaps at
the time of their design. These maps suggest that in a very real way users
can inhabit the world of a work, author, or period and, in some ways,
create it anew. “The city” is generally thought of as a fixed thing (e.g., one
assumes that the street on which she grew up will remain). These literary
maps counter that thought by demonstrating the ways in which the city
can be adapted. Los Angeles configured through Raymond Chandler is
very different than Los Angeles configured through a century of writers or
Los Angeles configured through Beat Writers. In demonstrating the
adaptiveness of space, the literary maps might bring to mind a tension
between the city and the individual, such as that explored by Michel de
Certeau (1984). These maps, though, become aligned with institutiona-
lized vision in the sense that readers plan their “authentic literary vacation”
according to the “Raymond Chandler vision”; each creative act is couched
within (and often anticipated by) another vision.
Though visually and stylistically very different, the Harris-Seybold /
Harris-Intertype and Aaron Blake maps are both anchored by a very specific
literary canon and reflect an investment in the preservation of a uniform body
of knowledge. Literary maps fall under the rubric of place-based learning, a
mode that has undergone dramatic changes in the past few decades as
advances in technology and information systems have reconfigured the very
concept of place and geography. The Harris-Seybold / Harris-Intertype and
Aaron Blake maps reinforce actual and metaphorical links between stories
and travel. Many writers are well-known travelers and those experiences
characterize their work, and most all writing involves some form of travel
or journeying be it to a real or imagined place or in characters’ emotional or
psychological development. Literary maps are themselves examples of story
travel, acting as one stopping-off point in a work’s larger adaptation network.
FROM MAPS TO MAPPING: DIGITAL MAPPING AND ADAPTATION

Hopkins concludes her introduction to Language of the Land with the
following statement: “Predicting the future is hazardous, but perhaps even-
tually literary maps will exist in electronic form, with viewers able to click on
an icon representing a region, author, or book and call up a detailed map,
photographs, biographical information, bibliographies, and other informa-
tion” (1999, 18). Indeed, the decades following that publication have seen
significant changes in literary mapping technologies that allow users to
engage with maps in exactly the manner Hopkins predicted. Whereas
paper-based literary maps attempt to convey information about a specific
region, author, work, or genre, digital maps and digital mapping projects do
all this and more, such as providing a greater sense of how particular works
fit within a larger network and highlighting trends across a vast number of
disparate works. Several digital mapping projects have been developed to
enhance users’ understanding of historical and literary works and contexts,
to observe and chart particular patterns and trends. These projects use the
concept of mapping both literally and figuratively. That is, they map geo-
graphical areas relevant to specific work, writers, and genres and allow users
to self-guide through the terrain. Clicking on areas of the map will make
visible additional information and links to information on a range of topics.
Mapping programs also allow users to “map” issues such as the popularity
of an author or work at a given moment in history, specific word usage, and
the like. Digital mapping projects are numerous and diverse, but I highlight
a few of their features here.
To a greater degree than paper-based maps, digital maps render
visible given adaptation networks. In addition to the biographical and
bibliographic information Hopkins foresaw, digital maps can visualize
multiple versions of a given work, as is demonstrated in Ben Fry’s Origin
of the Species: A Preservation of Favoured Traces, which maps the many
changes Charles Darwin’s text has experienced in its six editions.7 Such
projects lay bare the “fluid text,” to use John Bryant’s term (2002),
dispelling notions of fixed or finished works and illuminating the man-
ner in which works respond to the world in which they exist, undergoing
adaptation to meet the needs of new environments. William Fenton,
who reviewed this project for online periodical PC Mag, uses Darwin’s
eighth chapter, in which he addresses interbreeding and reproductive
sterility, as an example: “once it becomes clear that the fourth edition
brought significant changes to the eighth chapter, one might close read
128 K. NEWELL
the third (1861) and fourth (1866) editions of that chapter in the
context of the Civil War” (Fenton 2015).
Other digital mapping projects encourage and enhance user interactiv-
ity with canonical works of literature, providing extra-book or post-book
experiences and ways of extending the work beyond the boundaries of the
physical volume. The University of Virginia’s “Digital Yoknapatawpha,”
based on William Faulker’s fictional county of the same name, “allow[s]
scholars, teachers, students, and general readers to map William Faulker’s
Yoknapatawpha fictions, as single texts and in the aggregate, and in multi-
ple ways, including the familiar forms of maps and timelines, but also in
more abstract digital displays” (Hagood 2014).8 The Walking Ulysses
project, developed by Boston College, allows users to follow characters’
movements through a map of Dublin as it existed on June 16, 1904.9 The
map allows users to filter content by chapter, to choose between a histor-
ical map and a contemporary map for the display, and indicates which
routes remain walkable. Google Lit Trips allow users to interact with well-
known works of literature in a similar fashion with the assistance of
geobrowser Google Earth. Google Lit Trips are downloadable files, each
focused on a single work, that identify the routes of characters in a story.
Each map is punctuated by a number of pop-up windows that identify by
chapter the reference to a specific place and the significance of that specific
location within the work. The pop-ups also provide discussion prompts for
students and educators to think more deeply about the events of a location
and links to additional information.10
Literary maps and literary mapping suggest methods of using adaptive
strategies to broaden audiences’ engagement with works through user
engagement. Barbara Piatti et al. highlight some common forms of such
engagement, which include tailoring the reading of the material for spe-
cific needs as well as expanding the information provided with user com-
ments and additional data. Digital mapping projects also provide the
opportunity for others to contribute “by mapping selected literary land-
scapes and cities about which they could provide expert knowledge”
(2009, 193). Such collaboration is especially evident in fan-generated
maps that have come about from fans working together to generate
configurations for a fictional town or city, such as Sunnydale and
Springfield, the fictional settings of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and The
Simpsons. Characters in Buffy use maps fairly consistently to strategize
vampire and demon hunts and suss out hiding spots. Over the course of
the seven-season series, several facts emerge about the town, among them:
it was founded in 1899; it has a population of 38,500; it has an airport, a

bus stop, a train station, a military base, a university, a high school, and
twelve cemeteries.11 Fans have compiled maps based on such information
provided in episodes and on-screen glimpses of maps used by characters
and post these maps to fan sites and the Buffyverse Wiki. The Map of
Springfield: Home of the Simpsons Family, the collaboration of Jerry Lerma
and Terry Hogan, provides a comparable visualization of Springfield,
drawing on data provided in the show’s numerous episodes.
How and what do these projects contribute to adaptation networks? The
short answer is that they provide additional ways of seeing a given work or a
given network. These projects are themselves networks populated with myriad
nodes each capable of launching an additional network. Prioritizing a given
source within this paradigm, while still possible, becomes less interesting than
exploring the relative position of any one work in a larger constellation.
Importantly, though, just as paper-based literary maps work with set icono-
graphy and reinforce dominant views of the works mapped, digital maps work
with set dates and are accessible only via search tools capable of navigating the
terrain in certain ways. Decisions regarding which material is digitized are
made by institutions and organizations with individual biases, ideological
viewpoints, and interests in particular lines of inquiry. Even the most open
of open-source digital libraries and databases monitors the content shared and
amendments made by users. Returning to the idea of the legend, literary maps,
be they paper-based or digital, provide particular versions of a “story,” but all
versions are defined by, contribute and respond to a dominant, collective
vision reflected in the larger adaptation network. The view Jason Farman
offers in his discussion of user engagement with geographic information
systems, particularly Google Earth, is more optimistic. Considering digital
mapping through the lens of participatory culture, Farman reasons that “the
authorial nature of the map can be brought into public debate and reconfi-
gured by the user-generated content created by the community” (2010, 879).
While Farman acknowledges that any “reconfiguring” by users is accounted
for by the map’s software and, thus, perhaps not as rogue as some critics might
hope for, he asserts that “resistance to master narratives can come through a
recontextualization from within existing structures” (2010, 882). In other
words, though bound by certain structures, within this technology, users have
the ability to redefine how they see the world and their relationship to
representations of that space. In a manner similar to the modes discussed in
previous chapters, literary maps and mapping extend adaptation networks by
reinforcing and subtly altering dominant visions.
130 K. NEWELL
NOTES
1. The Harris Corp. has undergone several mergers and name changes in its
years of operation. Founded in 1895 as the Harris Automatic Press
Company, it merged in 1926 with the Seybold Machine Company and the
Premier Potter Premium Press Company to become the Harris-Seybold-
Potter Company, abbreviated in 1946 to Harris-Seybold. In 1957 the
company merged with the Intertype Company, which resulted in another
name change: Harris-Intertype. Thus some of the literary maps discussed in
this chapter were published by Harris-Seybold and others by Harris-
Intertype. In the 1970s the name again changed to the Harris
Corporation and, in the 1990s, the company divided forming Harris
Graphics. “Harris Corp.,” The Encyclopedia of Cleveland History,”
February 27, 2007. http://ech.case.edu/cgi/article.pl?id=HC
2. See, for example, “Chapter 4: ‘Ideas That Have Persisted,’” The Core
Curriculum. Columbia.edu, 2013. https://www.college.columbia.edu/core/
oasis/history4.php.
3. The Harris Corporation was founded in the 1890s by Alfred and Charles
Harris. The brothers invented an automatic sheet feeder that revolutionized
printing equipment, first by eliminating the need for labor-intensive hand-
feeders and, second, by being so technologically advanced that the brothers
then had to invent a new press to handle it. The resulting high-speed press
secured the company a prominent position in the manufacturing and print-
ing industry. By mid-century, Harris-Seybold had enhanced their litho-
graphic printing equipment and saw the calendar maps as a way to
advertise its superior printing quality. “The Harris Story,” Harris.com.,
2016, https://www.harris.com/about.
4. Promotional calendars were utilized as early as the 1850s when The Ketterlinus
Lithographic Producing Company of Philadelphia popularized the idea by
distributing calendars containing advertisements, see John J. Robinson, “A
Brief History of Advertising with Promotional Calendars,” EzineArticles.com,
last modified 2010, http://EzineArticles.com/expert/John_J._Robinson/
769470. Geiger Bros., the largest privately held company specializing in promo-
tional materials also printed promotional calendars in the late 1870s, see “Geiger
Bros. History,” Funding Universe, n.d., last accessed July 7, 2016, and
Robinson. At the end of the nineteenth century, Thomas D. Murphy and
Edward Burke Osborne, newspaper owners from Red Oak, Iowa, began to
include artwork (as opposed to just advertisements) in their promotional
calendars, thus increasing the likelihood that users would keep the calendars
on display, see Robinson 2010 and “A Look Inside the History of
the Promotional Products Industry,” PromotionalProductsWork.org 2016,
Promotional Products Association International, last accessed July 7, 2016.
This practice became popular in the decades to follow and established a pre-
cedent that the Harris Company followed.
5. Paul Riba illustrated The Call of the Wild (1962) and Ken Riley illustrated
The Last of the Mohicans (1963) and Robinson Crusoe (1964) (Hopkins
1999, p. 14).
6. As Simone Murray examines in The Adaptation Industry: The Cultural
Economy of Contemporary Literary Adaptation (New York: Routledge,
2012), literary works that are widely and positively reviewed and nominated
for prizes and awards are likely to be adapted into film—a process that
reinforces their cultural value.
7. “The Preservation of Favoured Traces,” last accessed September 18, 2016.
https://fathom.info/traces/.
8. “The Digital Yoknapatawpha Project,” last accessed November 21, 2016.
http://faulkner.drupal.shanti.virginia.edu/.
9. “Walking Ulysses: Joyce’s Dublin Today,” last accessed November 21,
2016. http://ulysses.bc.edu/.
10. Google Lit Trips, last modified June 26, 2016. http://www.googlelittrips.
org/.
11. “Sunnydale,”Buffy.wikia.com, last accessed September 18, 2016. http://
buffy.wikia.com/wiki/Sunnydale.
REFERENCES
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Directed by Michael Curtiz. MGM, 1960.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the Book by Mark Twain. Illustrated by
Everett Henry. Cleveland: Harris-Intertype, 1959.
Barthes, Roland. Image—Music—Text. Translated by Stephen Heath. New York:
Hill and Wang, 1977.
Bartholomew, J. G. A Literary and Historical Atlas of Europe. London: J.M. Dent
& Sons, 1910. Accessed September 19, 2016. https://archive.org/details/
literaryhistatlas00bartrich.
———. A Literary and Historical Atlas of North & South America. London: J.M.
Dent & Sons, 1911. Accessed September 19, 2016.https://archive.org/
details/literaryhistoric00bartuoft.
———. A Literary and Historical Atlas of Africa and Australasia. London: J.M.
Dent & Sons, 1913. Accessed September 19, 2016.https://archive.org/
details/literaryhistoric00bart_1.
The Beat Generation Map of America. Designed by Molly Maguire. Illustrated by
Stan Grant. Los Angeles: Aaron Blake, 1987.
Being a Literary Map of These United States Depicting a Renaissance No Less
Astonishing Than That of Periclean Athens or Elizabethan London, edited by
132 K. NEWELL
Gladys and Sterling North. Cartography by Frederic Dornseif. New York: G.P.
Putnam’s Sons, 1942.
Black Writers for Young America. Illustrated by Rachel Davis. Washington, D.C.:
District of Columbia Council of Teachers of English, 1976.
Bryant, John. The Fluid Text: A Theory of Revision and Editing for Book and
Screen. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002.
de Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life. Translated by Steven Rendall.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984.
Chandler, Raymond. The Big Sleep. New York: Knopf, 1939.
The Country of So Red the Rose by Stark Young. Cartography by Arthur
Zaidenburg. New York: Scribners and Sons, 1934.
Ellis, John. “The Literary Adaptation.” Screen 23, no. 1(1982): 3–5.
The Ernest Hemingway Adventure Map of the World. Designed by Molly Maguire.
Illustrated by Jay Strabala. Los Angeles: Aaron Blake, 1986.
Farman, Jason. “Mapping the Digital Empire: Google Earth and the Process
of Postmodern Cartography.” New Media Society 12, no. 6 (2010): 869–888.
doi: 10.1177/1461444809350900.
Fenton, William. “5 Digital Mapping Projects that Visualize Literature.” PCMag,
September 3, 2015. Accessed February 5, 2016. http://www.pcmag.com/
article2/0,2817,2490590,00.asp
“Folio Society 1960.” London: Folio Society, 1960. Accessed September 19, 2016.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bw4jspvPPmS3RjY0bnRRN00zSms/view.
General Education in a Free Society: Report of the Harvard Committee. 1945.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1950.
Greenberg, Milton. 2008. “The GI Bill of Rights: Changing the Social, Economic
Landscape of the United States.” Historians on America. http://photos.state.
gov/libraries/amgov/30145/publications-english/historians-on-america.pdf.
Hagood, Taylor. “The Digital Yoknapatawapha.” Southern Spaces. January 22,
2014. https://southernspaces.org/2014/digital-yoknapatawpha-project.
Harley, J.B. The New Nature of Maps: Essays in the History of Cartography, Edited
by Paul Laxton. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001.
Here Took Place the Adventures of Tom Sawyer from the Book by Mark Twain.
Illustrated by Everett Henry. Cleveland: Harris-Seybold, 1953.
Hopkins, Martha. Language of the Land: The Library of Congress Book of Literary
Maps. Washington: Library of Congress, 1999.
The Ian Fleming Thriller Map. Designed by Molly Maguire. Illustrated by John
Zelnick. Los Angeles: Aaron Blake, 1987.
Ivanhoe. Directed by Richard Thorpe. MGM, 1952.
Jacobs, Frank. “A Whale of a Story, for Goldfish: The Voyage of the Pequod.”
BigThink (blog). January 30, 2014. http://bigthink.com/strange-maps/641-
a-whale-of-a-story-for-goldfish-the-voyage-of-the-pequod.
The Jane Austen Map of England. Designed by Molly Maguire. Illustrated by Carol
Kieffer Police. Los Angeles: Aaron Blake, 1987.
John Steinbeck Map of America. Designed by Molly Maguire. Illustrated by
Jim Wolnick. Los Angeles: Aaron Blake, 1986.
Lattuca, Lisa R., S. Joan, and Stark. Shaping the College Curriculum: Academic
Plans in Context. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2009.
Literary History of New York 1650–1865. Compiled by Thomas Francis O’Donnell.
Illustrated by Jane Basenfelder. Phoenix, NY: Frank E. Richards, 1959.
The Literary Map of the American South. Designed by Molly Maguire. Illustrated
by Linda Ayriss. Los Angeles: Aaron Blake, 1988.
The Literary Map of England. Prepared by William Lydon Phelps. Boston: Ginn &
Company, 1899.
A Literary Map of New Jersey. Moorestown: Moorestown Woman’s Club, 1927.
The Literary Map of Southern Appalachia. Compiled by Parks Lanier, Jr. and Grace
Toney Edwards. Radford: Radford University, 1982.
Literature of the Pacific Northwest. Compiled by Harry Alonzo Thompson.
Lewiston: H.A. Thompson, 1950.
London. Illustrated by Julian Wolff. New York: N.p., 1940.
Map of the London of Dickens. Drawn by Frances Loomis. N.p., 1935.
Melville, Herman. Moby-Dick; or, The Whale. New York: Penguin, 1992.
Middle Earth. Illustrated by M. Blackburn. New York: Bruin, 1966.
Mitchell, Margaret. Gone With the Wind. London: Macmillan, 1936.
Moby Dick. Directed by John Huston. Warner Bros., 1956.
Modern Mississippi Writers: A Map of Literary Mississippi. Illustrated by Wyatt
Waters. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1992.
Monmonier, Mark. How to Lie with Maps. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1996.
Moretti, Franco. Graphs, Maps, Trees: Abstract Models for a Literary History.
London: Verso, 2005.
Muehrcke, Phillip C., and O. Juliana. “Maps in Literature.” The Geographical
Review 64, no. 3 (1974): 317–338. doi: 10.2307/213556.
Piatti, Barbara, et. al. “Mapping Literature: Toward a Geography of Fiction.” In
Cartography and Art, edited by William Cartwright, Georg Gartner, and
Antje Lehn, 177–194. New York: Springer, 2009. Accessed June 29, 2016.
doi: 10.1007/978-3-540-68569-2_15.
Portraits of Literary Michigan. Lansing: Library of Michigan, 1994.
The Raymond Chandler Mystery Map of Los Angeles. Designed by Molly
Maguire. Illustrated by Alice Clarke. Los Angeles, 1985.
The Red Badge of Courage. Directed by John Huston. MGM, 1951.
The Sherlock Holmes Mystery Map. Designed by Molly Maguire. Illustrated by
Jim Wolnick. Los Angeles: Aaron Blake, 1987.
134 K. NEWELL
Sisters in Crime: Solving Mysteries Coast-to-Coast. Illustrated by Robin Michal

Koontz. Raleigh: Sisters in Crime, 1991.
Snodgrass, Mary Ellen, and Raymond M. Barrett. Literary Maps for Young Adult
Literature. Englewood: Libraries Unlimited, 1995.
The Tale of Ivanhoe from the Novel by Sir Walter Scott. Illustrated by Everett Henry.
Cleveland: Harris-Intertype, 1958.
A Tale of Two Cities. Directed by Ralph Thomas. Rank, 1958.
A Tale of Two Cities from the Book by Charles Dickens. Illustrated by Everett Henry.
Cleveland: Harris-Seybold, 1957.
The Virginian. Directed by David Friedkin et. al. Written by Morton Fine et. al.
Revue, 1962.
The Voyage of the Pequod from the Book Moby Dick by Herman Melville. Illustrated
by Everett Henry. Cleveland: Harris-Seybold, 1956.
Wood, Denis. Rethinking the Power of Maps. New York: Guilford Press, 2010.
CHAPTER 5
Pop-up Books: Spectacle and Story
A commercial for Harry Potter: A Pop-Up Book Based on the Film

Phenomenon (2010) opens on a scene from one of the films, accompa-
nied by a dynamic orchestral arrangement. The camera moves swiftly
across images, swooping in and out of film footage and pop-up spreads,
as the voiceover invites readers to:
Explore the wizarding world like never before in the new Harry Potter Pop-Up
Book from the creators of the films. . . . From the cobbled streets of Diagon
Alley to Dumbledore’s desk, this collector’s item brings the Harry Potter
universe to life. . . . Stand back as the Howler delivers its message. Sneak a
peek inside a sealed package from the Ministry of Magic. . . . Travel to the
hallowed grounds of Hogwart’s School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Visit
Hagrid’s Hut. Adventure into the Forbidden Forest . . . then flip the page for
front row seats at the Triwizard Tournament as the competition unfolds before
your eyes. Dabble in the dark arts as Harry confronts Lord Voldermort. Bring
the wizarding world to life this season! (Foster 2011)
This advertisement follows the conventions of a movie trailer in its promise

of action and interaction, made explicit in “stand back,” “browse,” “travel,”
“visit,” “adventure.” If the word “book” was absent, viewers might reason-
ably assume that the commercial advertises a new Harry Potter theme park
attraction, virtual reality device, mobile app, or first-person video game.
Paper engineer Bruce Foster plays this commercial at the beginning of a talk
on making pop-ups and jokes, “I show that [trailer] at the risk of making

136 K. NEWELL
the pop-up book pale in comparison” (2011). If the pop-up book does pale
in comparison to its commercial, it may have less to do with what it offers
than with what the commercial promises. The book cannot make good on
the trailer’s dominant appeal—unfettered movement through the Harry
Potter landscape. However, what it does offer is a new way of seeing the
films and the franchise. The book includes five large pop-up spreads (as well
as several smaller spreads), three posters, and extensive behind-the-scenes
information on story development, set design, and the general making of
the film. Thus, what readers get from the book is not a paper-animated story
that pales in comparison to the films, but, rather, a series of set models and
insider information that works within and contributes to the larger Harry
Potter network to which the films also belong.
This chapter focuses on movable books as a unique form of adaptation.
Like other examples addressed in previous chapters, pop-up adaptations
contribute to a given adaptation network by isolating scenes and moments
and by reinforcing through repetition a synecdochic approach to reading
literature. In the rendering of three-dimensionality with a two-dimensional
medium, pop-up books draw attention to the role perception, expectation,
and habit play in constructing boundaries between media and invite us to
think about why, how, and whether such boundaries actually exist. The
chapter begins with a brief overview of the genre of movable books and
pop-ups. I then address strategies used in movable books and pop-ups to
heighten user engagement and to challenge expectations for print media.
I focus next on two pop-up adaptations of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s
Adventures in Wonderland and explore the manner in which pop-up adap-
tations of classic works balance fidelity to a prose source against the pop-
up’s promise of spectacle and surprise. Borrowing from film historian Tom
Gunning’s distinction between the early “cinema of attractions” and later
“cinema of narrative integration,” I distinguish between spectacle-focused
pop-up adaptations, which I call “literature of attractions,” and narrative-
focused pop-up adaptations, which I call “pop-up of narrative integration.”
I conclude the chapter with a discussion of book sculpture and the role of
fan-produced work in adaptation networks.
ENGAGING THE READER: A BRIEF OVERVIEW OF MOVABLE BOOKS

Movable books are those that incorporate moving pieces, such as pull tabs,
volvelles or other rotating wheel mechanisms, pop-ups, and flaps (Phillips
and Montanaro 2014). Although commonly associated with children and
POP-UP BOOKS: SPECTACLE AND STORY 137
children’s literature, pop-up and movable books have a varied readership

and history that spans genres, purpose, and audiences (Haining 1979;
Rubin 2010). The earliest known examples of movable books date to the
thirteenth century and were created primarily for religious and educational
purposes. Benedictine monk Matthew Paris incorporated volvelles, or
revolving wheel mechanisms, and gatefolds, a folded edge that expands
the page size when unfolded, into his Chronica Majora, an illuminated
manuscript that chronicles history from the beginning of the world until
his death in 1259. The volvelle was an early movable mechanism employed
in religious and astronomical works that depended upon lunar or other
cycles (Rubin 2010; Phillips and Montanaro 2014). The Chronica Majora
included several maps—Itinerary to the Holy Land, a map of Palestine and
a map of England—that incorporated what contemporary readers would
call “lift-the-flap” devices (Siebold 1994). Other early artists and writers
also incorporated volvelles and other movable features for informational
and educational purposes. For example, Catalan philosopher Ramon Llull
(c. 1232–c. 1315) developed a rotating wheel, dubbed the Lullian Circle,
for his Ars Magna (1305). The complex mechanism of the wheel was
intended to aid in computation of answers to questions regarding ultimate
truths and religion. Petrus Apianus’s Astronomicum Caesareum (1540)
contained over twenty volvelles to perform astrological and astronomical
calculations (Haining 1979, 9; Opie 1975). A 1574 edition of Johannes
de Sacrobosco’s De sphaera mundi (c. 1230) included volvelles and the
expectation, Ellen G.K. Rubin claims, that the book’s owner would cut
them from the book and display them. Several medical books also incor-
porated movables to aid students’ understanding of anatomy (Phillips and
Montanaro 2014, 12). Andreas Veslaius’s Tabulae Anatomicae Sex (1530)
included superimposed woodcuts and flaps to illustrate the external and
internal organs of male and female bodies. Other well-known examples of
medical books that incorporate superimposition and/or flaps include
Johan Remmelin’s Catoptrum Microcosmicum (1619), George Spratt’s
Obstetrics Tables: Comprising Graphic Illustrations, With Descriptions
and Practical Remarks, Exhibiting on Dissected Plates Many Important
Subjects in Midwifery (1848) (Rubin 2010; Phillips and Montanaro
2014). Although these examples depend upon user interaction, the major-
ity were intended to convey information, rather than to entertain.
Movable books for entertainment purposes were developed for adults
as early as the eighteenth century and many encouraged more liberal
modes of interaction. Harlequinades (also called turn-up books), first
138 K. NEWELL
created by Robert Sayer, were a very popular form. These books included
folds that could be opened and closed to reveal different illustrations and
thus change the overall scene. According to Krystina Madej, Sayer was
“inspired by the pantomimes of the day” and “wanted to show stories in a
series of changing scenes that emulated a performance” (2016, 22). Sayer
produced approximately fifteen titles in this form between 1766 and 1772
(Haining 1979, 9–10; Phillips and Montanaro 2014, 13). Two well-
known titles, Harlequin’s Invasion: A New Pantomime (1770) and
Queen Mab, or The Tricks of Harlequin (1771), both included text from
poems that readers could follow by opening and closing the flaps.
Harlequinades offered greater opportunities for reader autonomy than
earlier movables because, as Madej explains, readers “could follow the
sequence of the text or could open the flaps randomly, which provided an
unusual juxtaposition of sequences.” In effect, readers “physically manipu-
lated the flaps and collaborated in enacting the cause and effect that
moved the sequences forward” (2016, 23).
The nineteenth century saw the first movable books created specifically for
children, many of which blurred lines between book and toy and, in so doing,
facilitated even more interactive reading experiences than those available
previously. The History of Little Fanny (1810), one of S. and J. Fuller’s
Paper Doll Books, is often cited as the earliest and most popular of this type
(Haining 1979, 14). The book includes a paper “Fanny” doll as well as
multiple outfits to allow little readers to (re)enact the scenes from Fanny’s
story as represented in the illustrations. Ellen Ruffin clarifies, “The aim of the
book was to teach virtue to children in the nineteenth century, not to
entertain. Children were taught the results of immorality and the rewards of
virtue” (2008). Each page of the book includes a description of Fanny’s outfit,
which changes in accordance with her moral behavior:
She begins by wearing her very aristocratic white dress with a pink sash,
carrying her doll. Then, because of her idleness and vanity, she is overtaken
by ill fortune, and she is next seen with bare feet in a long red cloak begging
for bread. Through a series of trials and tribulations, she is finally restored to
her former station in life modestly dressed with book in hand, now no
longer idle, proud or vain. (Ruffin 2008; Haining 1979, 15)
Didacticism notwithstanding, this type of book creates the possibility for

alternative interactions in offering readers “the opportunity to add their
own intentions to the story and actively change the meaning of the story”
(Madej 2016, 24). Madej’s observations on Dean & Son’s The Royal Punch
and Judy (1859) are applicable here:
Although there is a traditional and very limited set of actions associated with
the story, readers could, nevertheless, choose to use these actions when they
felt the actions best expressed the personality of the characters and their part
in the story. This was, in small measure, emergence in the process of story-
telling, during which the reader collaborated with the author’s story content
to produce an unscripted version of the story. (2016, 24)
Other books published during the nineteenth century provide similar

opportunities for reader engagement. Though all did not promote the
autonomy of the paper dolls, advances in movable engineering offered
readers new reading perspectives and new ways to see familiar content.
Paper engineers developed a number of effects in the nineteenth cen-
tury. Dean & Son produced books with a range of movable mechanisms,
including peepshow devices, pull tabs, transformational plates, and panor-
amas (Haining 1979, 20–23; Phillips and Montanaro 2014, 14–15). Peter
Haining cites Dean & Son’s series Scenic Books (c. 1856) as the first
“true” movables. These “peep show”-style books layered several illu-
strated sheets, one behind the other, and attached them to each other
with a ribbon or string, which helped them to stand and fold properly
as needed. Two volumes in this series, Little Red Riding Hood and
Cinderella, were very popular. Each included eight pop-up spreads with
three hand-painted pieces each and illustrated well-known scenes from the
stories, such as Cinderella fleeing the ball and being fitted for the glass
slipper. Another London publisher, Raphael Tuck, experimented with a
range of techniques, such as pull-tabs, peepshows, and stand-ups (Phillips
and Montanaro 2014, 15). Tuck also developed books with removable
figures for children to play with. Little Red Riding Hood and Days in
Catland with Louis Wain (1895) are both accordion-folded books that
unfold to reveal four related panels that link to form a panoramic scene,
and which also included a number of cut-out figures, designed to fit in
slots in the scene. Ernest Nister’s “changing pictures” books became
popular in the late nineteenth century “in which an illustration changed
into a completely different scene at the pull of a tab” (Haining 1979, 45).
The American publisher Dutton combined Nister’s “changing pictures”
concept with the volvelle and produced Fly-Away Pictures: A Book of
Revolving Scenes (c. 1890). Paper engineers continued to innovate
140 K. NEWELL
throughout the twentieth century. In the 1930s and 1940s Julian Wehr
and Geraldine Clyne developed popular series: The Exciting Adventures of
Finnie the Fiddler and The Jolly Jump-ups, respectively. Wehr’s method is
distinguished by its use of tabs to convey many movements in one spread.
Unlike the glued-in pop-ups of earlier books, Clyne’s are notable for being
printed on and cut into a single page. Such innovations suggest a sustained
desire on the part of artists and publishers to engage audiences and the
medium in new and increasingly diverse ways.
Much of the ingenuity of contemporary paper engineering is attributed
to artists working in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, such as
Lothar Meggendorfer, S. Louis Giraud, and Vojtěch Kubašta (Haining
1979, 65). Their experiments with motion mechanisms demonstrated the
vast possibilities in paper engineering and advanced its art. As Phillips and
Montanaro point out, “[i]n contrast to most of his contemporaries,
Meggendorfer was not satisfied with only one action on each page. He
often had five parts of the illustration move simultaneously and in different
directions” (2014, 17). This ingenuity is perhaps most evident in his
Internationaler Zirkus (c. 1888), an accordion-style book featuring six
panels that unfold to reveal a large circus scene that includes pop-up
engineering for dimensionality, as well as pull-tab mechanisms that control
a range and number of movements in the scene. Giraud was the first paper
engineer to develop self-erecting pop-ups (as distinguished from pop-ups
that require a tab or string), and he centered his pop-ups on the page to
make them visible from all angles, as is the case in the Bookano Stories
(Phillips and Montanaro 2014, 18; Rubin 2010). Kubašta is one of the
more popular twentieth century pop-up bookmakers, and his contribu-
tions become even more significant for what they inspired. He is known
for his bright, distinctive style and the graceful simplicity of his paper
engineering (Rubin 2010; Grimes 2014). A pull-tab on the cover of his
Red Riding Hood, which includes an illustration of both the wolf and Red
Riding Hood, for example, extends the wolf’s tongue toward the girl’s
head and moves her head away simultaneously. In the 1960s, Waldo Hunt
saw one of Kubašta’s books in a book store and was inspired to start his
own company for making pop-up books, Graphics International. This
company produced numerous pop-up advertisements, such as “The
Wrigley Zoo” for Wrigley’s chewing gum (Fox 2009). In the 1970s
Hunt sold Graphics International to Hallmark and begin a new company,
Intervisual Books, Inc., which continued to put out innovative pop-up
books and materials.
Pop-up mechanisms and advertising have had a consistent relationship

historically, as the attention-getting qualities of pop-ups make them attractive
to advertising and design firms. The Kellogg’s Funny Jungleland Moving
Pictures advertised Kellogg’s cereal as early as 1909. The book included full-
page pictures composed of series of horizontal flaps that readers could lift to
change the animal, the animal’s clothes, and the setting. Other companies to
use pop-ups in the early decades of the twentieth century include Sears
Roebuck and Co., the British Savoy Hotel, and Good Housekeeping. In 1943
Pabst Blue Ribbon issued Blue Ribbon Town a “26-page book with four
pop-ups that showed townspeople helping the war effort” (Phillips and
Montanaro 2014, 21). Companies continue to use pop-ups in their marketing
campaigns. In 2008 print campaigns for both Fruit of the Loom and the Mars
Company included pop-ups: pop-up flowers and butterflies fashioned from
women’s panties for Fruit of the Loom, and a pop-up of a hand extending a
new mint-flavored Three Musketeers bar for Mars (Clifford 2008). The
Wisconsin-based Acuity Insurance Company commissioned pop-up designs
for their 2010 annual report, titled ACUITY’s Storybook Year. The spreads,
engineered by Andrew Baaron, each visualize a familiar nursery rhyme, such as
“Little Bo Beep” and “Hey Diddle Diddle.” The images all incorporate
humorous elements directed to the knowing audience. In the spread for
Humpty Dumpty, for example, the King’s Men wait on the ground with a
frying pan. More recently, in 2014, Nescafé France developed “Pop-Up
Café,” a print ad in 2014 that included two foldable paper coffee cups with
coffee powder inside. This ad played on “pop-up” by using pop-up coffee cups
to encourage pop-up interactions among strangers and acquaintances.1 In
2015, a select few Pier 1 Imports customers received a limited edition holiday
decorating catalog with pop-ups designed by Bruce Foster. In each of these
cases the company allotted a significant percentage of the yearly advertising
budget to this novelty because they knew the pop-up would grab customers’
attention, stimulate their senses in a manner unexpected for print media, and
invite them to interact with the print genre in an unconventional manner.
Pop-up adaptations of literary works have been around for a long time,
as the previously mentioned Scenic Books by Dean & Son attest. Like
novelizations, illustrations, and literary maps, pop-up adaptations of litera-
ture can contribute to the cultural knowledge of a work in a number of ways;
for example, they provide a point of access for readers (particularly reluctant
and/or emergent readers) and establish and reinforce particular works and
particular moments of those works. Blue Ribbon books, the company that
copyrighted the term “pop-up,” made a name for itself in publishing
142 K. NEWELL
books featuring Disney characters and based on fairy and other well-known
tales: Jack the Giant Killer (1933), Puss in Boots (1934), and The New
Adventures of Tarzan “Pop-up” (1935), to name three. Random House
entered the pop-up market in the 1960s with their Pop-up Classics series,
which “presented time-honoured tales retold in brief text with pop-up
illustrations” (Phillips and Montanaro 2014, 24). Some titles include
Robin Hood, Pinocchio, The Wizard of Oz, and Cinderella. The books utilize
a range of movable techniques among them pop-ups, pull-tabs, flaps, rotat-
ing wheels, and transformations, and some feature additional surprises, such
as the pair of green spectacles included with The Wizard of Oz edition.
Hallmark Cards also entered the pop-up book business at this time with
approximately seventy books, some of which adapted classic titles, such as
Cinderella, Snow White, Jack and the Beanstalk, and Thumbelina. Each
edition included a guarantee on the back cover: “Hallmark Children’s
Editions are created in consultation with Dr. Edith M. Dowley, Director
of the Bing Nursery School, Stanford University. Every title has been tested
to make sure of its interest. You can be sure that a Hallmark children’s book
will be a happy and healthy experience for young people” (see also Phillips
and Montanaro 2014, 24). Such assurances indicate an abiding interest in
maintaining a particular middle-class literary canon—one full of “time-hon-
oured” and “healthy” works—consistent with that reflected in the Harris-
Seybold and Harris-Intertype literary maps discussed in Chapter Four.
Now, in the twenty-first century a few paper engineers have cornered the
pop-up market, among them David A. Carter, Robert Sabuda, Matthew
Reinhart, and Bruce Foster. Carter focuses less on adapting extant works
and more on developing counting, color, and conceptual pop-ups for
children. Sabuda has created over twenty-five pop-ups over the past twenty
years, a number of them pop-up adaptations of well-known books, includ-
ing The Wonderful Wizard of Oz: A Commemorative Pop-Up (2000), Alice’s
Adventures in Wonderland: A Pop-up Adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s
Original Tale (2003), The Chronicles of Narnia (2007), Peter Pan: A
Pop-up Adaptation of J.M. Barrie’s Original Tale (2008), and Beauty and
the Beast: A Pop-Up Adaptation of the Classic Tale (2010). Reinhart and
Foster also adapt well-known stories. Reinhart has adapted Cinderella:
A Pop-Up Fairy Tale (2005), The Jungle Book: A Pop-up Adventure
(2006), A Pop-Up Book of Nursery Rhymes (2009), and many others.
Some of Foster’s engineering includes Little Red Riding Hood (2000),
The Princess and the Pea (2002), and A Christmas Carol: A Pop-Up Book
(2010). In addition to adapting specific canonical works, many paper
engineers adapt a topic of general interest or a property with an existing fan

base. Sabuda and Reinhart have worked together on the Encyclopedia
Prehistorica series, which features volumes for dinosaurs, mega-beasts, and
sharks and sea monsters. Reinhart has developed pop-ups for the Star Wars:
A Pop-Up Guide to the Galaxy (2007), DC Superheroes: The Ultimate Pop-Up
Book (2010), Transformers: The Ultimate Pop-Up Universe (2013), and
Game of Thrones: A Pop-Up Guide to Westeros (2014) franchises. Pop-up
books are very expensive to design and manufacture, so it follows that
publishers are interested in adapting books with a more guaranteed fan base.
What we see in this brief overview is a historical interest among publishers
and engineers in using paper in ways that make it more interesting and
accessible to readers. The popularity and profusion of pop-ups and movables
could be attributed simply to the novelty of the form, but central to that
novelty is a desire to engage readers more actively in reading. Movable books
are not for those who hope only to receive from books (i.e., entertainment,
edification, information); they are for readers who hope to experience books
as fully as possible. The next section focuses more specifically on how pop-
ups and other forms of paper engineering challenge expectations for paper as
a medium by offering a highly interactive sensory experience, and addresses
the contributions of pop-up adaptations to adaptation networks.
PAPER LIKE YOU’VE NEVER SEEN IT BEFORE!

Part of the appeal of pop-ups and other movable books is that they do things
we do not readily associate with books or paper. They are multimodal in that
they combine “text, image and sound” and draw on a “combination of sense
faculties; the auditory, the visual, the tactile and so forth” (Elleström 2010,
14). In this way, pop-up and moveable books appear to bridge the gap
between what we think of as “the arts of time (music, literature, film) and
the arts of space (the visual arts)” (Elleström 2010, 11). Interart works (that is,
works that appear to incorporate signifiers of more than one art form) tend to
be theorized in terms of differences in what Lars Elleström calls their “con-
ceptual units,” such as word/image, verbal/visual, visual/aural, and the like.
Pop-ups have been read in terms of word/image and static/dynamic. Such
approaches, as Elleström, W.J.T. Mitchell, and others have pointed out, are
problematic for several reasons. “The first problem,” Elleström explains, “is
that the units compared are often treated as fundamentally different media
with little or nothing in common. Thus, every intermedial relation seems to
be more or less an anomaly” (2010, 14). Much work on interart and
144 K. NEWELL
intermedial works shows that such relations, in fact, are not anomalous, but
the norm. All media objects are essentially intermedial. Another problem with
approaches that focus on comparisons of conceptual units is that they do not
consider the manner in which the materiality of media may differ from our
perception of media (Elleström 2010, 15). For example, as we saw in Chapter
Three, illustrators use line techniques to convey a sense of motion and readers
may perceive whatever is depicted as in motion, but the materiality of the
illustration is static. Pop-up books appear to challenge our expectations for
books because our expectations have been shaped by a dyadic understanding
of media and interart relationships. We see books as flat and static and pop-ups
as dimensional and dynamic.
Elleström identifies four modalities of all media, none of which are fixed
absolutely, but which help to sketch the experience of pop-up books and
readers’ responses. These include the material, the sensorial, the spatiotem-
poral, and the semiotic (2010). Pop-up and other moveable books affect
readers’ perception of the “material modality,” or “corporeal interface,” of
the page. The material interface of a basic book is a flat, unchanging surface,
unlike movies or television for which the material interface is a “flat surface of
changing images . . . combined with sound waves” (Elleström 2010, 17).
Pop-up and moveable books appear to transform the normally unchanging
surface of the page into something more like a movie (as the Harry Potter
advertisement promises) or, as Foster puts it, into a “sculpture in motion”
(2011). That audiences have this experience is the result of their “sense
faculties,” which respond to the stimulus of the paper architecture as chan-
ging and/or in motion (Elleström 2010, 17). Pop-ups also seem to challenge
readers’ expectations of the spatiotemporal modality of books. Elleström
explains that “[s]patiotemporal perception can be said to consist of four
dimensions: width, height, depth and time” (2010, 19). Conventional
books have two or three dimensions—width and height, and, if we are
focused on narrative, time —but pop-ups add depth in allowing the reader
to have a dimensional experience of the engineered paper. Conventional
books are static in that “their sense-data remain the same”—that is, if the
reader puts down the book, walks away, and then returns the data will not
have changed. Pop-up books are also static, but the mobility of the paper
architecture fosters the illusion of dynamism. In addition to challenging
readers’ expectations for paper in terms of the material object, many move-
able books challenge expectations by implicating readers in the action of the
book, through perspectival and positioning strategies, and by audio features,
which further challenge assumptions of the capabilities of print media.
Harry Potter: A Pop-Up Book Based on the Film Phenomenon is not

alone in its promise of interactivity; virtually all pop-up books based on
existing works promise a heightened sensory experience. The copy on
the back of Penguin’s 2011 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Pop-Up
Book, for example, boasts: “Now YOU can step inside! This is your
Golden Ticket! Explore Willy Wonka’s AMAZING world with this
unique pop-up, pull-tab, lift-the-flap edition of Roald Dahl’s much-
loved story.” Sabuda’s 2008 Peter Pan uses a similar appeal: “Master
paper engineer Robert Sabuda creates Peter’s world for the reader to
leap into: Tinkerbell flies, pirates pop, and ships spring up with masts
that sway in the breeze.” Readers’ responses seem to confirm the
dynamism of the reading experience. An Amazon.com reviewer praises
Harry Potter: A Pop-Up Book: “The pages are lush and realistic; flipping
through them is like flying through the world of Harry Potter on your
Firebolt” (Stotch 2010). Another praises a page from Peter Pan: “It is
astonishingly beautiful to open a page and look down into the depths
of a London that is alive and swirling with mystery. The clouds slowly
reveal themselves as fragments of all the central characters in the book,
almost as if they were actively hiding and exposing themselves in life”
(Psotka 2008).
Pop-up books engage readers on many levels, commonly by positioning
them in the action. The Pop-Up Book of Nightmares (2001) and The Pop-Up
Book of Phobias (1999) stand out for their use of subjective techniques.
These books, both created by Gary Greenberg, illustrated by Balvis Rubess,
and paper engineered by Matthew Reinhart, present full-page, pop-up
spreads focused on common nightmares and phobias, accompanied by an
explanation of the same. Each page is oriented as to place the reader in the
position of the person experiencing the nightmare or phobia. For example,
The Pop-Up Book of Nightmares includes a spread devoted to the nightmare
of a car accident that places the reader behind the wheel and looking out the
windshield at an oncoming truck on a winding highway. The Pop-Up Book of
Phobias uses the same strategy. This book opens with “dentophobia” and an
image of a menacing-looking dentist lunging toward the reader. The effect
is rendered more frightening by the pop-up of the dental drill that spins
toward the reader as the page opens and closes.
Some pop-up books put readers in the action rather literally. As men-
tioned, several publishers published book-toy hybrids during the nineteenth
century, among them S. and J. Fuller’s Paper Doll Books, which encour-
aged readers to use the dolls to act out books’ stories, and F.C. Westley’s
146 K. NEWELL
slot book, The Paignion (c. 1830), “which consisted of twelve scenes from
everyday life, liberally cut with slots, and a total of sixty-five little figures
which could be placed in these pictures completely at will” (Haining 1979,
14, 18). Like his Little Red Riding Hood and Days in Catland with Louis
Wain, Raphael Tuck’s Fairy Tale Series of Dressing Dolls (c. 1890) featured
cutout figures from beloved fairy tales that could be positioned in the
books’ various scenes. The French publisher Dambuyant & Guignard
created arguably the most impressive example of the book-toy hybrid with
Masion de Poupeé (c. 1900)—a book that transforms into a doll’s house
(Haining, 1979, 127).
The most common way for pop-ups to engage readers is in yoking the
mobility of the paper engineering to narrative consequences. Readers
cannot resist the call of a pull-tab or the lure of volvelle, but to give into
these visual-tactile urges commonly results in their interpellation in the
narrative’s chain of cause and effect. For a good number of pop-up books
simply opening the page can implicate the reader in actions performed
upon a character. For example, in many pop-up editions of The Wonderful
Wizard of Oz, to open the first page is to unleash the cyclone that tears
Dorothy and Toto from their home. Dell’s 1991 pop-up edition of Alice’s
Adventures in Wonderland features a pull-tab by which readers become
responsible for making Alice larger or smaller, as quickly and frequently as
they desire. Karen Benfield alludes to this reader-enactment in her article
on Sabuda, noting that “In his Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the Mad
Hatter and the March Hare really dunk the Dormouse in a tea pot, and
can do it again and again, as you desire. In his hands, and then in yours,
books are transformed into places to visit and make things happen” (2010,
emphasis added).
For some pop-up books, the act of turning the page might commit a
character to an unforeseen consequence, whereas others, for which the
reader is invited to pull a tab or open a flap, provide greater forewarning
that those actions produce effect. For example, Penguin’s 2011 Charlie
and the Chocolate Factory Pop-Up Book includes ten pop-up spreads, four
of which are devoted to the tragic events that befall four children that visit
Willy Wonka’s factory: Augustus Gloop falling into the chocolate river,
Violet Beauregarde blowing up like a blueberry, Veruca Salt being tossed
into the rubbish chute by discerning squirrels, and Mike Teavee traveling
across the room into the television. Each spread integrates a mechanism
that, when initiated by the reader, brings about the child’s punishment.
The Chocolate Room spread, for example, depicts Augustus Gloop after
he has fallen into the chocolate river, but he is not fully immersed until the
reader pulls the tab. In addition to cementing the punishment for each
child, the pull-tabs also make visible the chorus of Oompa Loompas. That
is, the pull-tabs that move the characters are also flaps that reveal the songs
of the Oompa Loompas when opened. Thus the pull-tab that submerges
Augustus opens to display the lyrics to the Oompa Loompa’s song con-
demning his gluttony. This mechanism combines punishment and judg-
ment into a single action. Additionally, it underscores the marginality of
the Oompa Loompas whose contributions are only brought to light by
readers’ engagement. Inattentive readers might pull the tabs and not
realize that they also open.
Sound offers another avenue for movable books and pop-ups to
heighten the sensory experience of reading and to challenge readers’
expectations for paper. The first movable book to incorporate sound
effects is The Speaking Picture Book (c. 1893), first manufactured in
Nuremberg and later in Britain and the United States. This book, sub-
titled “A Special Book with Picture, Rhyme and Sound for Little People,”
includes a set of tassels that operate a set of miniature bellows and, when
pulled, initiate various animal sounds. This book is an obvious precursor of
contemporary pop-up books that incorporate sound via an audio chip,
such as Silver Dolphin Book’s 2010 The Wizard of Oz: A Classic Story Pop-
Up Book With Sounds, which includes five pop-ups, each accompanied by a
sound effect associated with the scene. The opening pop-up depicting the
cyclone whirling through the Kansas prairie is accompanied by a sound
effect of whirling wind, a dog barking, and a cow lowing. In a similar
manner, Matthew Reinhart’s 2012 limited edition Star Wars: A Galactic
Pop-Up Adventure includes a pop-up of Darth Vader drawing his light
saber, accompanied by that distinctive sound effect.
While books that integrate sound chips are certainly technologically
novel, pop-up books that rely on the friction of the paper itself for sound
effects challenge our expectations for paper even more. The Pop-up Book of
Gnomes (1979) incorporates such an effect for the pop-up of the gnomes
sawing through a tree trunk. The sound is produced by the friction of the
saw’s jagged edge rubbing against the comparatively smooth edge of the log
when readers pull a tab. David Carter’s White Noise: A Pop-up Book for
Children of All Ages (2009) takes as its subject the various sounds paper can
make. Each page produces a particular sound effect when opened as paper
shapes dangle or rub against each other. The most audible effect occurs on a
spread titled “Walt’s megaphone.” The page features a raised paper box
148 K. NEWELL
with an opaque surface. Within the box is a set of thick paper tabs. When
readers pull the page’s tab, these interior tabs are raised and scrape gently
against the surface of the box creating sound. The sound, here, is integral to
the book, rather than ancillary as in the audio-chip examples.
Pop-ups can also engage audiences and challenge our expectations for
books by transforming them into something else entirely. Whereas some
pop-up books are designed for display as well as reading, others are designed
for display only. Game of Thrones: A Pop-Up Guide to Westeros is an example
of the first category. The book features five large pop-up spreads and several
smaller pop-ups on each page. Once readers have finished reading the book,
they can unhinge its spine and unfold the book into a three-dimensional
tabletop map of Westeros. Readers of Star Wars: A Galactic Pop-Up
Adventure and Harry Potter: A Pop-Up Book Based on the Film
Phenomenon express similar interest in display value. These books do not
unhinge, but their detail and visual interest render them display-worthy for
some fans and readers. Some non-narrative pop-up books fall squarely into
the second category and are designed to function as table art. Ray Marshall
has designed several such books including Paper Blossoms: A Book of
Beautiful Bouquets for the Table (2010) and Paper Blossoms, Butterflies &
Birds: A Book of Beautiful Bouquets for the Table (2014). Each of these books
contains a pop-up display of flowers intended to be used as centerpiece.
As these examples show, there is often more to pop-up books than meets
the eye. While we see commonalities across pop-up books in terms of devices
and types of movement, their purpose and effect differs widely. The next
section focuses specifically on pop-up adaptations of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s
Adventures in Wonderland, and considers how pop-ups reimagine classic
works and how they contribute to a given work’s adaptation network.
ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN POP-UP LAND

As with conventional illustrated editions for which artists and/or publishers
must decide which of many moments to visualize, artists and engineers
designing pop-up adaptations need to determine which moments will
make successful pop-ups and how to engineer those moments for the great-
est impact. Designers and engineers might look for moments for which
movement is intrinsic, such as Jack’s growing beanstalk or Peter Pan flying
through a window. As is the case with other modes of adaptation, pop-up
book adaptations also tend to adapt recognizable, iconic scenes—those
readers expect to see and with which they might be familiar from other
adaptations. For example, most pop-up adaptations of The Wizard of Oz

include a spread of the cyclone (Sabuda 2000; Hess 2010; Robinson 2012;
Treasury Collection 1991), the Emerald City (Sabuda; Hess; Robinson;
Treasury Collection), and the meeting with Oz (Sabuda; Modern
Promotions 1983; Robinson). Pop-up designers tend to select for adapta-
tion hinge-point moments in which something important happens—
moments that could be labeled narratively “risky” (McFarlane 1996, 13).
Without the cyclone, Dorothy would not have been transported to Oz. Had
Oz not bargained with Dorothy but had simply sent her away she would not
have had the experiences that gave her the confidence to actually return
home. As previous chapters have discussed, such moments of consequence
are those most commonly adapted across media and modalities; through the
reiterative process of adaptation, these moments come to be recognized as
“the work.”
Even a cursory consideration of several pop-up versions of Lewis Carroll’s
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland results in a clear sense of the artistic
consensus on cardinal narrative moments. Most pop-up editions of Alice
in Wonderland adapt the following moments or scenes in some fashion:
Alice falling down the rabbit hole, Alice growing too big for W. Rabbit’s
house, Alice meeting the caterpillar, Alice meeting the Duchess, the tea
party, the Queen’s cards painting the flowers, the Queen’s croquet game,
the Knave of Hearts’ trial, and Alice being attacked by the pack of cards
(Taylor 2015; Sabuda 2003; Seibold 2003; Denchfield 2000; Thorne 1980;
Chambers 1968). Robert Sabuda provides an explanation for this tendency:
“Most of us who are familiar with the story think of it in terms of individual
scenes of, well, to put it nicely, strange lunacy! Yes, there is wonderful
wordplay in the text, but there’s nothing like the image of a baby turning
into a pig” (quoted in “Alice’s . . . ” 2003). The potential for visual memory
to trump prose memory points to one reason why Alice has been so popular
with illustrators, filmmakers, and paper engineers. Most pop-up adaptations
incorporate prose from their nominal sources, typically, but it is altered or
dramatically abridged—the focus of these works is on the visual feat. The
scenes most commonly visualized are also those that mark Alice’s move-
ments: her geographical and psychological movement from the world of
the river bank to that of Wonderland, her physical movement from large to
small and back again, her linear movement as consistent with the convention
of the bildungsroman, and her cognitive movement from confusion and
disorientation to understanding this new environment. Scenes that fore-
ground physical movement appeal to pop-up artists the most, as the actions
150 K. NEWELL
of falling and growing too big or too small lend themselves to pull tabs and
volvelles.
A challenge in adapting a well-known book in any modality is creating a
balance of novelty and familiarity. In a cultural market saturated with visual
adaptations of classic works, pop-up adaptations must provide enough
“wow” to inspire their purchase but enough familiarity to anchor the read-
er’s experience. Steven Heller, reviewing Robert Sabuda’s Alice’s Adventures
in Wonderland: A Pop-Up Adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s Original Tale
(2003), explains: “Surprise is essential to the success of any pop-up book—
although with some of the less inventive ones, after the first couple of routine
pop-ups the viewer’s expectations are likely to diminish. Sabuda has surprises
on every spread, even given how well we all know Alice” (2003). Tim Adams
offers similar praise of Sabuda’s work: “Pop-up books generally pursue a law
of diminishing returns—you can only be genuinely surprised once, but
Sabuda seems capable of upping the ante at every page turn” (2003). My
own experience of pop-up adaptations of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,
however, yields comparatively few surprises in terms of what will be adapted
and how. For example, many reviewers cite Sabuda’s final spread which
features Alice assailed by an arc of playing cards as an example of his innova-
tion and superior engineering. Though certainly impressive, this spread is
compositionally similar to that of the 1980 Delacorte Alice’s Adventures in
Wonderland: A Pop-Up Book, illustrated by Jenny Thorne, which also fea-
tures a pop-up arc of playing cards over Alice’s head, and both of these pop-
ups are compositionally similar to the corollary scene presented in Random
House’s 1968 Alice in Wonderland: A Pop-Up Classic, which also positions
Alice at the center of the composition framed by an arc of flying cards
(though this version uses a dissolve technique rather than a pop-up)
(Chambers).2 Not surprisingly, each of these iterations is compositionally
similar to John Tenniel’s 1865 illustration of the same scene. Such unifor-
mity points to a visual homogeneity similar to that evident in comparisons of
illustrated editions and film adaptations in a given work’s adaptation net-
work. Paper engineers understand that readers expect a “wow” ending, but
one that, again, is familiar. They want the cascade of cards, but they want it to
be more spectacular than any they have seen before.
In foregrounding spectacle and innovation and in pushing medial
limits, many movable book adaptations of classic literary works engage
the reader in a manner similar to that of the early “cinema of attractions,”
identified as such by Tom Gunning in his foundational essay, “The
Cinema of Attraction: Early Film, Its Spectator and the Avant-Garde.”
The “cinema of attractions” refers to film’s earliest genres—actualities,

topicals, travel and trick films, and the like—which dominated the industry
until around 1906 or 1907: “it is a cinema that bases itself on . . . its ability
to show something”; it is “exhibitionist”; it is “willing to rupture a self-
enclosed fictional world for a chance to solicit the attention of the spec-
tator” (1986, 64).3 J. Otto Seibold’s Alice in Pop-up Wonderland (2003)
falls into the category of what might be called a “literature of attractions,”
foregrounding visual style and pop-up prowess and downplaying narrative
coherence and fidelity to Carroll. Heller’s New York Times review of
Seibold’s Alice in Pop-Up Wonderland remarks on his attention-seeking
strategy, noting that a few of the “pop-up effects seem perfunctory
(as though the artist said to himself, ‘What wild, crazy thing should I try
next?’)” (2003). The book’s back cover aptly labels it a “visual retelling of
Lewis Carroll’s classic tale.” Seibold incorporates some of Carroll’s word-
ing but does so in his characteristic heavily stylized type, which challenges
rather than facilitates reading. Unlike more traditional illustrated editions
in which words and images are visually distinct, Seibold’s style assigns the
words their own aesthetic weight, and they become an aspect of the visual
as opposed to ancillary to it. Pamela Klaffke of the Calgary Herald alludes
to this characteristic in her review of Seibold’s Alice: “The heavily orna-
mented type (in all different sizes, colour and fonts) can make for a
challenging read, but . . . the words are not really the point—having fun
pulling paper levers and opening peek-a-boo doors is” (2003). Indeed, the
levers, doors, tabs, and volvelles are the “point” of Seibold’s Alice; the
spectacle is what matters. Narrative events unfold in shorthand as a set of
seemingly disjointed vignettes and with such dramatic abridgement of
prose that many of the causal links are eradicated.
Seibold’s adaptation includes seven pop-up and moveable spreads: Alice
and her sister at the river bank, Alice falling down the rabbit hole, Alice
trapped in the house of the White Rabbit, Alice meeting the caterpillar,
Alice visiting the Duchess, the Mad Hatter’s tea party, the croquet game
with the Queen, and the Knave of Hearts’s trial. These scenes would be
recognizable to any reader with even a casual familiarity with Alice. Seibold
does not develop the causal connection between scenes; as a result, each
spread appears as an individual tableau and the book’s overall narration is
disjointed. For example, the second spread includes a pop-up of Alice falling
down the rabbit hole, along with a pull-tab that transforms the White
Rabbit from looking at his clock to running away. The page includes
three large passages of text, two related to Alice’s fall and one to the hallway
152 K. NEWELL
in which she finds herself. The White Rabbit is not mentioned on this page
(though he is mentioned on the previous page). The last of the text panels
on this page relates that Alice “found herself in a long, low hall which was lit
up by a row of lamps hanging from the roof. There were doors all around
the hall, but they were all locked . . . She went to the table. She found a little
bottle on it, and around the neck of the bottle was a paper label, with the
words ‘drink me’ beautifully printed on it in large letters” (Seibold 2003).
The pop-up on the right side includes five doors, two with flaps to open.
Behind one door are pop-ups of animals who appear to be running around a
track and the text “The Great Caucus Race: ’Round and ’Round.” Behind
the second door is a pop-up of Alice and a mouse sitting in a pool of water
and the text “Sea of Tears.” No exposition is offered for these images.
Readers hoping for clarification from the next page are disappointed, as this
page begins with the sentence “Alice drew her foot as far down the chimney
as she could.” This page’s spread includes three depictions of Alice (i.e., in a
pop-up house, with a pull-tab head, and as an illustration) and features a
pop-up of a giant caterpillar at the center. The pop-up of Alice in the house
includes a volvelle that moves a lizard over the house and Alice’s arms and
legs with it. The prose does not explain these images or their connection
and does not integrate them into a larger narrative structure.
For readers familiar with Alice’s story, the visuals would likely recall
corollary moments from readers’ previous encounters with Alice, likely on
page and/or on screen. Such readers would know, for example, that the
images behind the doors in the hallway refer to experiences that befall
Alice as she accustoms herself to her inexplicable physical growth and
shrinkage in Wonderland. Readers familiar with Alice would understand
that the next page’s spread offers glimpses of three distinct scenes featur-
ing Alice, rather than a proliferation of Alices. For the first-time reader,
however, the book will likely appear as a collection of visual vignettes, each
designed to draw attention to the magic of paper engineering and pop-up
mechanics, but it would likely not give that reader a clear sense of Carroll’s
narrative. But Seibold’s treatment may not be too far off the mark of
Alice’s larger adaptation history. As Thomas Leitch explains,
most film adaptations of Carroll’s story treat it and its sequel as a series of set
pieces or episodes as subject to selection, abridgment, or rearrangement as
the acts on a television variety program of the 1950s, held together only by
the abiding presence of Alice, whose role is scarcely more well-defined that
that of a television emcee. These adaptations, although they make no serious
attempts to reproduce Tenniel’s visuals exactly, are structurally closer to his

vivid but discontinuous illustrations than to the nonsensically overdeter-
mined logic of Carroll’s writing. (Leitch 2007, 185)
Mark Burstein would likely concur, noting: “[s]peculation as to why there

has never been a good cinematic adaptation revolve around the story being
anecdotal, not developmental—that is, it’s a series of vignettes rather than
a narrative arc; that it has the standard translation problems, only magni-
fied” (quoted in Nicols 2014, viii).
For the seasoned Alice reader, notable variations between Seibold’s
abridged prose and Carroll’s original prose invite alternative interpretations
of Alice’s story, and provide commentary on the pop-up format. In Carroll’s
well-known opening: “Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her
sister on the bank and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had
peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or
conversations in it, ‘and what is the use of a book,’ thought Alice, ‘without
pictures or conversations’” (1992, 7). In Seibold’s first spread, Alice reads a
book, titled reflexively “This is the Book Alice was Reading When She Was
Bored,” while her sister plays with a flower. This book, which readers can
also read as a six-page booklet affixed to the spread, begins: “Long ago in
the days of old. In the land of yore, the most boringest story took place.”
The facing illustration depicts a battle between a dragon and a knight. The
next text page reads: “It has a castle in it and—did I say this book is boring?
Because there is this one part—but it takes soooo long to get to!” The
accompanying illustration shows that the dragon has fallen asleep, presum-
ably from boredom with his own story, and a mouse stands before him. The
next page reads: “‘I am the finest tailor in the land’ said the little mouse.
This part is boring. But no one heard his boast. Boring.” The illustration
shows the mouse standing atop a spool of thread speaking, while the dragon
walks off in the background. In this manner Seibold provides an alternative
grounding for his Alice story. Not only is Alice the reader and her sister the
audience, she reads what Carroll’s Alice might categorize as a “useful”
book, one with illustrations. All the same, this beginning is not as revisionist
as it might seem initially. Seibold’s opening alludes to a medial hierarchy
similar to that to which Carroll alludes. Whereas Carroll positions books
against illustrated books, Seibold positions illustrated books against pop-up
books, specifically between “boring” black and white illustrated books like
his Alice reads and exciting, colorful pop-up books like Seibold’s readers are
reading. In Carroll’s novel, Alice, bored with her sister’s pictureless book,
154 K. NEWELL
falls asleep and enters the visually rich, surreal world of her unconscious,
wakes and tells her sister of her adventures in such a vivid manner that her
sister relives the dream in her own mind. Seibold’s title Alice in Pop-Up
Wonderland seems to be inviting a similar movement in which Alice, bored
by the two-dimensional adventure to which she is an observer, awakes to a
three-dimensional adventure of which she is a part. Seibold’s Alice con-
cludes with her sister waking her, but not with Alice sharing her story with
her sister, or with her sister’s dreamy projections of herself into
Wonderland, or her musings on an older Alice sharing her story with her
children. Rather, Seibold’s narrative ends abruptly with Alice’s sister’s
remark, “Why what a long sleep you’ve had!” The concluding impression
is not of story poised for inclusion in a great oral tradition, passed along
from generation to generation, but of a “one-off”—an isolated story con-
tained within a book’s boards. The book’s lack of exposition would render a
coherent narrative “recap” almost impossible for this Alice, who hops
inexplicably from place to place, and a visual recap seems beyond her
capabilities. Seibold “brings his unique visual talents to this timeless classic,”
as the copy on the back cover indicates, but these talents are not, it would
seem, transferable to Alice.
Several scholars, among them Lisa Coar and Nancy Armstrong, have
addressed the manner in which Alice’s movements through Wonderland in
Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland are motivated by or the conse-
quence of consumption (Coar 2012; Armstrong 1990). Throughout the
novel, Alice is consistently hungry and what she does and does not eat
impacts her significantly. On her way down the rabbit hole, she passes a jar
of marmalade, “but to her great disappointment it was empty” (1992, 8).
She “very soon finished” the bottle she encounters in the hallway, labeled
“Drink Me,” “finding it very nice (it had, in fact, a sort of mixed flavour of
cherry-tart, custard, pineapple, roast turkey, toffy, and hot buttered toast)”
(1992, 11). She nibbles bits of mushroom throughout the second half of the
story to alter her height as appropriate. Upon seeing the tarts on the table in
the courtroom of the Knave of Hearts’s trial, the narrator notes “they looked
so good, that it made Alice quite hungry to look at them” (1992, 86).
Seibold’s Alice focuses less on edibles specifically and more on consumer
goods in general. When Alice falls down the rabbit hole in Carroll’s tale, she
“tried to look down and make out what she was coming to, but it was too
dark to see anything: then she looked at the sides of the well, and noticed
that they were filled with cupboards and book-shelves” (1992, 8). In
Seibold’s version, the walls of the rabbit hole appear bare but Alice is joined
in her fall by a cascade of boxes and bottles of products labeled with the
word “everything.” The connection here seems to be that, in Wonderland,
“everything” is available in some packaged form. More specific examples of
product placement occur throughout the book. The Duchess’s baby, for
example, wears a cap by Baby Gap. The Queen of Hearts’s amulet is by
Tommy Hilfiger, and the king wears a shirt by Polo and jacket by Sean John
and carries a staff by Eddie Bauer. In another image the king’s clothing is
labeled with the brands Laura Ashley and Lancômbe, and the rock band ZZ
Top. In another, he wears clothes with labels from JCPenney, Montgomery
Ward, and Burger King. These nods to consumer culture offer a humorous
connection between contemporary consumer culture and the rise of mass-
produced goods and clothing and conspicuous consumption in the
Victorian era, as Thorstein Veblen has charted in The Theory of the Leisure
Class: An Economic Study of Institutions (1899). Seibold’s seemingly
random confluence of brands points to an indiscriminate consumer, one
as equally comfortable with Lancômbe as with ZZ Top, one who wants
“everything.”
Seibold’s Alice stands out from other pop-up adaptations in resisting
traditional storytelling and in emphasizing the disjointedness of Alice’s vign-
ettes, rather than attempting to smooth them over, as well as in his attempts
to disassociate his book from a conventional illustrated adaptation by blurring
the distinctions between prose and image. Whereas Seibold’s book exempli-
fies a “literature of attractions,” Robert Sabuda’s Alice’s Adventures in
Wonderland: A Pop-up Adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s Original Tale exempli-
fies a “pop-up of narrative integration”—a variation on “cinema of narrative
integration,” the phrase developed to denote a transition from spectacle- to
narrative-oriented filmmaking during the period of 1907–13. The phrase
“cinema of narrative integration,” underscores the period’s “fascination in
storytelling,” as Gunning explains. In subordinating pure pop-up spectacle to
narrative context and efficacy Sabuda produces works in which pop-ups
support rather than challenge or obscure prose. If Seibold sought to distin-
guish his pop-up book from conventional illustrated editions of Alice’s
Adventures in Wonderland, Sabuda seeks to orient his book as a pop-up
within conventional editions illustrated by Tenniel.
Sabuda’s Alice features six main pop-up spreads of the following scenes:
Alice by the river bank, Alice trapped in the house of the White Rabbit,
Alice visiting the Duchess, Alice at the Tea Party, Alice playing croquet,
and Alice beneath a cascade of playing cards. Sabuda’s adaptation distin-
guishes clearly between prose and image. The prose is included in small
156 K. NEWELL
booklets attached to each of the main spreads, which also contain smaller
pop-ups, depicting events such as Alice swimming in the sea of tears, the
Mad Hatter and the March Hare dunking the dormouse in the tea, and
the playing cards painting the Queen of Hearts’s rose bushes. This
arrangement preserves the image-prose relations of a more conventional
illustrated novel. Although Sabuda’s work is also abridged, it maintains a
conventional narrative structure and provides clear transitions between
scenes. The text booklet accompanying the spread of Alice on the river-
bank concludes with the Rabbit ordering Alice to fetch his gloves and
Alice “was so frightened that she ran off at once in the direction it pointed
to.” The next spread features a pop-up of the Rabbit’s house with Alice
stuck inside. The text booklet begins: “She came upon a neat little house
on which was a bright brass plate with the name W. Rabbit.” The pop-up
spreads are clearly the focal attraction of each page, but the narrative
provides a context for the pop-ups and eases the transition between scenes.
Sabuda’s visual style approximates Tenniel’s, a decision that suggests
that a goal of the book is to stretch the boundaries of canonical visions of
Alice, rather than to contribute a different or alternative perspective to
Alice’s visual history or adaptation network. The back cover of Sabuda’s
Alice assures readers of its fidelity to both Tenniel’s images and Carroll’s
story: “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is Robert Sabuda’s most amaz-
ing creation ever, featuring stunning pop-ups illustrated in John Tenniel’s
classic style. The text is faithful to Lewis Carroll’s original story, and
special effects like a Victorian peep show, multifaceted foil, and tactile
elements make this a pop-up to read and admire again and again.” Several
of Sabuda’s compositions mimic Tenniel’s in focus and arrangement. Such
similarities are evident throughout the work, but perhaps most so in
his depiction of characters and arrangement of a scene. For example, his
adaptation of the scene in the Duchess’s kitchen is very similar to
Tenniel’s. In Tenniel’s illustration, the duchess, whose head is dispropor-
tionate to her body, is seated at the center of the composition wearing a
large hat and holding a crying baby. Alice stands to the right, her body
inclined to talk to the duchess. The cook stands at the stove at the left of
the composition with a pepper pot in her left hand as she stirs the boiling
pot. The smiling cat lay at her feet. Sabuda’s compositional arrangement
and rendering of characters and expressions is identical to Tenniel’s, with
the exception that Sabuda’s cook and cat are on the right side of the
composition (as if mirroring Tenniel’s composition) and Alice stands
behind rather than in front of the Duchess. Similarly, Alice’s expression
and placement in Sabuda’s depiction of her encounter with the caterpillar

is identical to Tenniel’s. The shape of the caterpillar and the hookah, and
the flora in the image’s foreground are all the same. Yet there are also
marked differences between Sabuda’s and Tenniel’s images. Sabuda’s are
in color, for example, and they include movable features. The reader opens
and closes the caterpillar spread, the caterpillar raises and lowers the pipe
to his mouth. Additionally, he gives the caterpillar a facial expression,
which is absent from Tenniel’s image because the caterpillar is facing away.
The claim that Sabuda’s text is faithful to Carroll’s invites reflection on
what constitutes “faithful” in the context of abridgement and illustrated
edition-to-pop-up book adaptations. Reviewers of Sabuda’s book have
commented positively on his abridged translation of Carroll’s prose, but
their comments are often paradoxical. Jacqueline Blais explains that “The
words are trimmed a little, but the language is in its original form” (2003).
Frances Atkinson praises the abridgement as “sensitively condensed—the
ideal introduction for younger readers who are old enough to enjoy the
story and appreciate the mastery of the artwork. Alice herself would have
approved” (2003). Likewise, Adams compliments Sabuda: “Given this
pyrotechnic paper folding (and despite their complexity his designs are
quite robust) you might expect the text to be an afterthought, but Sabuda
proves deft, too, in his adaptation of Carroll’s text” (2003).
The prose is faithful in the sense that the reader would find the same
words in an edition of Carroll’s original novel, but Sabuda omits much of
the original prose as well, which impacts the meaning of particular
moments. For example, when Carroll’s Alice lands at the bottom of the
rabbit hole, she finds herself “in a long, low hall, which was lit up by a row
of lamps hanging from the roof,” and notices that “[t]here were doors all
round the hall, but they were all locked” (1992, 9). Alice locates a key and
eventually the little door it unlocks and sees through the door “the love-
liest garden” (1992, 10). Sabuda’s version of the scene is greatly com-
pressed. Alice finds herself in a hallway but one without doorways. His
Alice drinks from the bottle on the three-legged table, shrinks, and imme-
diately finds and eats the small cake under the table that increases her size.
While these differences may not be dramatic, the absence of the hallway’s
doors does have a larger impact on Alice’s development and maturation.
Later, in Carroll’s version, Alice leaves the Mad Hatter’s tea party and
discovers “that one of the trees had a door leading right into it.” She
enters and “found herself in the long hall, and close to the little glass
table.” Carroll’s Alice thinks: “Now, I’ll manage better this time,” and she
158 K. NEWELL
takes the key from the table, and then “set to work nibbling at the mush-
room (she had kept a piece in her pocket) till she was about a foot high:
then she walked down the little passage: and then—she found herself at last
in the beautiful garden” (1992, 61). The reappearance of the hallway and
doorways allows Alice to “get right” a process that she bungled when she
first arrived in Wonderland by drinking the liquid that caused her to shrink
before taking the key from the table. The brief scene demonstrates Alice’s
acquired knowledge and confidence. She knows she will “manage better
this time” because she has remembered to retain some of the mushroom
and she remembers the order of events that will lead her to her desired
outcome: to enter the garden “at last.” Sabuda’s Alice also enters the
doorway through the tree, but finds herself not in the hallway but imme-
diately in the garden. In Carroll’s version the hallway acts as a liminal
space, a space of possibility that exists between action-oriented spaces that
further the bildungsroman. As such, its importance might seem negligible
to a book that, while interested in narrative coherence, may be less inter-
ested in developing character. Upon seeing the doorway in the tree
Carroll’s and Sabuda’s Alices both think, “That’s very curious! . . . But
everything’s curious today.” Carroll’s Alice follows up with “I think I
may as well go in at once,” whereas Sabuda’s narrator states simply,
“And in she went.” Again, this distinction reveals a slight difference in
agency: Sabuda’s Alice seems more passive, content in being moved along
by the curiosities of her day, whereas Carroll’s Alice appears to be growing
in determination.
The differences between Seibold’s and Sabuda’s narratives can be
attributed to their different goals for their books. Whereas Seibold’s is a
“visual retelling”—a descriptor that implies that words are absent, ines-
sential, or subordinate to the visual—Sabuda’s book is labeled “A Classic
Collectible Pop-Up.” The cover’s copy includes the adjectives “classic,”
“faithful,” and “collectible,” each of which positions Sabuda’s work as an
adaptation in the heritage-style, to borrow a category from Linda Troost
(2007). Putting aside differences between the two pop-up adaptations, the
scenes Seibold and Sabuda elect to adapt are very similar and equally
similar to those adapted by other pop-up engineers, illustrators, and film-
makers. In this way, Seibold and Sabuda reinforce the existing vision of
Alice with only slight variation. The pop-up effects on which readers and
reviewers most commonly comment, such as the disappearing Cheshire
Cat (Seibold) or the cascading deck of cards (Sabuda), are common to
film, illustration, and other modalities. Such feats do not challenge or
expand reader’s interpretations of Alice, but they do expand Alice’s visual

network by confirming and reinforcing these few spectacle-rich moments
as quintessentially Alice.
MAKE YOUR OWN WONDERLAND

Book sculptures and otherwise “altered” books, while all are not techni-
cally pop-ups, are a related genre of artist and fan-based work that further
explores the capabilities of paper as an adaptive and adapting medium.
While some book sculptors will use any book as raw material provided that
its weight and heft render it responsive to sculpting, a good number of
artists who sculpt with books sculpt figures and scenes from the specific
book they are using that would be recognizable to a broad audience, and
the finished composition is commonly displayed within the book. Such
experiments tend to focus on only one moment or scene from a work and
would fall into the category of “literature of attractions”; as such, they are
even more telling in terms of the recognizable visual shorthand for a given
work in a particular culture.
Well-known paper artist Su Blackwell has developed three book sculp-
tures based on Alice in Wonderland from editions that feature Tenniel’s
illustrations. Each depicts a recognizable scene using familiar illustrations
but with variation. Alice (Falling) (2013) depicts the rabbit hole bored
through the center of the book. An image of Alice as well as smaller paper
sculptures of chairs, a cupboard, a clock and other items extend out from
within the hole, suspended on wires. The intended effect, of course, is of
Alice falling through the rabbit hole. Down the Rabbit Hole (2008) depicts
the same scene but from the perspective of Alice peering down the rabbit
hole before she jumps. These moments, recognizable to any audience for
what they are, demonstrate Blackwell’s utilization of subtle perspectival
differences to exploit the fecundity of a particular moment. The Alice that
stands at the edge of the rabbit hole is quite different from the Alice who
has decided to jump. Both sculptures signify the scene but do so in a
manner that invites differing reflections on character.
As with other artists and other adaptations, Blackwell uses iconic scenes
and, in this case, iconic material (i.e., the actual book and illustrations) but
in a way that is suggestive of other points of reference. For example,
Blackwell uses Tenniel’s image of Alice shielding her face from the rain of
playing cards as her Alice in the sculpture Alice (Falling). She uses Tenniel’s
image of Alice talking with the Cheshire Cat in Alice: A Mad Tea Party
160 K. NEWELL
(2007), her sculpture of Alice at the tea party, and an illustration of Alice
talking with Tiger-lily from Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice
Found There in her sculpture Down the Rabbit Hole. This repurposing of
illustrations, of casting familiar images in new contexts, extends the field of
significations, however slightly, particularly for readers familiar with
Tenniel’s illustrations and their placement in Carroll-Tenniel editions.
Another artist, Susan Hoerth, likewise forms sculptures from illustrated
editions. Hoerth cuts figures and settings from illustrations and then recasts
them in a proscenium tableau at the book’s center. The effect is one of
montage as opposed to the single scene adaptations of Blackwell’s sculp-
tures. Like Blackwell’s, Hoerth’s Alice in Wonderland uses Tenniel’s illus-
trations and mixes images from Alice in Wonderland and Through the
Looking-Glass. Hoerth has also adapted other books into sculpture, among
them Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz, the fourth book in L. Frank Baum’s Oz
series, with a 1965 edition illustrated by John R. Neill, Jane Eyre with a 1943
edition illustrated by Fritz Eichenberg, and Pride and Prejudice with a 1945
edition illustrated by Robert Ball. Hoerth’s style seems to anticipate readers
familiar with the work and perhaps even the illustrations, who could identify
the characters included in the montage. She writes of her Wizard of Oz
sculpture that it is “beautifully carved to tell the story in sculpture form.”
However, the sculpture only retells the story to someone who knows the
story as told over several volumes. The book repurposed is Dorothy and the
Wizard in Oz (as opposed to the more familiar The Wonderful Wizard of
Oz), and the sculpture includes images from Jack Pumpkinhead of Oz, the
twenty-third book in the series, written by Ruth Plumly Thompson, as well
as books from the series featuring the Tin Woodsman.
These examples reflect a “networked” view of adaptation. The canonical
source text plays a role in the adaptation process, but as raw material, rather
than as blueprint. The latest version of the adaptation bears traces of other
scenes, other contexts, other nodes in the larger adaptation network. For
readers familiar with the raw materials of the adaptation, the sculptures are
visibly representations of the work, though, as “literature of attractions,”
apprehending them as narrative representations may depend upon the input
of the reader. Additionally, the process of identifying aspects of the sculpture
as traces of some other image or text alerts readers to the larger continuum
on which any work exists. For readers unfamiliar with the raw materials,
for whom the sculpture provides the first experience of Alice in Wonderland
or The Wizard of Oz or Jane Eyre, the sculptures are still identifiable as
representations, though perhaps as non-narrative representations.
One of the ways in which the textual network of classic works is being
extended is through amateur artistic productions. Several books have
been published to demystify paper engineering to make it more acces-
sible to the average paper adventurer, among them The Pop-Up Book
(1996), Elements of Pop Up (1999), The Pocket Paper Engineer (2005),
The Practical Step-by-Step Guide to Making Pop-Ups & Novelty Cards: A
Masterclass in the Art of Paper Engineering (2011), and Art Made from
Books: Altered, Sculpted, Carved Transformed (2013). The ease of shar-
ing creations online through websites and social media outlets, such as
Pinterest, Facebook, Deviant Art, Etsy, YouTube, and others, extends a
fan’s community beyond like-minded fans of a work and into fans of
creation. A fan of Alice in Wonderland who opts to make a pop-up book
adaptation, for example, can share her work with other Alice fans as well
as pop-up fans and other collectible and small-batch bookmakers. Such
communities, though small and often highly specialized, demonstrate
the potential for interactivity generated by pop-up books. This interac-
tion occurs not only for the engineering, but in the reader opening,
pulling, and spinning the book, as well in the community developed
through the creation of a related work.
As I hope this chapter demonstrates, far from being mere novelty pub-
lications, pop-up books and other movables invite reflection on a range of
practices related to media and cultural production, including practices of
defining media in terms of abilities and capabilities, reiterative practices by
which dominant impressions of a literary classic become solidified, and
personal practices by which audiences engage with literary works through
creative acts.
NOTES
1. Structural Graphics also developed a pop-up cup of cappuccino for a maga-
zine insert advertisement for Kraft cappuccino, https://www.structural
graphics.com/work/dimensional-print/magazine-inserts.
2. Sabuda’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz: A Commemorative Pop-Up is likewise
praised for ingenuity and a number of readers note his inclusion of green
spectacles in the Emerald City spread. Random House included a similar
accessory in its 1968 The Wizard of Oz: A Pop-up Classic as did NorthSouth
for its 1996 edition, illustrated by Lisbeth Zwerger.
3. The phrase “literature of attractions” has been applied in discussions of
links between late nineteenth-century writing and the cinema; see, for
162 K. NEWELL
example, Michael Devine, “The Literature of Attractions: Teaching the

Popular Fiction of the 1890s through Early Cinema,” Teaching Tainted
Lit: Popular American Fiction in Today’s Classroom, ed. Janet G. Casey
(Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2015), and Owen Clayton,
“‘Literature of Attractions’: Jack London and Early Cinema,” Literature
and Photography in Transition, 1850–1915 (New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2015), 130–163.
REFERENCES
Adams, Tim. “The pop idol or the pop ups?” The Observer, December 14, 2003.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/dec/14/booksforchildrenand
teenagers.bestbooksof2003.
“Alice’s Adventures in Pop-up Land: Lewis Carroll’s Classic Tale Goes Lift! Pull!
Sproing!” Ottawa Citizen, November 23, 2003: C14. LexisNexis.
Armstrong, Nancy. “The Occidental Alice.” Differences 2.2 (Summer 1990):
3–40.
Art Made from Books: Altered, Sculpted, Carved Transformed. Compiled by Laura
Heyenga. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2013.
Atkinson, Frances. “Chapter and Verse for the Young.” Sunday Age, December
14, 2003. http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/12/13/
1071125718256.html.
Barton, Carol. The Pocket Paper Engineer. Popular Kinetics Press, 2005.
Benfield, Karen. “Beyond The Printed Page; Robert Sabuda is the superstar of the
modern pop-up book, and he doesn’t see electronic readers as any threat to
literature you can live in.” National Post, December 18, 2010. http://news.
nationalpost.com/afterword/beyond-the-printed-page.
Blackwell, Su. Alice: A Mad Tea Party. 2007. Su Blackwell Studio, 2016. www.
sublackwell.co.uk. Accessed 22 February 2017.
———. Down the Rabbit Hole. 2008. Su Blackwell Studio, 2016. www.sublack
well.co.uk. Accessed 22 February 2017.
———. Alice (Falling). 2013. Su Blackwell Studio, 2016. www.sublackwell.co.
uk. Accessed 22 February 2017.
Blais, Jacqueline. “What’s booked up this holiday season.” USA Today, December
4, 2003. http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/life/books/news/2003-12-03-
holiday-hits_x.htm
Carroll, Lewis. Alice in Wonderland. 2nd ed. Edited by Donald J. Gray. New York:
W.W. Norton, 1992.
Carter, David. White Noise: A Pop-up Book for Children of All Ages. New York:
Little Simon, 2009.
Chambers, Dave, Gwen Gordon, and John Spencer, illus. Alice in Wonderland:
A Pop-Up Classic. New York: Random House, 1968.
Clifford, Stephanie. “More Bells, Whistles and Packets of All Sorts.” New York
Times, April 22, 2008. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/22/business/
media/22adco.html.
Coar, Lisa. “Sugar and Spice and All Things Nice: The Victorian Woman’s All-
Consuming Predicament,” Victorian Network 4, no. 1 (Summer 2012): 48–72.
http://www.victoriannetwork.org/index.php/vn/article/view/31.
Dahl, Roald. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Pop-Up Book, illustrated by
Quentin Blake. New York: Penguin, 2011.
Days in Catland with Louis Wain. London: Raphael Tuck, 1895.
Denchfield, Nick. Alice’s Pop-Up Wonderland, illustrated by Alex Vining. London:
Macmillan Children’s Books, 2000.
Elleström, Lars. “The Modalities of Media: A Model for Understanding
Intermedial Relations.” In Media Borders, Multimodality and Intermediality,
edited by Lars Elleström, 11–48. New York: Palgrave, 2010.
Foster, Bruce. Little Red Riding Hood. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000.
———. The Princess and the Pea. New York: Little Simon, 2002.
———. A Christmas Carol: A Pop-Up Book. Boston: Little, Brown and Company,
2010.
———. “Behind the Paper Curtain: The Magic and Math of Harry Potter, The
Pop-Up.” YouTube, May 20, 2011. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
cH2MwHoiT68.
Fox, Margalit. “Waldo Hunt, King of the Pop-Up Book, Dies at 88.” New York
Times, November 26, 2009. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/26/arts/
26hunt.html.
Greenberg, Gary. The Pop-Up Book of Phobias. New York: HarperCollins, 1999.
———. The Pop-Up Book of Nightmares. London: St. Martin’s Press, 2001.
Grimes, William. “Wizard Who Made Art Jump Off the Page: ‘Pop-Ups from
Prague’ Celebrates Vojtech Kubasta.” New York Times, January 30, 2014.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/31/arts/design/pop-ups-from-prague-
celebrates-vojtech-kubasta.html?_r=0.
Gunning, Tom. “The Cinema of Attraction: Early Film, Its Spectator and the
Avant-Garde.” Wide Angle 8.3/4 (Fall 1986): 63–70.
Haining, Peter. Moveable Books: An Illustrated History by Peter Haining. London:
New English Library Limited, 1979.
Harlequin’s Invasion: A New Pantomime. London: Robert Sayer, 1770.
Harry Potter Pop-Up Book: Based on the Film Phenomenon. Engineered by Bruce
Foster. San Rafael: Insight Editions, 2010.
Heller, Steven. “Children’s Books; Ready for Her Close-Up.” Review of Alice’s
Adventures in Wonderland: A Pop-Up Adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s Original,
by Robert Sabuda. New York Times, November 16, 2003. http://www.
nytimes.com/2003/11/16/books/children-s-books-ready-for-her-close-
up.html.
164 K. NEWELL
Hess, Paul, illus. The Wizard of Oz: A Classic Story Pop-Up Book with Sounds. San
Diego: Silver Dolphin Books, 2010.
The History of Little Fanny. London: S. and J. Fuller, 1810.
Jack the Giant Killer. Illustrated by Harold Lentz. New York: Blue Ribbon Books,
1933.
Jackson, Paul. The Pop-Up Book: Step-by-Step Instructions for Creating Over 100
Original Paper Projects. New York: Holt, 1996.
Klaffke, Pamela. “Pop-up Books Fun for Everyone.” Calgary Herald, November
29, 2003: ES13. LexisNexis.
Leitch, Thomas. Film Adaptation and Its Discontents: From Gone with the Wind
to The Passion of the Christ. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007.
Little Red Riding Hood. London: Raphael Tuck, 1900.
Madej, Krystina. Interactivity, Collaboration, and Authoring in Social Media.
New York: Springer, 2016.
Marshall, Ray. Paper Blossoms: A Book of Beautiful Bouquets for the Table. San
Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2010.
———. Paper Blossoms, Butterflies & Birds: A Book of Beautiful Bouquets for the
Table. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2014.
Modern Promotions. Wizard of Oz: Giant Pop-Up Book. New York: Modern
Promotions, 1983.
The New Adventures of Tarzan “Pop-up.” Illustrated by Stephen Slesinger. New
York: Blue Ribbon Books, 1935.
Nicols, Catherine. Alice’s Wonderland: A Visual Journey through Lewis Carroll’s
Mad, Mad World. New York: Race Point, 2014.
Opie, Iona and Peter. “Books That Come to Life.” Times Literary Supplement,
September 19, 1975: 1055.
Phillips, Trish and Ann Montanaro. Creative Pop-Up: A History and Project Book.
London: Southwater, 2014.
The Pop-up Book of Gnomes. New York: H.N. Abrams, 1979.
The Practical Step-by-Step Guide to Making Pop-Ups & Novelty Cards: A
Masterclass in the Art of Paper Engineering. Loren, 2011.
Psotka, Joseph. “Pop-up Pantasia.” Review of Peter Pan: A Classic Collectible Pop-
Up, by Robert Sabuda. Amazon.com. November 29, 2008. https://www.
amazon.com/Peter-Pan-Classic-Collectible-Pop-Up/dp/0689853645/ref=
sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1473586988&sr=8-1&keywords=peter+pan+pop+up.
Puss in Boots. Illustrated by C. Carey Cloud and Harold B. Lentz. New York: Blue
Ribbon Books, 1934.
Queen Mab, or The Tricks of Harlequin. London: Robert Sayer, 1771.
Reinhart, Matthew. Cinderella: A Pop-Up Fairy Tale. New York: Little Simon,
2005.
———. The Jungle Book: A Pop-up Adventure. New York: Little Simon, 2006.
———. Star Wars: A Pop-Up Guide to the Galaxy. London: Orchard Books, 2007.
———. A Pop-Up Book of Nursery Rhymes. New York: Little Simon, 2009.
———. DC Superheroes: The Ultimate Pop-Up Book. Boston: Little, Brown and
Company, 2010.
———. Transformers: The Ultimate Pop-Up Universe. Boston: LB Kids, 2013.
———. Game of Thrones: A Pop-Up Guide to Westeros. San Rafael, CA: Insight
Editions, 2014)
Robinson, Nicola, illus. The Wizard of Oz with Three-Dimensional Pop-Up Scenes.
San Rafael: Insight Kids, 2012.
The Royal Punch and Judy. London: Dean & Son, 1859.
Rubin, Ellen G.K. “A History of Pop-up and Movable Books: 700 Years of Paper
Engineering.” The Pop-Up Lady. November 10, 2010. http://popuplady.
com/about12-historylecture.shtml.
Ruffin, Ellen. “The History of Little Fanny.” University of Southern Mississippi
Special Collections, September 2008. http://www.lib.usm.edu/spcol/exhibi
tions/item_of_the_month/iotm_sept_08.html.
Sabuda, Robert. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz: A Commemorative Pop-Up. New
York: Little Simon, 2000.
———. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland: A Pop-up Adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s
Original Tale. New York: Little Simon, 2003.
———. The Chronicles of Narnia. New York: HarperCollins, 2007.
———. Peter Pan: A Pop-up Adaptation of J.M. Barrie’s Original Tale. New York:
Little Simon, 2008.
———. Beauty and the Beast: A Pop-Up Adaptation of the Classic Tale. New York:
Little Simon, 2010.
Seibold, J.Otto. Alice in Pop-Up Wonderland. New York: Orchard Books, 2003.
Siebold, J. Cartographic Images. Henry Davis Consulting, 1994. Accessed July 15,
2016.
Spratt, George. Obstetrics Tables: Comprising Graphic Illustrations, With
Descriptions and Practical Remarks, Exhibiting on Dissected Plates Many
Important Subjects in Midwifery. Philadelphia: Thomas, Cowperthwait &
Co., 1848.
Stotch. “For Harry Potter Fans Young and Old.” Review of Harry Potter: A Pop-Up
Book Based on the Film Phenomenon. Amazon.com, November 21, 2010.
https://www.amazon.com/Harry-Potter-Pop-Up-Lucy-Kee/dp/
1608870081/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1473586877&sr=8-1&keywords=
harry+potter+popup+book.
Taylor, Maria, illus. Alice in Wonderland with Three-Dimensional Pop-Up Scenes.
San Rafael: Insight Kids, 2015.
Thorne, Jenny, illus. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland: A Pop-Up Book. New York:
Delacorte, 1980.
166 K. NEWELL
Treasury Collection. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz: Pop-Ups. N.p.: Allan Publishers,
1991.
Troost, Linda. “The Nineteenth-Century Novel on Film.” In The Cambridge
Companion to Literature on Screen, edited by Deborah Cartmell and Imelda
Whelehan, 75–89. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Veblen, Thorstein. The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of
Institutions [1899]. New York: B. W. Huebsch, 1924.
CHAPTER 6
“All Text is Lost”: Ekphrastic Reading
All text is lost, but illustrations left

suggest these flowers lived on meat
and, though largely brainless—dopey-eyed
with sweeping lashes on their flytrap heads—
were still rapacious, serpentine
above the scalloped farmers; goodwives
garnished with an upturned rib.
What’s not shown is how the five
escaped from their prisons of vine
(the Tinman axeless, the Scarecrow,
as usual, disemboweled & helpless).
We don’t know anything about it, really:
why one cabbage-headed shrub
behind the Lion seems to weep or grimace;
how much food was captured
& how much grown from seed;
whether babies slung & pantried
in those peapod cradles
slept through death; whether
their souls became cherubs
in vegetable churches, luminous

168 K. NEWELL
& opulent beneath the leaves, or even

why L. Frank Baum—who, my text assures me
was so fond of flowers—
wrote about so many deadly plants, and not just these;
whether the author sat on the porch
on cool evenings listening to the breath
of fields, watching the arms of wisteria
wrap the iron trellis; whether or not
this, too, is a story of innocence. (Beeder 2006, 55–56)
Amy Beeder’s “Garden of Meats,” from her 2006 collection, Burn the
Field, is very much about reading and meaning-making. While the open-
ing line indicates that, in the absence of the written text, the speaker turns
to the illustrations for meaning, she later concludes that “[w]e don’t know
anything about it really,” as the illustrations cannot answer questions
about “[w]hat’s not shown” (2006, lines 12; 8). The speaker then turns
to another written text, which assures her that Baum “was so fond of
flowers.”1 Finally, the speaker resorts to her own speculation on whether
Baum “sat on the porch / on cool evenings listening to the breath of
fields” (26–28). This trajectory shows how the speaker pieces meaning
together and suggests that we, like the speaker, are always “reading
through,” making meaning of one work through others. The impulse of
Beeder’s readers might be to identify the specific text, illustration, and
illustrator, or to discover the book that discusses Baum’s love of flowers,
but such detective work would miss the point. Because all texts are inter-
texts, no single text can provide definitive answers to the myriad questions
generated by a given work. Nonetheless, such answers are desired and the
poem is an attempt to verbally recreate absented images that, once reified,
can themselves stand in for the absented text and thereby provide those
answers.
Previous chapters have focused on the methods by which the cultural
understanding of a particular work results from the reiterative processes of
adaptation and the replication of iconography and narrative hinge points
within an adaptation network. That Beeder’s “Garden of Meats” resonates
as a node in the Oz adaptation network results from its reiteration of
recognizable iconography (e.g., Tinman, Scarecrow, Lion, menacing vege-
tation), evocation of a narrative hinge point (e.g., escape), and allusion to
authorship (e.g., L. Frank Baum). This poem, like any adaptation, invites
readers to see the familiar in unfamiliar ways. For example, throughout the
“ALL TEXT IS LOST”: EKPHRASTIC READING 169
Oz network the Scarecrow is depicted as generally competent and helpful,

and, in The Emerald City of Oz (1910), is hailed by the Tin Woodman as
“the wisest man in all Oz.” Beeder’s speaker challenges that vision by
describing him as disemboweled and helpless “as usual.”2
All adaptation involves representation in its “action of standing in for,
or in the place of, a person, group, or thing” (“Representation” 2016).
What Beeder’s poem represents is an absence—“All text is lost”—and the
speaker’s attempt to compensate for that loss with description. “Garden of
Meats” is written in the ekphrastic tradition, often explained colloquially
as “poems that describe works of art,” with Homer’s description of
Achilles’ shield in The Iliad being a commonly cited example. Ekphrasis
attempts to bring visual works “to life,” conjuring them in the reader’s
mind through the vividness of the writer’s description (i.e., energea). Like
the novelizations, illustrations, and literary maps discussed in previous
chapters, ekphrasis is distinguished by the absence it evokes; unlike pre-
vious examples, however, the absented object may lack a “real-life” cor-
ollary and may come into being only through the lens of ekphrasis. We see
this in “Garden of Meats,” for instance, which refers to an excised, no
longer extant chapter from The Patchwork Girl of Oz (1913).3 More
generally, ekphrasis is an invitation to read one representational medium
(e.g., painting, sculpture, film) in terms of another (e.g., poetry, novel).4
For ekphrasis to succeed, the reader needs to accept that representational
media can be divided into categories that reflect fundamental differences
(e.g., visual and verbal) and that ekphrasis bridges difference by allowing
one representational category to adopt the characteristics of another.
Beeder’s poem posits a familiar boundary between words and images in
proposing that they operate independently (e.g., “All text is lost, but
illustrations left / suggest”), and implies its ability to cross that boundary
in its description of the illustrations and in its creation of a supplementary
text. The opening line, “All text is lost,” can be read a number of ways
depending on emphasis. A moment ago I read the line with the emphasis
on “lost”—as in, the text has gone missing and, thus, the speaker turns
elsewhere for meaning. The line can also be read with the emphasis on “all
text”—as in, all text is lost, without direction or a point of reference. The
poem, thus, supplements that loss by providing an alternative to absence as
well as a compass point.
I view ekphrasis as a form of what Irina O. Rajewsky calls “intermedial
references”—moments in which one medium evokes the attributes of
another and, in so doing, creates the illusion of the presence of that
170 K. NEWELL
medium (2010, 55–56).5 Of course, this view and terminology are but one
possibility among many. Ekphrasis boasts a history of attempts to define
exactly what goes on—conceptually, perceptually, ideologically—when one
mode of expression endeavors to convey another. Ekphrasis is commonly
defined and theorized through a lens of difference, as the meeting of two
“conceptual units” (Mitchell 1994, 160; Elleström 2010b, 14). This prac-
tice has produced two dominant lines of thought on the function of ekphra-
sis in poetry and in prose. The first holds that, in its evocation of the visual in
the verbal, ekphrasis creates both the temporal-linear movement of words
and the perceptual-spatial stillness of objects and images. This tension is
theorized alternately as either a “stilling” of narrative or its “release” (Krieger
1967; Heffernan 1991). The second line of thought holds that the meeting
of the two conceptual units in ekphrasis enacts power dynamics similar to
those evident in colonial and identity-based discourses. In this view, the
verbal represents the dominant culture speaking for the subordinate culture
(i.e., the visual), which can never speak for itself (Mitchell 1994; Scott 1991;
Persin 1997). As I will discuss in greater detail in this chapter, the problem
with theorizing ekphrasis through the lens of difference lies not in the dyadic
formulation but in the maintenance of binaries that reflect hierarchical views
of media and their capabilities. Intermedial perspectives do not cast aside the
concept of difference—the basic concept of intermediality assumes differ-
ences between media (Elleström 2010a, 4)—but it does cast difference as “in
relation,” rather than definitively in agreement or in opposition (Rajewsky
2010, 51–52). Rather than settle on whether ekphrasis “stills” or “releases”
or whether the relationship between conceptual units is suppressive, this
chapter shows that, liberated from their hierarchical leanings, each line of
reasoning yields strategies for reading ekphrasis and for seeing it as a device
that reflects and refracts a work’s larger thematics.
I begin this chapter with a brief overview of definitions of ekphrasis and the
differential relationships they imply. If we read ekphrasis as bridging the
divide between the verbal and the visual, between expository and descriptive
writing, or between writing and writing about art, we can likewise read
ekphrastic moments as mirrors that reflect and refract a work’s larger
dynamics. The usefulness of ekphrasis as a model for reading will become
evident in a consideration of well-known ekphrastic moments in Herman
Melville’s Moby-Dick (1851) and Henry James’s Daisy Miller (1878). In both
examples, the prose’s progress appears momentarily “stilled” by the presence
of a painting, the contemplation of which “releases” additional narratives.
Ekphrasis can likewise reflect more ideologically constructed differences, as I
demonstrate in my analysis of Gary Wolf’s hard-boiled detective novel,

Who Censored Roger Rabbit? (1981). The novel’s characters are divided
into two dominant groups: humans and ’toons. ’Toons are cartoon char-
acters that communicate via word balloons that the narrator, private
detective Eddie Valiant, then describes for readers with such detail as to
bring them before their minds’ eye in the manner of ekphrasis. Divisions
between verbal and visual, between “us” and “them,” maintain the story’s
divisions between humans and ’toons. As I hope to show, in the opening
up of works to additional informing texts, ekphrasis expands readers’
experiences of a work and expands a given work’s larger network of
reference.
WHAT IS EKPHRASIS? DEFINITIONS AND DIVISIONS

Scholars generally theorize ekphrasis in terms of a divide between two
conceptual units, commonly between poetry or prose (description) and
visual art (object), though concrete definitions of ekphrasis have ranged
from the very specific to the very broad. Writers disagree on whether it is a
literary form, device, mode, genre, critical strategy, or all or none of these
(Scott 1991, 301; Fischer 2006, 4). The word “ekphrasis” stems from the
Greek ekphassein, which means “speaking out,” and initially referred to an
oral rhetorical device. Some definitions of ekphrasis bear traces of this
origin whereas others fall more in line with the earliest Oxford English
Dictionary definition of ecphrasis as “a plain declaration or interpretation
of a thing” (2016). With the transition from oral to written culture,
ekphrasis came to identify a device used within a larger poem, a descriptive
set piece, as in the description of the biblical carvings in the mountain of
Purgatory in Dante’s Purgatorio. Still later, ekphrasis indicated a specific
genre of poetry and has since been applied to a range of intermedial
relationships, including those in prose, film, and music. The most com-
monly cited (and challenged) definitions of ekphrasis have been put for-
ward by George Saintsbury, Leo Spitzer, and Murray Krieger. In 1902,
Saintsbury defined ekphrasis as “a set description intended to bring per-
son, place, picture, &c., vividly before the mind’s eye” (Saintsbury qtd. in
Hagstrum 1958, 18). Spitzer also defines ekphrasis as description but with
an important difference. Ekphrasis, for Spitzer, is “the poetic description
of a pictorial or sculptural work of art, which description implies . . . the
reproduction through the medium of words of sensuously perceptible objets
d’art” (1955, 207). In this distinction between words that bring something
172 K. NEWELL
“vividly before the mind’s eye” and words that reproduce a specifically poetic
description of a work of art, we see the seeds of dyadic formulations that
dominate ekphrastic discourse.
In his 1967 “Ekphrasis and the Still Movement of Poetry; or Laokoön
Revisited,” which I will discuss in more detail shortly, Krieger challenges
medial distinctions set forth by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing in Laocoön: An
Essay Upon the Limits of Painting and Poetry (1766) by pointing to the
manner in which poems can appropriate the formal features of objects and,
in doing so, develops his own binary formula for reading ekphrasis. Like
Spitzer, Krieger classifies ekphrasis as a genre particular to poetry, one
engaged in “the imitation in literature of a work of plastic art” (1967, 5).
Unlike Spitzer, however, Krieger sees ekphrasis not as “a narrow kind of
poem defined by its object of imitation,” but as “a general principle of
poetics, asserted by every poem in the assertion of its integrity” (1967,
22). For Krieger, the poet’s words give the poem shape and, in verbally
molding the poem’s form, the poet appropriates technique similar to that
of an artist working in the plastic arts. Krieger broadens his definition
further in a 1998 essay to include “any sought-for equivalent in words of
any visual image, inside or outside art; in effect, the use of language to
function as a substitute natural sign; that is, to seek to represent what
would seem to lie beyond the representational powers of words as mere
arbitrary signs” (1998, 4). Krieger’s contributions cannot be underesti-
mated, as virtually all subsequent writers on ekphrasis define their posi-
tions in relation to his, as either modifications or challenges. Significantly,
though, while most writers have wrestled with the particulars of Krieger’s
dyadic model, few have quarreled with the premise that ekphrasis should
be theorized dyadically.
James Heffernan criticizes as too general Krieger’s view of ekphrasis,
charging that he “stretches ekphrasis to the breaking point: to the point
where it no longer serves to contain any particular kind of literature and
merely becomes a new name for formalism” (1991, 298), but likewise
theorizes ekphrasis dyadically as “the verbal representation of graphic
representation” (1991, 299)—a definition he later amends to “the verbal
representation of a visual representation” (1998, 191). Heffernan cate-
gorizes ekphrasis as a mode rather than a genre and, in so doing, offers a
definition both more concrete and more general than Saintsbury’s,
Spitzer’s, or Krieger’s. Representation is essential for Heffernan: the verbal
text must depict a graphic representation. This distinction, he believes,
allows scholars to discern common threads in all ekphrasis that might go
unnoticed in exclusive analyses focused on singular works or inclusive

analyses focused on ekphrasis as form or style. He writes that, “When we
understand that ekphrasis uses one medium of representation to represent
another, we can see at once what makes ekphrasis a distinguishable mode
and what binds together all ekphrastic literature from Homer to John
Ashbery” (Heffernan 1991, 300).
As might be expected, Heffernan’s insistence on the representational
quality of the visual or graphic entity has been criticized as unnecessarily
limiting (Clüver 1997, 23); again, however, the practice of theorizing
ekphrasis in terms of medial binaries is not the quibbling point. Barbara
Fischer, for example, takes issue with Heffernan’s insistence on represen-
tation, pointing out that “contemporary ekphrastic poems may address
non-representational visual works, or many not ‘represent’ their subjects at
all, riffing off their visual sources more tangentially or interrogatively”
(2006, 2). Claus Clüver offers an alternative definition of ekphrasis as
“the verbalization of real or fictitious texts composed in a non-verbal
sign system” (1998, 49; 1997, 26), which would allow for the inclusion
of art criticism, architecture, posters, music, dance, modern sculpture,
non-representational art, and other forms beyond the boundaries of
Heffernan’s definition (Clüver 1997, 23–26; Wagner 2012, 14). Tamar
Yacobi promotes the “ekphrastic model,” an even broader application that
would include allusions, figures of speech and other verbal references,
both explicit and oblique to art, artists, artworks, and movements
(1998). In expanding the ekphrastic field into film and performance,
Laura Sager Eidt defines ekphrasis as “the verbalization, quotation, or
dramatization of real or fictitious texts composed in another sign system”
(2008, 19). Margaret H. Persin’s definition of ekphrasis is a potpourri of
previous definitions: “a poetic text that makes reference to a visual work of
art, whether real or imagined, canonized or uncanonized, and thus allows
that art object, in truth the object of (artistic) desire, to ‘speak for itself’
within the problematically ruptured framework of the poetic text” (1997,
17–18). In seeking to rein expanding conceptions of ekphrasis into man-
ageable and applicable concepts, some writers have distinguished between
types and degrees of ekphrasis through subcategories and taxonomies
designed to delineate the range of word-image relationships available in
ekphrasis (Hollander 1988, 1995; Robillard 1998; Sager Eidt 2008). Jean
Hagstrum distinguishes iconic poems from purely ekphrastic poems
(1958). John Hollander differentiates between notional ekphrasis,
“poems or passages in literary works which may or may not describe
174 K. NEWELL
some actual, but totally lost, work of art” (1988, 209), and actual ekphra-
sis, poems that “entail engagements with particular and identifiable works
of art” (1995, 4).
Definitions of ekphrasis continue to expand as scholars identify addi-
tional examples, reconceptualize verbal-visual relations, and reassess med-
ial boundaries. In just these few examples, the verbal in ekphrasis is said to
reproduce, imitate, represent, verbalize, and quote, to make reference to,
to be equivalent to, to riff off of, and to substitute for the visual. Far from
being synonymous, each suggests a different activity and different relation-
ships between the verbal and the visual. W.J.T. Mitchell describes a
moment in our understanding of ekphrasis at which ekphrasis seems
evident in all modes of artistic production, or, as he puts it, “the moment
when ekphrasis ceases to be a special or exceptional moment in verbal or
oral representation and begins to seem paradigmatic of a fundamental
tendency in all linguistic expression” (1994, 153). The number of defini-
tions and amendments points both to a liberal excitement over the possi-
bilities of this mode and a conservative impulse to pin ekphrasis down,
to describe it in a manner that sticks; an important through-thread of the
discourse, however, is the concept of difference. Regardless of the speci-
fics, the default view of ekphrasis is as a navigation of difference.
Dyadic conceptualizations of ekphrasis have produced a few models for
understanding presumed tensions between media in formal and ideologi-
cal terms, as suggested above. Krieger is most commonly cited as generat-
ing the formal approach, while Mitchell is the most often cited voice of the
ideological approach. In the great divide between media, verbal arts are
linear and temporal, and visual arts are spatial and static. Ekphrasis, the
story goes, uses a temporal-linear medium to evoke a perceptual-spatial
one and thus provides a meeting point. Krieger first addressed at length
the resulting tension in the aforementioned essay, “Ekphrasis and the Still
Movement of Poetry; or Laokoön Revisited.” For Krieger, “the ekphrastic
dimension of literature reveals itself wherever the poem takes on the ‘still’
elements of plastic form which we normally attribute to the spatial arts. In
doing so, the poem proclaims as its own poetic its formal necessity, thus
making more than just loosely metaphorical the use of spatial language to
describe—and thus to arrest—its movements” (1967, 6). Such moments
challenge distinctions between the characteristics of poetry and painting as
articulated in Lessing’s Laocoön by blurring the features of each medium
and by demonstrating the poem’s ability to appropriate characteristics of
the painting (or sculpture) (Krieger 1967, 5). For Krieger, “[t]he object of
imitation, as spatial work, becomes the metaphor for the temporal

work which seeks to capture it in that temporality. The spatial work
freezes the temporal work even as the latter seeks to free it from
space” (1967, 5). Several scholars disagree with Krieger, arguing that
ekphrasis does not still narrative so much as release it. Heffernan, for
example, finds a “storytelling impulse” inherent in ekphrasis; rather
than create stillness, “ekphrastic literature typically delivers from the
pregnant moment of graphic art its embryonically narrative impulse,
and thus makes explicit the story that graphic art tells only by impli-
cation” (1991, 301). Hollander addresses both functions, pointing to
the power of ekphrasis to still the narrative and to release it: “On the
other hand, when the pause for a description of an image creates a
hiatus or digression in the narrative it can provide a set piece of
ecphrasis, an image described for a reader. In that case, the narrative,
if any, is of that interesting figurative sort which governs the unfold-
ing, unrolling, or playing out of a descriptive passage” (1995, 17).
Scholars have also developed ideological models for reading ekphrasis
through lenses of gender, for which the verbal is masculine and the visual
feminine, and difference, for which the verbal is Self and the visual Other.6
Many early ekphrases described circular objects—shields, urns, bowls, and
the like—which were then read as evocative of the womb and fertility. In
such readings, the male poet not only brings to life the female object, he
shapes his words into a circular form that echoes that of the object. In a
similar vein, well-known ekphrastic poems, such as Percy Bysshe Shelley’s
“On the Medusa of Leonardo Da Vinci, in the Florentine Gallery” (1819)
and William Carlos Williams’s “Portrait of a Lady” (1920), are read as
sensualizing the feminine as object. In others, such as John Keats’s “Ode
on a Grecian Urn” (1820) and Robert Browning’s “My Last Duchess”
(1842), the male poet/speaker bestows communicative powers on the
gendered female artwork that is the subject of the poem and, in doing so,
evokes an explicit power dynamic that resonates in and reflects compli-
cated gendered power dynamics within the poem. Read through ideolo-
gical models, ekphrasis becomes a vehicle for the word to subsume and
assimilate the visual. Grant F. Scott touches on this dynamic in comment-
ing that “[o]ften the goal of ekphrasis seems more in keeping with an
appropriation of the visual ‘other’ than an open aesthetic exchange”
(1991, 302). The visual in ekphrasis is an “alien Other,” Persin explains,
that “both is and is not within the literary text’s frame, since its presence
has been evoked via language in the literary text, that the very presence
176 K. NEWELL
projects and defines itself by means of its difference from that same literary
text” (1997, 20). Mitchell extends the localized event of speaking for
associated with the ekphrastic work to the larger field of art history:
“Like the masses, the colonized, the powerless and voiceless everywhere,
visual representation cannot represent itself; it must be represented by
discourse” (1994, 157).
Though the current scholarly trend is to reject outright binaries and
dyadic formulations as reductive, in thinking about ekphrasis as a model for
reading and as a strategy for expanding networks of reference, I propose
maintaining some of the theoretical questions generated from that binary—
specifically, how does ekphrasis operate within a given work to expand
networks of signification? And, what insights might ekphrasis offer on
boundaries between media as they are generally conceived? The next section
looks at examples of ekphrasis in Moby-Dick and Daisy Miller and considers
how these moments relate to the larger narrative of which they are a part,
and how readers’ ability to recognize the artwork being described impacts
their understanding of the work as a whole. I then turn to Who Censored
Roger Rabbit? and examine the manner in which Wolf uses ekphrasis and
plays up the verbal-visual tension to highlight the novel’s larger social and
ideological tensions.
EKPHRASIS AND THE READER: DISRUPTION AND EXPANSION

Ekphrasis, like any mode of adaptation, engages different readers in dif-
ferent ways (Alpers 1960, 201; Davidson 1983, 77; Heffernan 1991, 302;
Clüver 1997, 26; Sager Eidt 2008, 10). Historically, ekphrasis existed for
its audience as a means to render visible lost or no longer existent works, as
well as works with limited circulation. Svetlana Alpers highlights this
characteristic in her discussion of Giorgio Vasari’s intent for his encyclo-
pedia of artistic biographies, Lives of the Artists (1550): “The function of
the descriptions in the Lives is simply to make a picture live for the viewer,
no matter where, when, or by whom it was made: ekphrasis concerns the
viewer’s education, not the artist’s” (1960, 201). Heffernan’s comments
echo Alpers’s: “ekphrasis commonly tells this story for the benefit of those
who don’t know it, moving well beyond what the picture by itself implies”
(1991, 302). Other ekphrastic writing may be more interested in expres-
sing the effect of the work of art on the speaker (e.g., Shelley’s “On the
Medusa of Leonardo Da Vinci, in the Florentine Gallery”) or in using
the ekphrasis to alert readers to traits in the speaker (e.g., Browning’s
“My Last Duchess”). Additionally, readers respond differently to ekphrasis

based on an existing work (Hollander’s “actual” ekphrasis) and that based
on an imaginary work (Hollander’s “notional” ekphrasis).
The audience’s ability to recognize the reference is key to the success of
the ekphrasis (to it being received as ekphrasis). As Tamar Yacobi points
out, “[i]dentifying the reference to the visual source is an all-important
function, because everything else turns on it” (1998, 27). That is, the
reader must recognize the reference or, at minimum, that a reference to a
visual source is being made, and then, as Clüver avers, “[i]t is ultimately up
to the reader to decide whether to read such a verbalization as an ekphra-
sis, a decision determined in part by the critical use he will make of the
verbal text” (1997, 26).
Ekphrasis behaves differently depending on its medium. Abigail Rischin
offers an insightful distinction between the monoglossic function of
ekphrasis in poetry and its heteroglossic function in prose: “While an
ekphrastic lyric is self-contained, an ekphrastic moment embedded in a
novel both informs and is informed by the surrounding narrative.
Moreover, such a moment is not restricted to the aesthetic response of a
single voice. Rather it may include the voices and perspectives of a narrator
and of one or more characters” (1996, 1124). In other words, nestled
within larger work, moments of ekphrasis—moments at which characters
and/or narrators stop the forward momentum of the narrative to describe
a work of art—reverberate through the work as a whole by evoking or
underscoring intertextual and thematic alliances which may or may not be
explicit elsewhere.
Ekphrasis can point readers toward references that may, in turn, lead to
additional threads of interpretation, as J. Hillis Miller has pointed out:
“The story changes the picture by forcing the reader to look at it in a new
way” (2008, S81). As Clüver shows in his analysis of Jorge de Sena’s
poem, “Fragonard’s Swing” (1961), based on Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s
La balance (The Swing) (1767), the poem renders explicit tensions implicit
in the painting through diction that signifies on multiple levels: thus,
“cordas são / Tão cornea” (“ropes so horny”) refers simultaneously to
the texture of the ropes, the lovers’ sexual desire, and the husband’s
cuckoldry (1997, 21). Readers are invited to consider what the poem
reflects of the painting as well as what the painting reflects of the poem.
Likewise, the artwork that is the subject of the ekphrasis comes with its
own history of readings and interpretations. Ekphrasis can allude to
themes outside of a work and, in doing so, prompt readers to read those
178 K. NEWELL
themes back into the work. As Rischin explains, “an ekphrastic moment
may also leave its readers to recall the narrative captured in a statue or
painting, challenging them . . . to become active interpreters” (1996,
1130). For example, ekphrasis based on a work of art that has been
traditionally read as erotic or aggressive or as evocative of other emotions
or themes can refract those into a work from which they might otherwise
be absent (Rischin 1996, 1129).
The dual action of ekphrasis’ stilling and releasing is perhaps most
evident in prose examples in which ekphrasis is singled out, bracketed
off from the normalized prose of the novel as a whole, as is the case in the
“Spouter-Inn,” the third chapter of Moby-Dick, and in Chapter Four of
Daisy Miller. In both examples, ekphrasis provides a moment of contem-
plation and an opening for external commentary that invites readers to
reflect on the novel’s larger thematic tensions. Of course, the ekphrasis
may not resonate as ekphrasis for some readers, in that, borrowing from
Miller’s distinction, the detailed description of the work of art is subordi-
nated to “what happens to the spectator as a result of seeing the artwork”
(2008, S66); however, as the overview of definitions of ekphrasis at the
chapter’s opening demonstrates, ekphrasis takes on many forms and fulfills
a number of functions—among them the effect of art on the viewer,
a contribution to meaning construction, and an expansion of both the
host and nested work’s available significations.
“The Spouter-Inn” offers an often-cited example of ekphrasis in prose
in which Ishmael describes his difficulty in making sense of a painting on
the inn’s wall.7 Readers enter the inn under Ishmael’s direction and he
leads them immediately to “a very large oil-painting so thoroughly
besmoked, and every way defaced, that in the unequal cross-lights by
which you viewed it, it was only by diligent study and a series of systematic
visits to it, and careful inquiry of the neighbors” and “by dint of much and
earnest contemplation, and oft repeated ponderings, and especially by
throwing open the little window towards the back of the entry” that
“you could any way arrive at an understanding of its purpose” (Melville
1992, 13). Ishmael’s description rests less on the painting itself that its
resistance to reading and interpretation:
But what most puzzled and confounded you was a long, limber, portentous,
black mass of something hovering in the centre of the picture over three
blue, dim, perpendicular lines floating in a nameless yeast. A boggy, soggy,
squitchy picture truly, enough to drive a nervous man distracted. Yet was
there a sort of indefinite, half-attained, unimaginable sublimity about it that

fairly froze you to it, till you involuntarily took an oath with yourself to find
out what that marvelous painting meant. (1992, 13)
For Ishmael, the painting must mean something, and he turns to others to
validate his appreciation of and response to the painting:
In fact, the artist’s design seemed this: a final theory of my own, partly
based upon the aggregated opinions of many aged persons with whom I
conversed upon the subject. The picture represents a Cape-Horner in a
great hurricane; the half-foundered ship weltering there with its three
dismantled masts alone visible; and an exasperated whale, purposing to
spring clean over the craft, is in the enormous act of impaling himself upon
the three mast-heads. (1992, 14)
We might read this moment as one in which Ishmael stills or halts the
narrative to contemplate the painting, yet the moment is not still but,
rather, characterized by both spatial and metaphoric movement: Ishmael
describes the painting while moving through the inn (in effect, describing
the painting and interior of the inn simultaneously) and he moves meta-
phorically through several different interpretations of the picture. Further,
he attempts to prompt an emotional movement in the reader in projecting
that the image “fairly froze you to it, till you involuntarily took an oath”
(1992, 13, emphasis added).
The artist and title of the painting are not identified within the novel, but
scholars generally assume that Melville had in mind one of J.M.W. Turner’s
seascapes, likely Whalers (1845) or Snow Storm—Steam-Boat off a Harbour’s
Mouth (1842) (Wallace 1991, 56; Moore 1982, 127–29). While critics have
been unable to establish definitively with which Turner paintings Melville
was familiar, they do know that he was familiar with some of Turner’s works,
as were Melville’s associates. Robert K. Wallace reasons that “Melville may
not have seen” these paintings “with his own eyes, but he is likely to have
seen them through the eyes of some, if not all” of his acquaintances on his
visit to London (1991, 58). Arguments regarding Melville’s familiarity with
the discourse generated by Turner’s work are supported by noted corre-
spondences between the language of reviews of Turner’s exhibitions and
Ishmael’s language in describing the painting he encounters (Wallace 1991,
58). In an oft-quoted review of Whalers, a reviewer for Punch Magazine
comments on “those singular effects which are only met with in
180 K. NEWELL
lobster salads and this artist’s pictures” (“A Scamper” 1845, 233).
Novelist William Makepeace Thackeray’s (1905) observations (voiced
by Samuel Titmarsh) are an even closer model to Ishmael’s:
Look at the latter for a little time, and it begins to affect you too, to
mesmerize you. It is revealed to you; and, as it is said in the East, the
magicians make children see the sultans, carpet-bearers, tents, &c., in a
spot of ink in their hands; so the magician, Joseph Mallard, makes you see
what he likes on a board, that to the first view is merely dabbed over with
occasional streaks of yellow, and flecked here and there with vermilion. The
vermilion blotches become little boats full of harpooners and gondolas, with
a deal of music going on on board. That is not a smear of purple you see
yonder, but a beautiful whale, whose tail has just slapped a half-dozen
whale-boats into perdition; and as for what you fancied to be a few zigzag
lines spattered on the canvas at hap-hazard, look! they turn out to be a ship
with all her sails; the captain and his crew are clearly visible in the ship’s
bows; and you may distinctly see the oil-casks getting ready under the
superintendence of that man with the red whiskers and the cast in his eye;
who is, of course, the chief mate. In a word, I say that Turner is a great and
awful mystery to me. (263)
As Wallace notes, “[n]ot only does Ishmael adapt much of his diction from
Titmarsh, he also recreates the dynamics of perception by which each man
stands before a painting that appears to be a wild chaos of meaningless
color” (1991, 58). Melville also appears to adapt language from John
Ruskin’s Modern Painters in describing the effects of the water as “name-
less yeast,” as Ruskin describes stormy seascapes similarly as “masses of
accumulated yeast” (Ruskin 1848, 375; Moore 1982, 127–28).
Readers unequipped with the Turner reference would likely read
Ishmael’s description differently than those equipped. The first group
might puzzle through Ishmael’s description, as frustrated and curious as
he in their inability to “see,” whereas the latter group might see in their
mind’s eye a specific painting or, at least, a concrete visual style. The latter
group might be more satisfied with their reading, but they also might run
the risk of closing off the reading in a manner that truncates the inter-
pretive impulse of the scene—rending a “work” from Ishmael’s descrip-
tion, where he might have intended a “text,” to use Roland Barthes’
distinction (1977). If we read this description as an ekphrasis of a specific
work, we might overlook similarities between Ishmael’s digressions here
and elsewhere in the novel. Indeed, this moment provides a micro view of
the novel’s macro structure (Wallace 1991, 58–59; Moore 1982). Richard
S. Moore writes that “Melville’s multiple perspectives on the whale, his
delvings into mythology, cetology, paleontology, and a spate of other
disciplines, find their synecdochic analogs” in Ishmael’s examination of
the painting (1982, 124–25). The moment passes for one in which
Ishmael is the confused, troubled reader grasping at the meaning of a
work in a new style that functions as a mirror for Melville’s own troubled
readers.
Novelists often incorporate ekphrasis to bring about revelations of
character, to motivate narrative action, and for any number of related
reasons. Rischin draws attention to one such moment in Chapter
Nineteen of George Eliot’s Middlemarch (1871) in which Dorothea visits
the Vatican Museum. Within the scene, artist Adolf Naumann and Will
Ladislaw see her standing in front of the statue of The Sleeping Ariadne
(referred to in the novel as “the reclining Ariadne, then called
Cleopatra”) and begin to discuss her as though she were a work of art
as well. Rischin argues that the sculpture “not only helps to arouse Will’s
feelings for Dorothea but also prefigures the novel’s larger romance plot
and provides an acceptable vehicle for the representation of female eroti-
cism within the mores of Victorian culture” (1996, 1125–26). She
reasons that, “[a]lthough static and fixed, art functions as an agent of
change in Will, thereby becoming a vehicle for narrative dynamism”
(1996, 1125). Henry James uses a similar device in Chapter Four of
Daisy Miller in which Winterbourne visits St. Peters with his aunt, Mrs.
Costello, to hear the vesper service, but Daisy proves the more popular
attraction. Winterbourne notices Daisy and her companion Giovanelli
and “point[s] out the young girl and her cavalier” to his aunt (1892,
106). Mrs. Costello’s friends join her and the group proceeds to discuss
“poor little Miss Miller’s going really ‘too far’” (1892, 112). Sometime
after this scene, Winterbourne encounters a friend exiting the Doria
Palace, having come from viewing Velázquez’s Portrait of Innocent X.
The friend confides that “in the same cabinet, by-the-way, I had the
pleasure of contemplating a picture of a different kind—the pretty
American girl whom you pointed out to me last week.” The friend tells
Winterbourne, “the pretty American girl—prettier than ever—was seated
with a companion in the secluded nook in which the great papal portrait
[is] enshrined” (1892, 113). In both scenes Daisy is portrayed as yet
another art object available for contemplation and comment. The scene
in St. Peters reinforces Daisy as the object of study and positions
182 K. NEWELL
Winterbourne as an amateur docent, full of vague observations and

limited understanding. Winterbourne may fancy that he protects Daisy
in warning her of the impact of her behavior on others, yet his habit of
pointing her out to others as an object to be looked at in situations in
which she might otherwise proceed unnoticed suggests otherwise. Such
moments pause or still the narrative in aesthetic contemplation as Krieger
suggests, yet they release larger implications for the overall narrative.
The reference to Velázquez’s Portrait of Innocent X, a portrait famous
for its astute representation of the disagreeable and morally reproachable
papal figure, seems curious in a narrative focused on the exploits of a young
American girl. Much like the painting in The Spouter-Inn though, the
reference to Velázquez’s picture refracts the novella’s themes. For Jeffrey
Meyers, James’s reference to Velázquez’s work “forms a symbolic center of
the story and expresses some of its dominant polarities: innocence and
experience, individualism and authority, idealism and reality” (1979,
171). The Pope might be read as an inversion of Daisy: “The worldly
Italian Pope, who is called Innocent but (as his portrait reveals) is actually
experienced, is exactly the opposite of the naïve American Daisy, who is
called experienced but (as her description suggests) is really quite innocent”
(Meyers 1979, 177). Adam Sonstegard notes this play as well in his discus-
sion of H.W. McVickar’s illustrations for the novella and connects it to the
novella’s many acts of spectatorship: “The reader notes the ironic play on
the word ‘innocent,’ understands the pretty flirt is a ‘picture,’ without being
certain just what she exemplifies” (2008, 76; see also Tintner 1986).
In each of these examples, ekphrasis is used as a reading aide, incorpo-
rated to bring to light something unseen. The presence of the seascape in
Moby-Dick provides insights into Ishmael’s ways of making meaning. Like
Beeder’s speaker who looks for the text, then turns to the illustrations, and
then to other texts, Ishmael arrives at meaning through a reading model
comprised of multiple strategies. The reference to Velázquez’s picture in
Daisy Miller draws attention to Winterbourne’s and others’ superficial
reading models. Thus folded into the novels, the paintings become addi-
tional nodes in the works’ larger networks and invite readers to reflect
more broadly on the larger impact of Turner on Melville or Velázquez on
James. Should these pictorial styles inform subsequent visual adaptations
of either novel, the signifying power of the ekphrastic moments will be
even greater. The next section focuses ekphrastic strategies more broadly
in an analysis of Gary Wolf’s 1981 hardboiled detective novel Who
Censored Roger Rabbit?
SPEAKING FOR THE EKPHRASTIC OTHER: WHO CENSORED

ROGER RABBIT?
Wolf’s Who Censored Roger Rabbit? uses an ekphrastic conceit designed to
reinforce its representation- and race-related themes. Much of the novel’s
ingenuity stems from its distinguishing premise: cartoon characters—’toons
as they are called in the novel—are real and they communicate in word
balloons. Unlike the speech balloons of a conventional comic or graphic
novel that, in the language of Heffernan, would offer a visual representa-
tion of a verbal representation, and are used, Scott McCloud tells us, “to
depict sound in a strictly visual medium” (1993, 134), Wolf’s balloons
offer a verbal representation (word) of a visual representation (balloon)
of a verbal representation (speech). Put more simply, Wolf’s narrator,
detective Eddie Valiant, painstakingly describes each speech balloon
addressed to him. The balloons demarcate speaking subjects, highlight
the approximate and representative nature of language, and establish and
maintain divisions between the first-person narrator, Valiant, and the
Other, broadly conceived within the novel’s framework as the ’toon
population. In a world in which the verbal (human) and visual (’toon)
are opposites, ekphrasis acts as a mediator either through strategies
of assimilation that find commonalities between the two (ut pictura
poesis, “sister arts”) or strategies of resistance that locate divisions
(Lessing’s Laocoön). Ekphrasis becomes the tool by which Valiant estab-
lishes ’toons’ difference as well as that by which readers come to under-
stand the fallibility of Valiant’s reading model.
The novel begins with Roger Rabbit hiring private investigator Eddie
Valiant to investigate what he claims is a plot to murder him. Set in a
fictionalized Los Angeles, the novel focuses on the inner-workings of the
comics business. According to its premise, comics are not hand-drawn and
lettered, but photographed. The ’toon characters pose and their natural
speech balloons form the type that accompanies the image. Roger tells
Valiant that the DeGreasy Brothers, owners of the syndicate for which
Roger works, had promised him his own strip but have never followed
through and have forbidden him to work for anyone else. To make matters
worse, Roger’s wife, Jessica Rabbit, has recently left Roger for Rocco
DeGreasy, with whom she had had a relationship before marrying
Roger. As would be expected, in the course of investigating various
leads, Valiant uncovers numerous other crimes. Carol Masters, for exam-
ple, the photographer who photographs the comic strips, is involved in a
184 K. NEWELL
scheme to copy photographic negatives and sell them as originals. A subplot

involving a teakettle rumored to be a magic lantern results in duplicitous
acts on the part of numerous characters as each attempts to locate the kettle.
A bias and prejudice of humans against ’toons undergirds the novel’s
structure, informing all significant character relationships and the general
fabric of the mise-en-scène.
Like conventional speech balloons, Wolf’s convey tone and mood, yet,
unlike a conventional comic, such markers are not visible on the page.
Instead, Wolf uses ekphrastic strategies to bring the image of the speech
balloon “before the eye” of the reader. To facilitate, Valiant describes the
balloons in terms of recognizable references. For example, Roger Rabbit’s
psychiatrist, Doctor Beaver, speaks in balloons that “resembled the scrawly
prescription forms you take to the drugstore” (1981, 33) and Baby
Herman’s speech appears “in the lettering style found on a preschooler’s
handmade valentine” (1981, 8). The concept of enargeia is central to
ekphrasis, as it refers to an especial vividness defined by Dionysius as “a
power that brings what is said before the senses” to the degree listeners
“consort with the characters brought on by the orator as if they were
present” (quoted in Hardie 2002, 5).8 Wolf attempts to bring the visuals
to life for the reader by configuring the balloons as living things—they bend
and fold, follow various trajectories, are continually shifting in intention and
use value, and are open to appropriation and re-appropriation. For example,
during the scene in which Valiant first asks Roger about his wife, Jessica,
Roger responds, “My wife?” Valiant relates that his “word balloon miserably
failed its maiden flight, collapsing half-deflated across my shoulder.” Valiant
then “grabbed it, squashed it into an hourglass shape, and tossed it in front
of him. ‘Jessica Rabbit.’ I pointed to the mangled balloon. ‘Your wife.
Remember her?’” Roger replies, “‘Oh, of course. Jessica!” and “pluck[s]
the name from out of the air above him and extend[s] it to [Valiant] pillowed
in the cup of his palm” (1981, 15). In another scene Roger asks, “What?’
and “A series of tiny balloons, each containing an itsy-bitsy question mark,
bubbled out of his head. The balloons popped, letting the question marks
parachute to the floor.” Valiant admits, “I was tempted to scoop them
up and pocket them, since I knew a book publisher who bought them to
cut type-setting costs in his line of whodunits” (1981, 44). Occasionally
balloons get away from the speaker as when Roger shakes his head “empha-
tically enough to put a spin on his . . . balloon” and Valiant “had to slow
it to a stop by dragging [his] finger across it before [he] could read it”
(1981, 114).
In addition to structuring the representation, ekphrasis structures

power dynamics within the novel’s diegesis. All communication is filtered
through Valiant, who determines how readers read characters and char-
acter relationships. In this way, Valiant serves a function similar to that of
the ekphrastic poet-ventriloquist bringing to life the ceremonial bowl or
urn and bidding it “speak.” In the verbal/visual binary, the ’toons become
the “visual” by virtue of their being described as visuals. Within the novel,
’toons represent a generalized minority, whose marginality is reinforced
through segregational practices such as “humans only” and “’toons only”
bars, elevators, and police forces. The ’toons themselves are divided into
“humanoid” and “barnyard.” “Humanoids” look human and comprise
the highest rung of the social hierarchy and “barnyards” look like animals
or objects and comprise the lowest rung. Humanoid ’toons can repress
their speech balloons and pass as human, while animal and object ’toons
cannot. Within the novel’s segregated story world (as elsewhere) passing is
transgressive as it involves unsanctioned negotiations of space and borders,
a transcending of categories. The novel’s many examples of ’toons passing
as human reflect its larger ekphrastic strategy of the description of speech
balloons passing as the visual. The language Valiant struggles to represent
is also the “image of a language” in the Bakhtinian sense, as speech
balloons are always approximations, representations of language (1981).
Jessica Rabbit embodies both the fear of the feminine Other and a more
generalized fear of unstable relations between words and images, as well as
between representation and reality. Jessica poses a threat to Valiant on multi-
ple levels, largely because she resists his reading model. Knowing her name is
Jessica Rabbit, Valiant assumes he knows her because he knows rabbits. When
Carol Masters refers to Jessica as “a real bitch,” Valiant challenges, “Kind of
hard for me to picture so much allure and such a devious nature in a female
rabbit” (1981, 12). Masters warns, “don’t be misled by her name.” But
Valiant continues to allow himself to be misled by his assumptive and flawed
reading model. He first encounters her as a photograph and describes her as a
type: “A knockout. Every line perfection. . . . Easily able to pass for human”
(1981, 12–13). When he does finally meet Jessica, he describes her in terms of
variances between her photographed self and what he sees standing before
him, and then in terms of her iconic value:
Her photos, stunning as they were, hadn’t begun to capture the full scope of
her beauty. Curly hair the color of a lingering sunset. Porcelain skin.
Incendiary gray-blue eyes. Lips the softness of pink rose petals. And a
186 K. NEWELL
body straight out of one of the magazines adolescent boys pore over in
locked bathrooms. The kind of woman usually portrayed floating down the
Nile on a barge, nibbling at stuffed pheasant and peeled grapes, enticing
some beguiled Roman into conquering half the civilized world on her
behalf. (1981, 20)
Valiant is unable to describe Jessica directly; rather, for Valiant, she is a

series of metaphors. His reading of her is complicated further as she begins
to disintegrate right before his eyes, “her brilliant smile dribbl[ing] off her
chin and flutter[ing] to the ground like a bicuspid butterfly.” Valiant
“gallantly scramble[s] to retrieve [her] bits and pieces for her . . . but they
disintegrat[e],” and he is left “circl[ing] the spot where she had stood,
kicking [his] toe against the concrete. Not a smidgeon of her remained.”
The real Jessica then appears behind him, “bemused” and laughing at
Valiant for not recognizing her expired image as a doppelgänger, “a
mentally projected duplicate” (1981, 21). Within Wolf’s diegesis ’toons
can manufacture temporary replicas of themselves that they call doppels or
doppelgängers. In creating a doppelgänger ’toons can be in two places at
once, a trick that goes undetected by human readers, who cannot tell the
difference between the original and the copy.
Jessica also suppresses her speech balloons, which further frustrates
Valiant’s reading, as she leaves him with no part of her to manipulate,
no souvenir and no tangible evidence. Her deft passing between human
and ’toon, original and copy, and, as Valiant will discover, pornographic
and mainstream comics, erodes the boundaries between the categories.
He is unable to fix her: as soon as he locates her in a category, that
category becomes inadequate; it no longer applies. We might say that
Jessica embodies Mitchell’s concept of ekphrastic fear, that moment
“when we sense that the difference between the verbal and the visual
representation might collapse and the figurative, imaginary desire of
ekphrasis might be realized literally and actually” (1994, 154). Valiant
attempts to buttress the collapse heralded by Jessica through various
strategies, all aimed at reinstalling binaries and, with that, his dyadic
perception. Thus, during an interrogation scene, he conjures a thought
balloon for her: “Had she not suppressed her thought balloons, the air
above her head would have been filled with visions of churning gears”
(Wolf 1981, 106).
The preservation of boundaries is essential to Valiant’s worldview, but
the erosion of boundaries is essential to his cracking the case. Margaret
Persin’s explanation of the ekphrastic encounter as a “frame up” is certainly

apt for this novel. For Persin, ekphrasis results from
a falsifying of evidence, in that the visual art object is really not present
after all; the writer has framed only a forgery, a copy, a simulacrum of the
desired object. . . . The poetic text pulls off a sting, seems to deliver the
goods, but the art object presented in a brilliant fake, a ‘true’ copy that
faithfully and subversively evokes the presence/absence of the desired
Other. (1997, 21)
However, just as ekphrasis preserves binaries throughout the novel, the

novel also points to the pitfalls of evaluative binaries. That is, the novel’s
ingenuity comes from its reliance on familiar binaries, among them novel/
comics, human/’toon, reading/speaking, invisible/visible, original/copy,
male/female, and its ability to manipulate them in a manner that allows
them to function in new and interesting ways. The case (and the novel),
however, only comes into focus through a blurring of dyadic reading
models. Jessica is not an outlier in her passing; rather, her seemingly
transgressive boundary crossing is par for the course. Against the novel’s
primary conceit, Jessica Rabbit’s manner of communication is cast as
“suppressed,” though it is that same as Valiant’s. Likewise, the various
’toon characters’ speech is singled out, marked as different, though it
becomes so only via the ekphrastic conceit. Wolf uses ekphrasis to con-
struct difference as well as transgression. Visually, on the page, the lan-
guage of the author, the narrator, and the characters, the language of
humans and ’toons is all the same.
Much writing on ekphrasis attempts to unpack the verbal-visual or
verbal/visual binary by exposing its limits, yet, as Stanley Fish might aver,
it is the theory that provided this lens for interpretation (1976). “Verbal”
and “visual,” “human” and “’toon,” prove to be ideological categories that
reinforce the division between the verbal and the visual and the human and
the ’toon. The actual activity of ekphrasis exists in the fissure between the
terms. Ekphrasis, as Mitchell has pointed out, is simply a device that enables
us to articulate a particular relationship (Mitchell 1994, 161). In each of the
examples discussed in this chapter, the dominant relationship is that
between a character and acts of interpretation. In its seeming ability to
bridge disparateness, ekphrasis becomes the device best able to articulate
activities of meaning-making. The act of a character making sense of a visual
becomes a surrogate for external readers making sense of the ekphrasis.
188 K. NEWELL
EKPHRASIS AND THE ADAPTATION NETWORK

I would like now to examine more specifically how ekphrasis can also be a
tool for reflecting and expanding a work’s adaptation network by turning
to another of Amy Beeder’s Wizard of Oz-based poems, “Gossip,” which
describes the scene in which Dorothy throws water on the Wicked Witch
of the West. Unlike “Garden of Meats,” this poem does not identify any of
the characters by name, nor does it mention L. Frank Baum explicitly.
Moreover, it does not acknowledge a specific illustration or film as its
basis. However, the poem’s iconography evokes and situates it within Oz’s
adaptation network. Many readers would recognize an Oz text as its
source from the opening line, “—Didn’t you know water would be the
end of me?” (Beeder 2006, 53, line 1). If that reference is not familiar, the
poem includes the word “wicked” four times and incorporates dialogue
from Baum’s novel:
See what you have done, she said.

For a moment we were both amazed
as she began to ebb away
behind her eye patch, pointed hat—O
I have been wicked in my day, she said (2006, 53, 2–6)
Although the general scene is easily identifiable, the particular iteration

Beeder describes is not. The dialogue and the eye patch seem to identify
this witch as Baum’s, however, several Wicked Witches of the West wear
eye patches, Miss Piggy among them. Also, Baum does not mention the
hat in the melting scene. W.W. Denslow’s illustration of the scene includes
the eye patch but not the hat. Of course, the 1939 MGM film’s Wicked
Witch does wear the hat in her melting scene, though not the eye patch.
This poem might also evoke Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked
Witch of the West (1995) in its title, “Gossip,” given that Gregory Maguire
opens and closes the novel with scenes of gossip. The novel’s prologue
features a conversation between the Lion, the Tin Woodman, the
Scarecrow, and Dorothy in which they share rumors circulating about
the Wicked Witch of the West’s mental state and sexual orientation,
connected by phrases such as “to hear them tell it” and “I’m only repeat-
ing what folks say” (1995, 1). The narrator notes that the Witch overhears
it all, and “was so stunned that she nearly lost her grip on the branch” on
which she was perched; “[t]he last thing she ever cared for was gossip”
(1995, 2). The novel also concludes with intimations of the gossip gen-
erated by the witch’s death: “It was hailed as a political assassination or a
juicy murder. Dorothy’s description of what had happened was deemed
self-delusion, at best, or a bald-faced lie. Murder or mercy killing or
accident” (1995, 405). The poem might even evoke the 1998 musical
adaptation of Wicked, which was advertised with an image of Glinda
whispering into the Witch’s ear.
Unlike “Garden of Meats” which signals itself as ekphrasis in its
opening line—“All text is lost, but illustrations left”—“Gossip” does
not. The poem could easily be read as a meditation on Oz and need
not be read through the lens of ekphrasis. Refracted through this lens,
the poem points to the interpretive potential of ekphrastic writing and
reading. Rather than verbally represent a singular, identifiable visual
representation, Beeder’s “Gossip” might verbally represent the network
of representation: a verbal representation of a range of visual and verbal
representations. The poem provides a vivid description of an iconic
scene that has become iconic because of the vividness of its visual
descriptions and by virtue of its reproducibility. Beeder need not iden-
tify a specific iteration of the witch’s melting as the general image
would be imprinted in the cultural memory of the majority of her
readers who, doubtless, have seen it numerous times in a range of
contexts. In addition to offering an ekphrasis of this scene, Beeder’s
poem also contributes its own interpretation to the adaptation network,
in framing it from Dorothy’s perspective and in capturing the girl’s
confusion, and its own commentary on that network.
That the plethora of Oz stories and representations cohere in a larger
network that grants little preference to details is evident in the poem’s
presentation and revision of the witch’s final words, each more nonsensical
and further removed from the immediate context than the previous:
I thought I heard I never thought

a girl like you could end my wicked deeds;
it might have been could send me wicked dreams
or end by tickling me or even
bend my wicker seams— (2006, 53, lines 12–16)
The speaker finally settles that, “You bitch you murdered me / is surely what
she meant to say,” and concludes “but all’s mixed up in history now / (a girl
some shoes my wicked tricks) (2006, 53, 21–24). Indeed, much of The Wizard
190 K. NEWELL
of Oz can be distilled to a girl, some shoes, some wicked tricks—the parti-

culars—what specifically the witch says or does not say—is irrelevant against
the larger history, or network of the story. Maguire’s narrator’s comment on
what became of the Wizard is perhaps most apt: “The story is told in so many
ways, depending on who is doing the telling, and what needs to be heard at
the time” (1995, 406).
This chapter has focused on ekphrasis as a reading tool, as a lens for
magnifying and refracting, for opening a work up to significations unavail-
able or otherwise invisible. As I have tried to show, conceptions of ekphrasis
as a meeting of two conceptual units posit boundaries between media in
order to show ekphrasis as somehow unique in overcoming those bound-
aries. But, as Mitchell reminds us, “there is no essential difference between
texts and images and thus no gap between the media to be overcome by any
special ekphrastic strategies” (1994, 160). Without such boundaries, how
might we theorize ekphrasis? The success of ekphrasis hinges on the audi-
ence’s awareness that something has happened. Readers need to read
Ishmael’s stopping to view the painting in The Spouter-Inn as somehow
different from his viewing Queequeg’s idol worship—another moment
focused on spectacle and rife with Ishmael’s attempts to make meaning—
for it to “count” as ekphrasis. Medial borders are thus useful, as Rajewsky
has noted, for helping to distinguish “normalized” moments of spectator-
ship and description (whatever that might mean for the particular work)
from moments in which the act of describing is centered on an intermedial
reference. The challenge then appears to be one of avoiding dualizing the
borders and assigning them arbitrary values. The concept of media borders
or boundaries need not indicate a line between two entities but can, instead,
simply demarcate medial presence.
Earlier in this chapter I mentioned that I view ekphrasis as a form of
“intermedial reference,” as, in most instances, ekphrasis uses one medium to
evoke the attributes of another (Rajewsky 2010, 55–56). Thinking about
ekphrasis within the fold of intermediality has raised several questions for
me, among them: what (if any) value does ekphrasis hold in a climate rich
with more generalized (and pronounceable) terms capable of expressing its
particular relationships? I am reluctant to embrace either “ekphrasis” or
“intermedial reference” wholly or to cast one aside definitively as I see both
as useful. Ekphrasis brings to the table a history of usage, debate over its
delineation, and frustration in pinpointing its particular function and pur-
view, as the brief overview at this chapter’s beginning (which focuses mainly
on twentieth-century conceptions) suggests. The history of ekphrasis is
laden with biases and ways of thinking about relationships between media
and the arts that prove enlightening to the study of other intermedial works
(e.g., illustration, comics, film adaptation, games) but that might not sur-
face if ekphrasis were grouped under the umbrella of intermediality. The
term “intermedial” is comparatively recent, coined in the mid-twentieth
century (though interart and intermedial practices have always been in
circulation). Intermediality’s own history is also fraught with debates over
definition and application, and the challenge of articulating medial relation-
ships. Intermediality casts a wider net over media and modalities than does
ekphrasis and has actively resisted rigid dualisms of the type that have
burdened studies of ekphrasis. In consequence, intermediaity offers ekphra-
sis a more generalized way of theorizing its particular relationships. The
concept of intermedial referencing, for example, allows for the productive
recognition of a particular relationship, without the unproductive recourse
to binary conceptualizations of media. Rather than asserting the priority of
one or the other, the terms may work most productively in tandem.
NOTES
1. In a footnote to “The Deadly Poppy Field” chapter, Michael Patrick Hearn
notes: “It is surprising that someone as fond of flowers as Baum was should
introduce so many hostile plants into the Oz books,” The Annotated Wizard
of Oz (New York: W.W. Norton, 2000) p. 141, n. 6. Carnivorous and
menacing flowers and vegetation appear fairly often throughout the Oz
series. For example, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1960) includes fighting
trees and the poppy fields (which may or may not be consciously menacing),
and Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz (1908) includes the Mangaboos, a race of
vegetable people, who send unwanted outsiders into “The Garden of the
Clinging Vines” to die.
2. Granted, the Scarecrow is disemboweled at several points in the Oz narrative
trajectory—most notably by the Wicked Witch of the West’s flying monkeys
in several versions of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz—but he also disembowels
himself to protect his friends from the swarm of bees.
3. Baum’s original manuscript included a chapter, “The Garden of Meats,”
which focused on a race of vegetable people, who farmed humans for food.
Baum’s publishers found the chapter too troubling and suggested that he
omit it, which he did. Though, as the poem indicates, the chapter is no
longer extant, a few of John R. Neill’s illustrations remain. These, combined
with Baum’s correspondence and publisher’s notes, provide a rough sketch
of what the chapter might have entailed.
192 K. NEWELL
4. This chapter focuses primarily on ekphrasis as it manifests in words based on

visual art. Several studies have addressed ekphrasis in other media, among
them Siglind Bruhn’s Musical Ekphrasis: Composers Responding to Poetry and
Painting (Hillsdale, NY: Pendragon Press, 2000) and Sonic Transformations
of Literary Texts: From Program Music to Musical Ekphrasis (Hillsdale, NY:
Pendragon, 2008), and Linda Sager Eidt’s Writing and Filming the
Painting: Ekphrasis in Literature and Film (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2008).
5. Rajewsky does not address ekphrasis specifically in her discussion of inter-
medial references; she focuses, rather, on dance theater and photorealistic
paintings. Important to the distinction between intermedial referencing is
that “it is not two or more different forms of medial articulation that are
present in their own specific materiality”—the work is not a hybrid combin-
ing photograph and painting, but, rather the painting takes on the attributes
of the photograph (2010, 58).
6. Laura Sager Eidt provides a succinct overview the history of criticism that
casts the so-called tension between words and images in social and ideolo-
gical terms (2008, 14–16).
7. A number of writers have addressed this moment, among them Howard P.
Vincent, “Ishmael, Writer and Critic,” in Themes and Directions in American
Literature, ed. Ray B. Brown and Donald Pizer (Lafeyette: Purdue University
Press, 1969), and Moore 1982.
8. For Clüver and others writing on ekphrasis, enargeia distinguishes ekphrasis
from ordinary description; for others, though, like Yacobi, writing need not
demonstrate enargeia to be ekphrastic (Clüver 1998, 37–9, 42).
REFERENCES
Alpers, Svetlana Leontief. “Ekphrasis and Aesthetic Attitudes in Vasari’s Lives.”
Journal of the Warburg and Courtlauld Institutes 23, no. 3/4 (July–December
1960): 190–215. JSTOR.
Bakhtin, M.M. “Discourse in the Novel.” In The Dialogic Imagination, edited
by Michael Holquist, 259–422. Translated by Caryl Emerson and Michael
Holquist. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981.
Barthes, Roland. “From Work to Text.” In Image—Music—Text, 155–164.
Translated by Stephen Heath. New York: Hill and Wang, 1977.
Baum, L. Frank. Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz. Illustrated by John R. Neill.
Chicago: Reilly & Britton, 1908.
———. The Patchwork Girl of Oz. Illustrated by John R. Neill. Chicago: Reilly &
Britton, 1913.
———. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Illustrated by W.W. Denslow. New York:
Dover, 1960.
———. The Emerald City of Oz. Chicago: Reilly and Britton, 1910. Lit2Go, 2016.
http://etc.usf.edu/lit2go/123/the-emerald-city-of-oz/2179/chapter-25-
how-the-scarecrow-displayed-his-wisdom/.
Clüver, Claus. “Ekphrasis Reconsidered: On Verbal Representations of Non-
Verbal Texts.” In Interart Poetics: Essays on the Interrelations of the Arts and
Media, edited by Ulla-Britta Lagerroth, Hans Lund, Erik Hedling, 19–33.
Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1997.
——— “Quotation, Enargeia, and the Functions of Ekphrasis.” In Pictures
Into Words: Theoretical and Descriptive Approaches to Ekphrasis, edited by
Valerie Robillard and Els Jongeneel, 35–52. Amsterdam: VU University
Press, 1998.
Davidson, Michael. “Ekphrasis and the Postmodern Painter Poem.” The Journal of
Aesthetics and Art Criticism 42, no. 1 (Autumn 1983): 69–79. JSTOR.
“Ecphrasis.” Oxford English Dictionary, 2016. http://0-www.oed.com.library.
scad.edu/view/Entry/59412?redirectedFrom=ecphrasis#eid
Elleström, Lars. “Introduction.” In Media Borders, Multimodality and
Intermediality, edited by Elleström, 1–8. New York: Palgrave, 2010a.
——— “The Modalities of Media: A Model for Understanding Intermedial
Relations.” In Media Borders, Multimodality and Intermediality, edited by
Lars Elleström, 11–48. New York: Palgrave, 2010b.
Fischer, Barbara K. Museum Mediations: Reframing Ekphrasis in Contemporary
American Poetry. New York: Routledge, 2006.
Fish, Stanley. “Interpreting the ‘Variorum.” Critical Inquiry 2, no. 3 (Spring
1976): 465–485. JSTOR.
Hagstrum, Jean H. The Sister Arts: The Tradition of Literary Pictorialism and
English Poetry from Dryden to Gray. Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1958.
Hardie, Philip. Ovid’s Poetics of Illusion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2002.
Heffernan, James A. W. “Entering the Museum of Words: Ashbery’s ‘Self-Portrait
in a Convex Mirror.” Pictures Into Words: Theoretical and Descriptive Approaches
to Ekphrasis, edited by Valerie Robillard and Els Jongeneel, 189–211.
Amsterdam: VU University Press, 1998.
———. “Ekphrasis and Representation.” New Literary History 22, no.2 (Spring
1991): 297–316. JSTOR.
Hollander, John. The Gazer’s Spirit: Poems Speaking to Silent Works of Art.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995.
———. “The Poetics of Ekphrasis.” Word & Image 4.1 (1988): 209–219.
James, Henry. Daisy Miller & An International Episode. Illustrated by H.W.
McVickar. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1892.
194 K. NEWELL
Krieger, Murray. “Ekphrasis and the Still Movement of Poetry; or Laokoön

Revisited.” In The Poet as Critic, edited by Frederick P. W. McDowell, 3–26.
Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1967.
——— “The Problem of Ekphrasis: Image and Words, Space and Time—and the
Literary Work.” In Pictures Into Words: Theoretical and Descriptive Approaches
to Ekphrasis, edited by Valerie Robillard and Els Jongeneel, 3–20. Amsterdam:
VU University Press, 1998.
Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim. Laocoön: An Essay Upon the Limits of Painting and Poetry
[1766]. Translated by Ellen Frothingham. Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1874.
Maguire, Gregory. Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West.
New York: HarperCollins, 1995.
McCloud, Scott. Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. New York: HarperCollins,
1993.
Melville, Herman. Moby-Dick; or, The Whale. New York: Penguin, 1992.
Meyers, Jeffrey. “Velázquez and ‘Daisy Miller.’” Studies in Short Fiction 16.3
(Summer 1979): 171–178.
Miller, J. Hillis. “What Do Stories About Pictures Want.” Critical Inquiry 34,
no. S2 (Winter 2008): S59-S97. JSTOR.
Mitchell, W.J.T. Picture Theory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994.
Moore, Richard S. That Cunning Alphabet: Melville’s Aesthetics of Nature.
Persin, Margaret H. Getting the Picture: The Ekphrastic Principle in Twentieth-
Century Spanish Poetry. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1997.
Rajewsky, Irina O. “Border Talks: The Problematic Status of Media Borders in
the Current Debate About Intermediality.” In Media Borders, Multimodality
and Intermediality, edited by Lars Elleström, 51–68. New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2010.
“Representation.” Oxford English Dictionary, 2016. http://0-www.oed.com.
library.scad.edu/view/Entry/162997?rskey=zuK5sw&result=1&isAdvanced=
false#eid.
Rischin, Abigail S. “Beside the Reclining Statue: Ekphrasis, Narrative, and
Desire in Middlemarch. ” PMLA 111, no. 5 (October 1996): 1121–1132.
JSTOR.
Robillard, Valerie. “In Pursuit of Ekphrasis (an intertextual approach).” Pictures
Into Words: Theoretical and Descriptive Approaches to Ekphrasis. edited by
Valerie Robillard and Els Jongeneel. Amsterdam: VU University Press, 1998.
53-72. Print.
Ruskin, John. Modern Painters. Volume 1. London: Smith, Elder, and Co., 1848.
Sager Eidt, Laura M. Writing and Filming the Painting: Ekphrasis in Literature
and Film. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2008.
“A Scamper Through the Exhibition of the Royal Academy.” Punch, Or the London
Charivari. Vol. 8, 233–234. 1845. https://books.google.com/books.
Scott, Grant F. “The Rhetorical of Dilation: Ekphrasis and Ideology.” Word &
Image 7.4 (1991): 301–310.
Sonstegard, Adam. “Discreetly Depicting ‘an Outrage’: Graphic Illustration and
‘Daisy Miller’s Reputation.” Henry James Review 29, no. 1 (Winter 2008): 65–
79. Project Muse.
Spitzer, Leo. “‘Ode on a Grecian Urn,’ or Content vs. Metagrammar.”
Comparative Literature 7, no. 3 (Summer 1955): 203–225. JSTOR.
Thackeray, W.M. “Picture Gossip: In a Letter From Michael Angelo Titmarsh.”
In The Complete Works of W.M. Thackeray, 247–270 New York: Riverdale
Press, 1905.
Tintner, Adeline R. The Museum World of Henry James. Ann Arbor: UMI, 1986.
Wagner, Peter. “Introduction: Ekphrasis, Iconotexts, and Intermediality—the
State(s) of the Art(s).” In Icons—Texts—Iconotexts: Essays on Ekphrasis and
Intermediality, 1–40. Tubingen, DEU: Walter de Gruyter, 2012.
Wallace, Robert K. “Bulkington, J.M.W. Turner, and ‘The Lee Shore.” Savage
Eye: Melville and the Visual Arts, edited by Christopher Sten, 55–76. Kent,
OH: Kent State University Press, 1991.
Wolf, Gary. Who Censored Roger Rabbit? New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1981.
Yacobi, Tamar. “The Ekphrastic Model: Forms and Functions.” In Pictures Into
Words: Theoretical and Descriptive Approaches to Ekphrasis, edited by Valerie
Robillard and Els Jongeneel, 21–34. Amsterdam: VU University Press, 1998.
CHAPTER 7
Conclusion: Like an Open Book
As I mention in the introduction to this book, writing about adaptation

poses several challenges, not the least of which is how to define adaptation.
Rather than answer that question, this book has sought to open the field of
inquiry further by exploring the adaptive activity evident in modes not
frequently included in discussions of adaptation. My goal has not been to
champion these modes as “just as” or “more” valuable than whole-work
adaptation, but, rather, to show what a networked model of adaptation
can illuminate—namely, that cultural understandings of literary works
originate not exclusively or even necessarily in source texts but in patterns
of repetition and reiteration. The modes of adaptation that I have addressed
in this book have been said to provide points of access or gateways into
the works they adapt. The notion of “access,” however, assumes a stable
text and passive readers—an assumption disproved by adaptation net-
works which show fluid texts and active readers. Adaptation networks
reveal the numerous ways in which readers engage with works and make
them meaningful. This chapter returns briefly to the icon of the ruby
slippers discussed in Chapter One to show how audiences make works
personally meaningful in their recognition and prioritization of certain
signifiers over others. The potential of adaptation as a strategy for personal
meaning-making is evident also in the art of the collaborative team of Tim
Rollins and K.O.S. (Kids of Survival), and in the work of visual perfor-
mance artist Tim Youd. Both have created visual art based on classic works
of literature and situate their work within a larger network of literary

198 K. NEWELL
appreciation and critical commentary, albeit via very different methodol-

ogies, motivations, and visual styles. In using the literary works they adapt
as both inspirations for and the physical medium of the work, both also
complicate the source text as a point of reference. Many of the works
discussed in this book are what Brian Rose calls “culture-texts” (1996),
and, as such, they might seem more receptive to a networked model of
adaptation than a new work with comparatively limited adaptation history.
To demonstrate the broad benefit of the network model, I turn to Emma
Donoghue’s 2010 novel Room, about a woman and her son who escape
from captivity, which she adapted to the screen for the 2015 film of the
same name, directed by Lenny Abrahamson.
Arguably one of the most recognizable icons of MGM’s 1939 The
Wizard of Oz film, the ruby slippers designed by Gilbert Adrian and
worn by Judy Garland in her portrayal of Dorothy Gale are fetishized
within the film and in virtually all of its publicity materials as a talisman
of loss and possibility, and they have taken on a life independent of the
film, as we saw in Chapter One. What is not shown is that the ruby
slippers are not one pair of shoes, but, in fact, several. At least four pairs
of ruby slippers were created for the MGM film: one for dance
sequences, one for close-ups, one for the Wicked Witch of the East’s
feet, and one for Judy Garland’s stunt double. Visual representations of
the shoes typically do not identify a particular pair but, instead, elide
multiplicity in favor of a unified, stable icon: the ruby slippers. This
tendency is evident in the article that introduces Annie Leibovitz’s
Wizard of Oz-themed photographic spread for Vogue magazine: “The
young actress Keira Knightley was chosen to step into Judy Garland’s
ruby slippers—not to mention a variety of top designers’ takes on her
gingham frock” (“The Wizard” 2005, emphasis added). Of course,
Knightley does not step into any of the pairs of Garland’s shoes but,
instead, steps into several different pairs of ruby slippers, all by high-end
designers. While Vogue grants that the dresses are variations on Garland’s
costume, it evades variation with regard to the shoes. This desire for a
unified icon is apparent also in Amy Beeder’s poem, “The Shoes,”
which likewise distills the many into one. Beeder’s shoes have a varied
history—“they were really silver, transformed to ruby for the / Technicolor
screen,” they “trod roads of fire in the ancient story,” and “continued the
tradition of magic shoes and flight”—that culminates in the those parti-
cular shoes, that “were more powerful than the golden cap and Glinda’s
kiss / together” (2006, 54, lines 2–3, 5, 6, 11–12).
CONCLUSION: LIKE AN OPEN BOOK 199
Through reiterative practices, the ruby slippers have been brought to

signify much more than a particular pair of shoes worn by a particular
character. Both examples corral disparate meanings into a seemingly
stable icon—the ruby slippers—which simultaneously refracts, multi-
plies, and disperses those meanings. For the Vogue reader immune to
or disinterested in the iconography of The Wizard of Oz, the shoes
still signify in their evocation of Christian Louboutin or Marc Jacobs—
cultural markers of equal or greater weight for certain audiences.
Leibovitz’s photographs may provide Vogue’s readers with a gateway to
The Wizard of Oz, but they also provide gateways to Leibovitz’s photo-
graphic style and Vogue’s spring fashion offerings. Whether the shoes
signify Oz or a spring fashion trend, they are made to mean. The photo-
graphs adapt (and adapt to) Oz iconography and the Oz iconography
adapts (and adapts to) editorial fashion photography. Adaptations are
always pointing in multiple directions as they contribute to existing
networks and initiate others. How readers engage with particular nodes
depends on their understanding of the adaptation network and the
meanings they can make from it.
The link between reading, personal meaning-making, and adaptation
is exemplified in the work of the collaborative team of Tim Rollins and
K.O.S. (Kids of Survival). The group formed in 1981 under the guidance
of Rollins, then a young public school teacher in the South Bronx, whose
principal charged him to devise a curriculum that “incorporated art-
making with reading and writing lessons for students classified as acade-
mically or emotionally ‘at risk’” (“Tim” 2010). Rollins met this chal-
lenge by selecting literary works with themes he thought might resonate
with the school’s inner-city population and having students read and
create art inspired by those works. For each session, one person reads
aloud to the group, while the others create sketches that “relat[e] the
stories to their own experiences” (“Tim” 2010). The developmental
stage for each piece involves repeated revisitation and discussion of the
literary work’s themes and dominant symbols and its relevance to the
group. Once the group settles on a vision for the larger artwork, they
move onto the next stage, which entails removing the book’s binding,
affixing its pages to a large canvas or set of canvasses, and painting over
those pages an image or set of images or symbols (Romaine 2009). In
this way, the group physically adapts the work into a new material object
and new iconography that reifies their critical reading process and the
range of personal meanings generated from that process.
200 K. NEWELL
K.O.S. envisions their work as simultaneously artistic, social, and political,

as is evident in their interpretations of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn—Asleep
on the Raft (after Mark Twain) (2011) features a large-scale replica of E.W.
Kemble’s illustration from the 1885 edition of Jim falling asleep on the raft
after he and Huck become separated in the fog. The image depicts Jim as
physically spent. He sits on the raft with his head resting on his bent knees.
His left arm crosses his knees, supporting his head, and his right arm drapes
along his body. Other works in the Huckleberry Finn series also focus on Jim,
among them Adventures of Huckleberry Finn—In the Cave (after Mark
Twain) (2011) and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn—On the Raft (after
Mark Twain) (2011). As signifiers of Twain’s novel, these images offer quite
a different vision than does the central image of Everett Henry’s literary map
discussed in Chapter Four. Whereas that image of horseplay and laughter
privileges the “buddy” tale favored by popular film and stage adaptations,
the Rollins and K.O.S. images foreground a tale of despair and alienation.
The work of Rollins and K.O.S. shows adaptation to be a tool for making
works meaningful. They use recognizable images from Huckleberry Finn but
removed from their contexts and enlarged to such dimensions they become
estranged, distanciated. For example, the series includes representations of
Kemble’s “The Bag of Money” and “Buttons on Their Tales”—illustrations
that appear in scenes in which Huckleberry’s expressions of white entitle-
ment work to the disadvantage of non-white characters. The “bag of
money” refers specifically to the $6,000 the king and duke attempt to
swindle from the Wilks family—an attempt thwarted by Huck, who hides
the money and returns it to the family. But these events, the money, and the
other property the king and duke attempt to secure is embroiled in the
complex machinery of slave exchange. Not satisfied with just the $6,000, the
king and duke seek to sell off the Wilks’ property, which includes a family of
slaves. Seeing how distraught both families are with this sale, Huck claims
that the only thing that prevents him from disclosing the truth about the
crooks at that moment is his knowledge that “the sale warn’t no account”
and that the slaves would be reunited “in a week or two.” Huck’s naïveté and
willingness to allow others to experience unnecessary grief and torment is a
constant through the novel and most consistently tied to his racial privilege.
Though “it most made me down sick to see” the family facing separation, he
protects his own course of action and says nothing (1999, 195). Similarly,
“Buttons on Their Tales” and “Irrigation” refer to Tom Sawyer’s plot to
“rescue” Jim, whom he has cast as the “prisoner” in his adventure fantasy.
The events that befall Jim under Tom Sawyer’s influence are malicious
and difficult for many contemporary readers to find humorous. To fulfill
Tom’s vision for “correct” escape, Jim is unchained—that is, set free—
and then forced by Tom to participate in the gathering of ridiculous props
and, then, rechained. “Buttons on Their Tales” refers to Tom’s instance
that Jim should have a rattlesnake in the shed with him so that Jim can
tame and befriend it as do captured prisoners in his romance novels. Jim
protests and Tom finally agrees to substitute garter snakes with buttons
on their tales (1999, 267). “Irrigation” refers to Tom’s insistence that
Jim attempt to grow a flower in his cell and water it with his tears. When
Jim explains, “I doan’ skasely ever cry,” Tom proposes secreting an onion
in Jim’s coffee pot (1999, 269). Seen within the context of the heavily-
illustrated novel, these illustrations are three of many. Isolated, though,
and placed within the context of an exhibition focused on Jim or on
historic representations of African-American people in visual culture,
these images take on new meanings and significations. They hone our
attention on Jim and, by extension, the novel’s complex racial and eco-
nomic power dynamics and, more importantly, to contemporary strate-
gies of reading Huckleberry Finn less as a boy’s adventure story than a
document reflective of systemic racism.
A similar technique is visible in the group’s “Alice” series, which also
includes number of paintings, but all based on the same illustration,
among them Alice (After Lewis Carroll) (1987), White Alice (After
Lewis Carroll) (1984–87), Black Alice (After Lewis Carroll) (1989),
Red Alice II (After Lewis Carroll) (1990), White Alice III (After Lewis
Carroll) (1992). Each features a large-scale representation of Carroll’s
illustration of Alice trapped in the house of the White Rabbit, painted
over pages from editions of his novel. The image of Alice encompasses
the full surface area of the canvas and is overlaid with a dominant color,
as is suggested by the titles. For some, like Alice (After Lewis Carroll),
the image of Alice is very clear. For others, like Dark Gray Alice (After
Lewis Carroll) (1990) and Black Alice, the color is so heavily saturated as
to obscure almost completely the image of Alice. Unlike illustrated and
pop-up depictions of Alice, which tend to emphasize change and move-
ment, the effect of K.O.S.’s “Alice” series is one of stasis and restraint,
but honed on perception. Nicholas Paley notes, “If one isn’t a careful
observer, Black Alice never exists at all . . . . This is a painting that moves
back and forth across objective and conceptual locations: alternately a
work of art and also an instrument that sharpens perception” (1995, 38).
202 K. NEWELL
The work of Rollins and K.O.S. shows adaptation to be a tool for making
works meaningful for diverse audiences. Both the Huckleberry Finn and
Alice pieces use recognizable images, but removed from their contexts and
enlarged to such dimensions they become estranged, distanciated. In adapt-
ing Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Rollins and K.O.S. use Carroll’s
illustration, as opposed to the more canonical image by John Tenniel.
Though the images’ compositions are similar, Carroll’s Alice looks out of
the frame with an expression of sadness and despair, whereas Tenniel’s Alice
looks within the frame, directing her frustration inward. Carroll’s Alice is
completely compressed in her enclosure, whereas Tenniel’s has marginally
more space. In the hands of Rollins and K.O.S., the fantastical bildungsro-
man is revealed for its larger comment on patriarchal and ideological
structures that limit growth and opportunity, often arbitrarily. The artists
involved in creating these paintings identified with Alice’s experience of
being trapped; her alternating invisibility and hyper-visibility resonated with
their own lives growing up in the South Bronx. The group’s adaptations
reflect what Alice means to them specifically. Annette Rosado, one of the
artists who worked on this series, explains that “[t]he Red Alice is a young
girl who is so angry and in pain that she has had it and might jump out of
the painting and fight back. The Red Alice is angry because of all the girls
who are raped and hurt and killed because they are girls” (2009, 75).
Rosado’s comment suggests a transformative experience in creating this
work: Carroll’s Alice, her frustration of being lost and not fitting in,
becomes a channel for real world frustrations. The resulting “Red Alice”
resonates more fully for the K.O.S. artists than does Carroll’s illustration.
That classic works can and must be revitalized to meet contemporary
challenges is a given in K.O.S.’s approach to canonical works. The group
adapts works representative of a range of periods, countries, genres, and
media. For example, they adapted Franz Shubert’s song cycle Winterreise
into a series of seventy panels, each featuring a page of the score affixed to
wood panel and painted over with successively thicker layers of white
paint. The series and its emotional effect is perhaps best described by art
historian David Deitcher: “the score becomes less and less legible as the
viewer moves from left to right. The experience evokes the sensation of
walking through a winter landscape as snow begins to fall until, eventually,
whiteout occurs, an uncanny visual equivalent for Schubert’s settings of
Wilhelm Müller’s twenty-four poems addressing unrequited love and
loneliness” (2008). Such a work might seem to be of little interest to
high school students in the South Bronx. However, Rollins explains the
group’s engagement: “Just the way Shubert took the poems of Mueller and
rewrote them and reintegrated them and changed the whole tone . . . we are
taking Shubert who is dead and we try to give it life by relating it to the
political and emotional and moral issues of everyday life on Longwood
Avenue” (“Art of Survival” 2009). Art historian Susan Cahan comments on
this revitalizing aspect, noting that the group’s paintings “embody an inter-
textual relationship between a canonical cultural object and its pragmatic use
in understanding and re-envisioning the present” (2009, 103). While twen-
tieth century American teenagers may not relate to the lives of a nineteenth
century Austrian composer and German poet, they are likely able to relate to
the works’ emotional intensity and universal themes of sorrow and loss. The
group’s adaptation depicts the slow accumulation of a snow fall—a familiar
sight in a Bronx winter—and, more figuratively, the obliterating “white”
vision of the dominant class, also familiar to the group’s members.
Even a cursory look across adaptation networks shows that the rele-
vance of given work must be maintained through acts of renewal that
revitalize the work for new audiences and contexts. “[R]ather than being
positioned as something fixed and read as an absolute, literature, for
Rollins and K.O.S.,” Paley explains, “is seen to play an active, mediating
role between the past and the present, constantly needing to be recon-
sidered in the light of contemporary conditions and events” (1995, 41).
That adaptation should play a role in revitalization and in audiences’
processes of meaning-making is both necessary and inevitable. Such revi-
talization has been theorized through a number of metaphors, “rewrit-
ing” among them (Hand and Krebs 2007, 3; see also; Clüver 1998, 45
and, 1997, 31). As Thomas Leitch has pointed out, “texts remain alive
only to the extent that they can be rewritten . . . to experience a text in all
its power requires each reader to rewrite it” (2007, 12–13). The link
between adaptation and rewriting is perhaps nowhere more evident than
in the 100 Novels Project, for which Los Angeles-based performance
artist Tim Youd is retyping one hundred novels over ten years. Rather
than recreate the novels in their recognizable form, however, Youd recasts
them as graphic shapes through a process that is equal parts representa-
tion, effacement, and creation. The result is a visual representation of
Youd’s reading process—an artifact of reading.
Youd’s process is fairly simple: he selects a novel of personal interest,
travels to locations significant to the novel or its writer and, using a
typewriter of the same year, make, and model as that used by the writer,
retypes the novel in full on a single sheet of paper backed by a supporting
204 K. NEWELL
sheet that he runs repeatedly through the typewriter. Over the course of
the process, the top sheet becomes completely black with ink and, often,
significantly shredded. The thicker supporting paper bears the imprint of
the many key strikes and ink bleeds. Youd displays the finished piece as a
diptych, with the two sheets of paper juxtaposed, each as individualized
and varied as the novel it represents, thanks to differences in the length of
the works and in the pressure of the typewriters’ key strokes. Some, like
the Raymond Chandler novels he has retyped (The Big Sleep, Farewell My
Lovely, The High Window, The Lady in the Lake), appear as two relatively
symmetrical and contrasting rectangles, one largely white on which type is
visible, and one a perfect black rectangle. Others are more abstract: the
rectangular frame is still evident but also reshaped by the negative space of
the torn, shredded, or eradicated paper (Fig. 7.1 and 7.2).
Youd’s work gets at some fundamental issues of adaptation. His
description of his diptychs, for which “the entire novel is present, yet
completely illegible,” might serve as a banner for the simultaneous forces
of presence and effacement that characterize adaptation (Youd 2016).
Fig. 7.1 Tim Youd, “Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep, 246 pages typed on an
Underwood Noiseless, Los Angeles Art Fair, January 2014”
Fig. 7.2 Tim Youd, “Virginia Woolf ’s To The Lighthouse, 209 pages typed on
an Underwood Portable, Godrevy Lighthouse and Penwith Gallery, St. Ives,
Cornwall, England, April 2015”
Adaptation is defined by the connections it forges to an existent work as

well as by the disconnections. Youd forges temporal and geospatial con-
nections in his approximation of typing time and setting, which seems an
attempt to channel the work’s aura—lost through decades of mechanical
reproduction—and transfer it to this new work (Benjamin 1968). Youd
readily acknowledges the fetishistic aspects of his work but stresses that the
project is not about channeling the author or the work, but, rather, it is
about reading: “It’s a metaphor for deeply reading the book” and “mak-
ing the most that I possibly can of the reading experience” (quoted in
MacCash 2015). Ironically, the product of Youd’s reading process is an
artifact, likewise, of the project’s disconnection from the work being read.
That is, Youd’s process obliterates what is distinct about the work of
literature (e.g., words, phrasing) in bringing to light what is distinct
about his own work. As adaptations, Youd’s diptychs are more than
“repetition with variation”; they are repetition, obliteration, and regen-
eration (Hutcheon 2006, 4). The diptychs are unrecognizable as retyped
206 K. NEWELL
literary works, let alone as specific novels. Audiences only come to recognize
them for what they are by reading the titles, which identify the novel by title
and length, the typewriter, and the performance site and date, as in “Charles
Bukowski’s Women; 304 pages typed on an Olympia SG-1, Los Angeles,
March 2013.” The juxtaposition of diptych and title renders the work both
alien and familiar, particularly as audiences are inclined to try to read some
evidence of the literary work—words, phrases, shapes—in the abstract visual.
Innovations aside, the vision of literature offered in Youd’s and K.O.S.’s
adaptations is not too far afield from others in the works’ adaptation net-
works. Youd’s diptychs, for example, may provide a new visual feature to To
the Lighthouse, but the project’s implicit theses—modernist literature is hard
to read and thus requires careful attention; literary works are products of
place and best understood in that context—is already well established in its
network. The vision of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland or Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn presented by K.O.S. is likewise prepared for by decades of
popular, artistic, and academic commentary. K.O.S.’s Huckleberry Finn
series, exhibited in 2011, continues a conversation on Jim’s characterization
and role in the novel, begun by several earlier adaptations, among them the
1974 United Artists-Readers’ Digest musical adaptation, Huckleberry Finn,
directed by J. Lee Thompson, the 1985 American Playhouse television
adaptation, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, directed by Peter H. Hunt,
the 1993 Disney film adaptation, The Adventures of Huck Finn, directed by
Stephen Sommers, and the several editions of Huckleberry Finn that omit
racist language, such as Alan Gribben’s Mark Twain’s Adventures of Tom
Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn (2011) and John Wallace’s The Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn Adapted (1983). K.O.S.’s series, like many of these
adaptations, foreground Jim’s role. Whereas most adaptations present
Jim’s fear in the form of an external force—the fugitive slave catchers or
duplicitous white people—K.O.S.’s attention to smaller moments—the bag
of money, the snakes—points to the threat that is always with him. In this
light, as Jim’s (rather than Huck’s) story, Huckleberry is reinforced as just as
complicit in Jim’s subjugation as any other character.
Like other artists discussed in this book, Rollins and Youd have both
suggested that adaptation offers a gateway to literature. When asked what
the highest compliment he could receive on his work would be, Youd
commented: “Because literature has grabbed me, it’s so much a part of my
whole approach [that] if somebody sees what I’m doing and goes home
and reads that book that I am typing, that would be pretty cool” (Shah
2013). What Youd’s performance shows, however, is not so much the joys
of reading literature but the joys of making something from it, of adapting
it into something else. Youd’s project is less about glorifying a stable

text than about celebrating the ways in which readers can use texts; it
is in this spirit that parallels between his and K.O.S.’s work become
most evident. Both K.O.S.’s and Youd’s work rewrite, re-present, and
revitalize literary texts, and invite audiences to rethink both the book
as a medium and reading as engagement. K.O.S. makes visible that
which is usually hidden within a book’s covers—namely, the book itself
—and, in so doing, demystifies the work and renders it more accessible
for new readers. Youd’s work obscures that which is signature about a
work, distilling it to its more formal features. Both present books as
material objects open to manipulation in the service of making some-
thing new and innovative. Unlike conventional forms of adaptation for
which a so-called source is adapted into something else, these artists
adapt the physical source text itself, thus drawing attention to the
fluidity in all cultural productions. The physical results of their efforts
are artifacts of reading, as all adaptations really are artifacts of reading
and readings.
A criticism of a networked model of adaptation might be that it seems to
lend itself only to the study of adaptations of canonical works and so-called
“culture-texts” (Rose 1996). However, we see the benefit of this focus even
in works with what we might assume to be undeveloped adaptation net-
works. Take Emma Donoghue’s 2010 novel Room as an example. The
novel’s plot centers on a twenty-six-year old woman, who had been
abducted at the age of nineteen, and the five-year-old son she has raised in
captivity; the two escape their confinement and have to negotiate life on the
outside. The novel was nominated for a number of prizes and honors and
was adapted to the screen by Donoghue for the 2015 film of the same name,
directed by Lenny Abrahamson. We might think that this work demon-
strates a fairly limited adaptation network: one work + one adaptation = two
network nodes. Yet adaptation is, from the beginning, always imbedded in
other discourses.
Reviews of both the novel and the film continually point in multiple
directions, to multiple additional works. These include the infamous Fritzl
case (2008), in which Josef Fritzl held his daughter, Elisabeth, captive for
twenty-four years, during which time she birthed seven children, which
Donoghue cites as a source for her novel. In the years between the
publication of Donoghue’s novel and the release of the film adaptation
another case of abduction and forced imprisonment, the Ariel Castro
case, came to light and is cited by reviewers of the film as a reference
point for audiences (Taylor 2010; Sherlock 2010; Womersley 2010;
208 K. NEWELL
Aftab 2015; Tucker 2015). Additional network nodes might include the
various written and visual documents and adaptations of these cases (e.g.,
court proceedings, the survivors’ memoirs, interviews, and dramatiza-
tions). The novel and film both also include references to other texts,
among them Dora the Explorer and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
Manohla Dargis’s review of the film brings another feature into the net-
work in her opening line: “Like some mother-and-child stories, ‘Room’ is
about two people who have yet to cut the cord” (2015; see also Winik
2010). Indeed, the archetypical trope of Mother and Child has provided
yet another pattern for reading and interpreting these works, one which
Donoghue herself also cites: “Room was inspired by . . . having kids; the
locked room is a metaphor for the claustrophobic, tender bond of parent-
hood” (“Room” 2006). The iconography of “Room” begins to emerge
not solely from it but also from texts that precede and follow it: abduction,
confined space, mother-child bond, escape. These become the reference
points in Room’s adaptation network.
Unlike Dorothy who finds her way home in most iterations of The
Wonderful Wizard of Oz, adaptation networks lack a definitive start and
end point. As Julie Grossman has pointed out, “[a]daptation attempts
to dialectically revisit a source text recognizing that it cannot go
‘home’ again” (2015, 10). She writes that “[a]daptations ask us to
reorient ourselves to our knowledge base and our relationship with
previous texts—our ‘home texts’—and imagine that ‘home’ is a con-
struct that may disguise an extensive series of previous works that build
upon a set of ideas and textual productions” (2015, 21). The adapta-
tion network to which the latest blockbuster film adaptation contri-
butes consists not solely of source texts and previous performance-
based installments of that work but of all iterations of that work across
media. Interpretive models that favor the adaptation of a given work
into several iterations in one mode (e.g., several film adaptations of a
novel) or of a given work into one or two modes (e.g., film and stage
adaptations of a play) can offer only a partial view of the role adaptation
plays in constructing the dominant understanding of particular works.
As I have argued, a networked model of adaptation—one anchored by
the cumulative collection of texts responsible for and generated by a
given work—gives a broader sense of how cultural understanding
comes to be via acts of consensus and corroboration. Adaptation illu-
minates processes by which readers and viewers make meaning from
specific cultural artifacts through strategies of negotiating and filling in
gaps in resonating iconography and, perhaps more interestingly, how

works themselves come to mean through processes of repetition and
variation. In the long view, the usefulness of adaptation is grounded
not in what it tells us about the relationship between one work and
another or even one work and several others but, rather, what it can
illuminate about processes of meaning-making.
REFERENCES
Aftab, Kaleem. “Talking to the Stars of the Opening Film.” Review of Room,
directed by Lenny Abrahamson. The National, December 7, 2015, n.p.
“Art of Survival: The Story of Tim Rollins and K.O.S.” Last updated September
29, 2009. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_KdAO6MqiM.
Benjamin, Walter. Illuminations, edited by Hannah Arendt. New York: Schocken,
1968.
Cahan, Susan. “The Wonder Years.” In Tim Rollins and K.O.S.: A History,
edited by Ian Berry, 101–107. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2009.
Clüver, Claus. “Ekphrasis Reconsidered: On Verbal Representations of Non-
Verbal Texts.” In Interart Poetics: Essays on the Interrelations of the Arts and
Media, edited by Ulla-Britta Lagerroth, Hans Lund, and Erik Hedling, 19–33.
Clüver, Claus. “Quotation, Enargeia, and the Functions of Ekphrasis.” In Pictures
Into Words: Theoretical and Descriptive Approaches to Ekphrasis, edited by
Valerie Robillard and Els Jongeneel, 35–52. Amsterdam: VU University
Press, 1998.
Dargis, Manohla. “Review: ‘Room,’ Mother and Child in 100 Square Feet.”
Review of Room, directed by Lenny Abrahamson. The New York Times,
October 15, 2015. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/16/movies/review-
room-mother-and-child-in-100-square-feet.html?_r=0.
Deitcher, David. “The Other Way.” Daviddeitcher.com, 2008. http://www.
daviddeitcher.com/ARTICLES/10-OtherWay/otherway.html.
Donoghue, Emma. Room. New York: Little Brown, 2010.
Grossman, Julie. Literature, Film, and Their Hideous Progeny. New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2015.
Hand, Richard, and Katja Krebs. “Editorial.” Journal of Adaptation in Film &
Performance 1, no. 1 (2007): 3–4.
Hutcheon, Linda.. A Theory of Adaptation. New York: Routledge, 2006.
Leitch, Thomas. Film Adaptation and Its Discontents: From Gone with the
Wind to The Passion of the Christ. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 2007.
210 K. NEWELL
MacCash, Doug. “Performance Artist Tim Youd Retypes ‘A Confederacy of

Dunces’ at NOMA.” The Times-Picayune, September 29, 2015. http://www.
nola.com/arts/index.ssf/2015/09/tim_youd_typing_novels_new_orl.html.
Paley, Nicholas. Finding Art’s Place: Experiments in Contemporary Education and
Culture. New York: Routledge, 1995.
Romaine, James. “Making History.” In Tim Rollins and K.O.S.: A History,
edited by Ian Berry, 41–49. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2009.
“Room.” Emma Donoghue, 2006. http://www.emmadonoghue.com/books/
novels/room-the-novel.html.
Room. Directed by Lenny Abrahamson. Element Pictures, 2015.
Rosado, Annette. Tim Rollins and K.O.S.: A History, edited by Ian Berry, 75.
Cambridge: MIT Press, 2009.
Rose, Brian. Jekyll and Hyde Adapted: Dramatizations of Cultural Anxiety.
Westport: Greenwood Press, 1996.
Shah, Natasha. “Artist Interview: Tim Youd Fetishizes the Typewriter.”
OCARTBLOG, December 11, 2013. http://www.ocartblog.com/2013/12/
artist-interview-tim-youd/.
Sherlock, Tracy. “Here’s How It Feels to Be Confined Against Your Will.” Review
of Room, by Emma Donoghue. The Vancouver Sun, September 11, 2010: D6.
Taylor, Catherine. “A Captive’s View of Life—and He’s Only Five.” Review of
Room, by Emma Donoghue. Edmonton Journal, September 19, 2010: B3.
“Tim Rollins and K.O.S.: A History.” 2010. Frye Art Museum, July 23, 2016.
http://fryemuseum.org/exhibition/3315/.
Tucker, Reed. “How ‘Room’ Was Inspired by Real-Life Kidnapping Cases.”
Review of Room, directed by Lenny Abrahamson. New York Post, October
16, 2015. http://nypost.com/2015/10/16/how-room-was-inspired-by-
real-life-kidnapping-cases/.
Twain, Mark. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, edited by Thomas Cooley.
New York: Norton Critical Edition, 1999.
Winik, Marion. “Lighthearted Moments Found in Dark Tale.” Review of Room,
by Emma Donoghue. The Calgary Herald, September 26, 2010: B5.
“The Wizard of Oz.” Written by Adam Green and photographed by Annie
Leibovitz. Vogue 195, no. 12 (December 2005): 295–317.
Womersley, Chris. “A Room with A Child’s View.” Review of Room, by Emma
Donoghue. The Age, September 18, 2010: A2, 26.
Youd, Tim. “A Painting is Not a Picture: Thoughts on ‘Meaning’ and My
100 Novels Project.” Lecture, Arnold Hall Auditorium, Savannah College
of Art and Design, Savannah, GA, March 2, 2016.
INDEX
A pop-up books and, 136, 145,

Aaron Blake Company, 17, 102, 148, 156
119, 120 Adrian, Gilbert, 198
See also Literary maps The Adventures of Huck Finn
Abrahamson, Lenny, 198, 207 (1993, Disney), 206
ACUITY’s Storybook Year Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885,
(2010), 141 Webster and Company), 200
Adams, Tim, 150, 157 The Adventures of Huckleberry
Adaptation Finn (1963, Grosset and
and audience, 4, 9 Dunlap), 111
cartography as, 127 Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
definitions of, 1–10, 12–13 (1985, American Playhouse), 206
and dominant vision, 101, 129 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
hinge points (narrative), 9, 39, 46, Adapted (1983, Wallace &
54, 80, 93, 102–103, 112, Sons), 206
149, 168 Adventures of Huckleberry
and intertexuality, 6, 7 Finn—Asleep on the Raft (after
and reiteration, 149, 168, 197 Mark Twain) (2011), 200
as rewriting, 6, 8 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
whole work vs. episodic, 5 from the Book by Mark Twain
Adaptation network (1959, Harris-Intertype),
book sculpture and, 136, 155 116, 117
definitions of, 1–2, 9, 12–13, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn—In
20n2, 26–27 the Cave (after Mark Twain)
digital mapping and, 127, 129 (2011), 200
expansion through novelization, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn—On
26, 54 the Raft (after Mark Twain)
and fan fiction, 55 (2011), 200

K. Newell, Print-based Adaptation Networks, Palgrave Studies in
Adaptation and Visual Culture, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-56712-3
212 INDEX
The Adventures of Kathlyn (1914, Selig Arrangement in Black: Portrait

Polyscope), 28 of F. R. Leyland (1873), 77
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer Arrangement in Black and White:
(1876), 114 The Young American
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1874), 77
(1936, Heritage Press), 114 Ars Magna (1305), 137
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer Art Made from Books: Altered,
(1938, United Artists), 114 Sculpted, Carved Transformed
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (2013, Chronicle), 161
(1946, Grosset and Ashley, Monty, 47, 49
Dunlap), 111 Astronomicum Caesareum
Aiken, Conrad, 121 (1540), 137
Alice (After Lewis Carroll) Atkinson, Frances, 157
(1987), 201 At the Auction of the Ruby Slippers
Alice (Falling) (2013), 159 (1994), 13
Alice: A Mad Tea Party Aykroyd, Dan, 38
(2007), 159
Alice in Pop-up Wonderland
(2003, Orchard), 151, 154 B
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland Baaron, Andrew, 141
(1991, Dell, pop-up), 146 Baetens, Jan, 27, 29, 31–32, 35–37,
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland: 57–58
A Pop-Up Adaptation of Lewis Bakhtin, Mikhail, 185
Carroll’s Original Tale La balance (The Swing)
(2003, Little Simon), 150 (1767), 177
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland: Ball, Robert, 160
A Pop-Up Book (1980, Barrett, Raymond M., 105
Delacorte), 150 Barthes, Roland, 9, 57, 68,
Alice in Wonderland: A Pop-Up 102, 180
Classic (1968, Random Basic Instinct (1992, Signet), 16,
House), 150 25–26
All the King’s Men Basic Instinct (1992, TriStar), 16, 25,
(1946, Harcourt), 122 26, 44, 46
All the King’s Men Baum, L. Frank, 2, 4–7, 10, 12–13,
(1949, Columbia), 122 160, 168, 188, 191n3
Alpers, Svetlana, 68, 176 Beaman, S.G. Hulme, 84, 86
Altered books, 159 The Beat Generation Map of America
See also Book sculpture (1987, Aaron Blake), 123, 124
Andrew, Dudley, 1, 10 Beauty and the Beast: A Pop-Up
Apianus, Petrus, 137 Adaptation of the Classic Tale
Armstrong, Nancy, 154 (2010, Little Simon), 142
INDEX 213
Beeder, Amy, 13, 14, 168–169, 182, Bookano Stories, 140

188, 189, 198 Book sculpture
Garden of Meats (2006), 168, 169, See also Altered
188, 189 books, 159
gossip (2006), 188, 189 Bram Stoker’s Dracula
The Shoes (2006), 13, 198 (1992, Columbia), 58
Being a Literary Map of These United Brendon, Nicholas, 53
States Depicting a Renaissance The Brontë Way (1993, Travel and
No Less Astonishing Than That Leisure, map), 106
of Periclean Athens or Elizabethan Browne, Hablot Knight, 66, 111
London (1942, G.P. Putnam’s Browning, Robert, 175, 176
Sons), 103 Brown, Summer R., 38
Beja, Morris, 1 Bruhn, Siglind, 192n4
Benassi, Stéphane, 37 Bryant, John, 4, 127
Benfield, Karen, 146 Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992, 20th
Benjamin, Walter, 205 Century Fox), 51
Benson, Amber, 51 Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997–2003,
Bernie Wrightson’s Frankenstein WB/UPN), 51
(1983), 63 intertextual references in, 51
Bevington, David, 1 Storyteller Episode, 51
Bierly, Mandi, 44 Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Chosen
The Big Sleep (1939, book), 124 (2003, Pocket Books), 16, 26, 51
Black Alice (After Lewis Carroll) Burstein, Mark, 153
(1989), 201 Busoni, Rafaello, 112
Blackton, J. Stuart, 28
Blackwell, Su, 159, 160
Black Writers for Young America
(1976, District of Columbia C
Council of Teachers Cahan, Susan, 203
of English, map), 104 The Call of the Wild (1903,
Blainderson, 55 Macmillan), 105
Blais, Jacqueline, 157 The Call of the Wild (1962,
Bloom, Harold, 57 Harris-Intertype, map), 131n5
Blue Ribbon Books, 141 Campion, Jane, 57
Blue Ribbon Town Cardwell, Sarah, 1
(1943), 141 Carr, M.J., 2, 50
Bluestone, George, 1 Carroll, Lewis, 136, 148, 149,
Blum, Jonathan, 57 150–151, 154–156, 158,
Bogdanovich, Peter, 78 201, 202
Bond girls, 120 Carter, David A., 142, 147
Bond, James, 120, 122, 125 Cartmell, Deborah, 1
214 INDEX
Cartography Clifford, Stephanie, 141

as adaptation, 101, 102 Clift, Montgomery, 79
and dominant vision, 101, 107–108 Clüver, Claus, 173, 176, 177,
and hierarchicalization 192n8, 203
of space, 108, 118 Clyne, Geraldine, 140
and truth claims, 107 Coar, Lisa, 154
Casey, Warren, 47 Cohan, Steven, 25
Castro, Ariel, 207 Colfer, Chris, 56
The Catcher in the Rye (1951, Little, Collins, Jim, 57
Brown and Company), 105 Common literacy, 16, 38–39, 51,
Catoptrum Microcosmicum 65, 68, 112, 118
(1619), 137 Congdon, Charles, 66
Caufield, Emma, 52 Corrigan, Timothy, 1, 6
Chambers, Dave, 149, 150 The Country of So Red the Rose
Chandler, Raymond, 123, 124, by Stark Young (1934, Scribners
126, 204 and Sons, map), 104
Chaplin, Ben, 79 Crain, Patricia, 65
Charles Bukowski’s Women; Cremorne Gardens No. 2 (1875), 77
304 pages typed Criss, Darren, 56
on an Olympia SG-1, Los Cross, David, 78
Angeles, March 2013, 206 Cryer, Jon, 41, 43
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Culkin, Macaulay, 40
Pop-Up Book (2011, Curtis, Jamie Lee, 40
Penguin), 145, 146 Cutchins, Dennis, 20n3, 94n1
Chlumsky, Anna, 40
A Christmas Carol: A Pop-Up Book
(2010, Little, Brown D
and Company), 142 Dahl, Roald, 145
Chronica Majora, 137 Daisy Miller (1878), 17, 71–72, 170
The Chronicles of Narnia (2007, Daisy Miller (1969, Heritage Press),
HarperCollins, pop-up), 142 74–76
Cinderella (Dean & Son), 139 Daisy Miller (1974, Paramount), 74
Cinderella (Hallmark Children’s Daisy Miller (1974, Westvaco), 74,
Edition), 142 77, 79
Cinderella: A Pop-Up Fairy Tale Daisy Miller & An International
(2005, Little Simon), 142 Episode (1892, Harper &
Cinema of attractions, 136, 150–151 Brothers), 73
Cinema of narrative integration, Dambuyant & Guignard
136, 155 (publisher), 146
Cinéromans, 29 Danahay, Martin, 92, 93
Clemente, Francesco and Alba, 12 Dargis, Manohla, 208
INDEX 215
Dark Gray Alice (After Lewis Carroll) Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
(1990), 201 (1920, Paramount/Artcraft), 86
Davidson, Michael, 176 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Davis, Paul, 20n1 (1931, Paramount), 84
Days in Catland with Louis Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Wain (1895, Tuck & Sons), (1941, MGM), 86
139, 146 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: A Graphic
DC Superheroes: The Ultimate Pop-Up Novel (2002, NBM), 90
Book (2010, Little, Brown and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: A Graphic
Company), 143 Novel (2009, Sterling), 86
Dean & Son, 139, 141 Dr. Lenera, 25
Scenic Books, 139, 141 Du Maurier, George, 69, 93, 94n3
De Certeau, Michel, 126 Dutton (publisher), 139
De Christoforo, Ron, 47–50 Dwiggins, W.A., 86–88
Deep Throat (1972, Dyer, Richard, 28
Bryanston), 28 Dzundza, George, 44
De Havilland, Olivia, 79
Deitcher, David, 202
Denchfield, Nick, 149 E
Denner, Charles, 29 Eichenberg, Fritz, 160
Denslow, William Wallace, 2–4, Ekphrasis, 16, 18–19
7, 188 definitions of, 169–174
Dent, J.M. (publisher), 105 dyadic conceptions of, 170, 172,
Derrida, Jacques, 32 174, 176
De Sacrobosco, Johannes, 137 enargeia and, 184
De Sena, Jorge, 177 gender and, 175
De sphaera mundi medial binaries, 173
(c. 1230), 137 and narrative pause, 170, 175
Dickens, Charles, 66, 112 and narrative release, 170, 175
Donoghue, Emma, 198, 207–208 and novelization, 49
Dora the Explorer, 208 and the Other, 187
Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz and representation, 172–174,
(1908, Reilly & Britton), 183, 185
160, 191n1 Elements of Pop Up (1999,
Douglas, Michael, 25 Little Simon), 161
Down the Rabbit Hole Eliot, George, 181
(2008), 159 Eliot, T.S., 57
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Elleström, Lars, 143–144, 170
(1887, play), 84 Elliott, Kamilla, 66, 68, 94n2
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Ellis, John, 104
(1912, Thanhouser), 86 Emerald City (2017, NBC), 2
216 INDEX
The Emerald City of Oz (1910, Reilly Fritzl, Josef, 207

and Britton), 169 Frozen (2013, Disney Press), 39
Encyclopedia Prehistorica (2005, Fruit of the Loom, 141
Candlewick), 143 Fry, Ben, 127
The Ernest Hemingway Adventure Fuller, Kathryn H., 28
Map of the World (1986, Aaron Fuller, S. and J. (publisher), 138, 145
Blake), 99, 100, 123 See also Paper doll books
Eshbaugh, Ted, 2
The Exciting Adventures of Finnie
the Fiddler (1942, Cupples & G
Leon), 140 Game of Thrones: A Pop-Up Guide
The Exploits of Elaine (1914, to Westeros (2014, Insight
Pathé), 28 Editions), 143, 148
Garden of Meats
and Patchwork Girl of Oz, 191n3
F poem, 169, 188 (see also Beeder,
The Fairylogue and Radio-Plays Amy)
(1908, Selig Polyscope), 2 Garland, Judy, 3, 198
Fandom, 53 Gellar, Sarah Michelle, 51
Fan fiction, 54–56 General Education in a Free Society:
Farman, Jason, 129 Report of the Harvard
Faulkner, William, 122, 128 Committee, 109
Fenton, William, 127–128 See also Harvard Redbook
Fermaud, Michel, 29 Geraghty, Christine, 8
Fifty Shades of Grey (2011, Germanà, Monica, 83, 84, 86, 92
Vintage), 56 GI Bill, 109
Finney, Albert, 79 See also Servicemen’s Readjustment
Fischer, Barbara, 171, 173 Act of 1944
Fisher, Judith, 66 Gilda (1946, Columbia), 30
Fish, Stanley, 8, 187 Gilmour, H.B., 40, 41, 43
Fleming, Victor, 86 Giraud, S. Louis, 140
Fly-Away Pictures: A Book The Girl and Her Trust (1912), 30
of Revolving Scenes The Girl and Her Trust (1912,
(c. 1890), 139 Biograph), 30
The Folio Society, 111 Glee (2009–2015 Fox), 55–56
on common literacy, 111 Goetz, Ruth and Augustus, 79
Foster, Alan Dean, 35, 36 Gone With the Wind (1936,
Foster, Bruce, 135, 141, 142, 144 Macmillan), 122
Fragonard, Jean-Honoré, 177 Goodman, Nelson, 67
Fragonard’s Swing (1961), 177 Graphic novels
Frankenstein (1818), 63–65, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
70, 71 (2002, NBM), 90
INDEX 217
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: A Graphic Harris-Seybold/Harris-Intertype

Novel (2009, Sterling), 86 Company, 17, 102, 110, 119,
Gris Grimly’s Frankenstein (2013, 126, 130n1
Balzer + Bray), 63 See also Literary maps; Map-of-A-
Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Book calendars
Mr. Hyde (2008, Waverley Harry Potter: A Pop-Up Book Based
Books), 82–84 on the Film Phenomenon (2010,
Grease (1978, Paramount), 47 Insight Editions), San
Grease (1978, Pocket Books), 47 Rafael), 135, 145, 148
Greenberg, Gary, 145 The Harvard Redbook, 109, 118
Greenberg, Milton, 109 See also General Education in a Free
Gribben, Alan, 206 Society: Report of the Harvard
Griffith, D. W., 30 Committee
Grimes, William, 140 Hearn, Michael Patrick, 191n1
Grimly, Gris, 63 Hearst International (publisher), 28
Gris Grimly’s Frankenstein Heffernan, James, 31, 170, 172–173,
(2013, Balzer + Bray), 63 175, 176, 183
Grosset and Dunlap (publisher) The Heiress (1947, play), 79
illustrated editions, 111, 112 The Heiress (1949, Paramount), 79
The Ladies’ World, 28 Heller, Steven, 150, 151
novelization, 27 Henderson, Lucius J., 84
Grossman, Julie, 208 Henry, E. Everett, 111, 112, 200
Gunning, Tom, 18, 136, 150, 155 Here Took Place the Adventures
cinema of attractions, 136, 150 of Tom Sawyer from the Book
By Mark Twain (1953,
Harris-Seybold), 113
H The Heritage Press (publisher), 111
Hagood, Taylor, 128 Hermes, Patricia, 40, 42
Hagstrum, Jean, 171 Hess, Paul, 149
Haining, Peter, 137–140, 146 The History of Little Fanny
Hallmark Children’s (1810), 138
Editions, 142 See also Paper doll books
Hall, Stuart, 8 Hitchcock, Alfred, 57
Hand, Richard, 6–8, 202 Hodnett, Edward, 66
Hannigan, Alyson, 51 Hoerth, Susan, 160
Hardie, Philip, 184 Holder, Nancy, 35, 37, 51
Harlequinades, 137–138 Holland, Agnieska, 79
See also Sayer, Robert Hollander, John, 173, 175, 177
Harlequin’s Invasion: A New Holmberg, Claes-Göran, 37
Pantomime (1770, Sayer), 138 Holzman, Winnie, 2
Harley, J.B., 107, 108 Hopkins, Martha, 104, 106, 111,
Harrison, Stephanie, 1 112, 120, 124, 127, 131n5
218 INDEX
Horace, 66 Ingpen, Robert, 3

ut pictura poesis, 66 Intermediality, 15, 143–144, 190
Horne, Philip, 72 and ekphrasis, 169, 170, 190
Huckleberry Finn (1960, and novelization, 31
MGM), 111 and pop-up books, 142–143
Huckleberry Finn (1974, United International Association of Media
Artists), 206 Tie-In Writers, 58n1
Hughes, John, 40, 55, 56 Internationaler Zirkus (c. 1888,
Hunt, Waldo, 140 H. Grevel & Co.), 140
Hutcheon, Linda, 1, 3–6, 8–10, 29, Ironhorse_iv (Internet Movie
34, 37–39, 47, 55, 77, 102, Database), 25
120, 205 Iser, Wolfgang, 8
and repetition with variation, 8, 10, Ivanhoe (1951, Heritage Press), 111
55, 77, 102, 205 Ivanhoe (1952, MGM), 111
I J
The Ian Fleming Thriller Map Jack and the Beanstalk (Hallmark
(1987, Aaron Blake), 120–123 Children’s Edition), 142
Iconography, 2, 3, 9, 10, 14, 15, Jack the Giant Killer (1932, Blue
17, 19, 53, 54, 56, 168, 188, Ribbon Books), 142
199, 208 Jack Pumpkinhead of Oz (1929,
adaptation and, 9, 10 Reilly & Lee), 160
audience recognition of, 12, 199 Jacobs, Frank, 116
illustration and, 64 Jacobs, Jim, 47
ruby slippers, 2, 10, 12, 13, 199 Jacobs, Marc, 12, 199
silver shoes, 4, 10 James, E.L., 56
use in mapping, 101 James, Henry, 17, 65, 181
Illustration, 28 on Daisy Miller, 71
and adaptation network, 64, 93–94 on illustration, 65, 71, 93
as clarification of prose, 17, 64, 65, The Jane Austen Map of England
78, 79, 94 (1987, Aaron Blake), 104,
coding in, 65, 68–70, 74 106, 119
collaborating with prose, 66 Jane Eyre (1847), 160
as commentary, 66, 72 Jenkins, Henry, 54–55
in competition with prose, 67 Johnbernardbooks (Internet Movie
as gateway, 64, 70, 78, 94, 101 Database), 25
and iconography, 64 The John Steinbeck Map of America
as interpretation, 63–65, 79 (1986, Aaron Blake), 104, 119,
as version, 64 125
See also Reading The Jolly Jump-ups, 140
INDEX 219
Juddery, Mark, 57 Lattuca, Lisa R., 109

The Jungle Book: A Pop-up Adventure Leedham, Robert, 34
(2006, Little Simon), 142 Leibovitz, Annie, 10, 198, 199
Leigh, Jennifer Jason, 79
Leitch, Thomas, 1, 5, 7,
K 152, 203
Keats, John, 175 Lenk, Tom, 51
The Kellogg’s Funny Jungleland Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim, 66,
Moving Pictures (1909), 141 172, 174
Kemble, E.W., 200 Laocoön: An Essay Upon the Limits
Kennedy, Cam, 86 of Painting and Poetry, 66, 172
Kent, Rockwell, 111 L’Homme qui aimait les femmes
Kerry (Goodreads), 44 (1977, United Artists), 29
Kids of Survival, 19, 197, 199 Licensed fiction, 34
See also Rollins, Tim See also Novelization
King, Charles, 92, 95n6 Linton, Eliza Lynn, 71
King, Stephen, 53, 63–65, 68, A Literary and Historical Atlas
70, 71 of Africa and Australasia
Klaffke, Pamela, 151 (1913, J.M. Dent), 105
Klimowski, Andrzej, 86 A Literary and Historical Atlas
Knightley, Keira, 11, 12, of Europe (1914, J.M. Dent), 105
14, 198 A Literary and Historical Atlas
Kobel, Peter, 34 of North & South America
Kooistra, Lorraine Janzen, 70 (1911, J.M. Dent), 105
Korby, Sol, 111 Literary History of New York 1650–1865
Koszarski, Richard, 27–28, 30 (1959, Frank E. Richards,
Kramsky, Jerry, 90 map), 103
Krebs, Katja, 6–8, 203 The Literary Map of the American
Krieger, Murray, 170–172, South (1988, Aaron Blake), 103,
174–175, 182 121–123
Kubašta, Vojtěch, 140 The Literary Map of England (1899,
Kuzui, Fran Rubel, 51 Ginn & Company), 103
The Literary Map of Latin America
(1988, Aaron Blake), 119
L The Literary Map of Los Angeles
The Ladies’ World, 28 (1987, Aaron Blake), 123
Lamb, Lynton, 80, 82, 93 The Literary Map of New Jersey
Land of Oz (resort), 2, 3 (1927, Moorestown Woman’s
Larson, Randall D., 37 Club), 103
The Last of the Mohicans The Literary Map of Paris (1988,
(1963, map), 131n5 Aaron Blake), 103, 123, 124
220 INDEX
The Literary Map of Southern Madame Tussaud, 3, 10

Appalachia (1982, Radford Madej, Krystina, 138–139
University), 103 Maguire, Gregory, 2, 6, 188, 190
Literary mapping, 103, 106 Maguire, Molly, 119, 122, 123–124
Literary maps, 17 Mahlknecht, Johannes, 31, 32, 38, 58
and audience, 104, 128 Male, Alan, 66
definition of, 103–106 Mamoulian, Rouben, 84
and dominant vision, 101–102, Mansfield, Richard, 84, 92
126, 129 Map-of-A-Book calendars, 102, 110
functionality of, 102 Map of the London of Dickens
and hinge points, 101 (1935, Loomis), 104
legend and, 128 Mapping
and middle class readership, 103, digital mapping, 18, 103, 127–129;
109, 140 Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s
and reading, 113, 114, 122 Sunnydale, 128; The Digital
and tourism, 105–106 Yoknapatawpha Project, 128;
and user interaction, 103–108, Google Lit Trips, 128; Origin
119–120, 128–129 of the Species: The Preservation
See also Cartography; Mapping; of Favoured Traces, 127; The
Harris-Seybold /Harris- Simpsons’ Springfield, 128;
Intertype Company; Aaron Blake Walking Ulysses, 128
Company See also Cartography; Literary maps;
Literary Maps for Young Adult Aaron Blake Company; and
Literature (1995, Libraries Harris-Seybold /Harris-
Unlimited), 105 Intertype Company
Literature of attractions, 18, 136, Mark Twain’s Adventures of Tom
151, 155, 159–160, 161n3 Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn
Literature of the Pacific Northwest (2011, NewSouth), 200
(1950, H.A. Thompson, Mars Company, 141
map), 103 Marshall, Ray, 148
Little Red Riding Hood, 139, 146 Marsters, James, 52
Little Red Riding Hood (2001, Marvel Comics, 63
Little Simon, pop-up), 139 The Marvelous Land of Oz (1904,
Llull, Ramon, 137 Reilly & Britton), 2
London (1940, Wolff, map), 104 Masion de Poupeé (c. 1900), 146
Louboutin, Christian, 12, 199 Mattotti, Lorenzo, 90
McCarthy, Andrew, 41
McCloud, Scott, 183
M McCormack, Peggy, 78
MacCabe, Colin, 4 McFarlane, Brian, 1, 9–10, 78, 149
MacCash, Doug, 205 McKay, Donald, 111
Machefert, Stella, 30 McLean, Adrienne L., 28, 54
INDEX 221
McVickar, Harry W., 182 Monmonier, Mark, 107

Daisy Miller & An International Montalbano, Margaret, 58
Episode (1892, Harper & Montanaro, Ann, 136–142
Brothers), 73 Moore, Richard S., 179–181, 192n7
Society: The Greatest Show On Earth Moretti, Franco, 106–108, 112
(1892, Harper & Brothers), 72 Moser, Barry, 3, 88–91
Meggendorfer, Lothar, 140 Motion Picture Classic, 28
Meikle, Kyle, 20n2 Motion Picture Production Code, 29
Melville, Herman, 114–116, 176–180 The Motion Picture Story Magazine, 28
Men in Black: A Novel (1997, Moveable books
Bantam), 35 history of, 143–148
The Merry Adventures of Robin See also Pop-up books
Hood (1952, Grosset and Movie Digest, 28
Dunlap), 111 Moving Picture Stories, 28
Meyers, Jeffrey, 180 Moyers, William, 111
Meyers, Stephenie, 56 Muehrcke, Phillip and Juliana, 107
Middle Earth (1966, Bruin, map), 104 Müller, Wilhelm, 202
Middlemarch (1871, William Multimodality, 64
Blackwood and Sons), 181 The Muppets’ Wizard of Oz
Midnight in the Garden of Good and (2005, Fox), 2, 6, 14
Evil (1994, Random House), 126 Murray, Simone, 131n6
Miller, J. Hillis, 67, 70, 88, 175–176 Musser, Charles, 4, 7
Miss Piggy, 186 My Girl (1991, Columbia), 40–46
Mitchell, Julian, 2 My Girl (1991, Pocket Books), 40–46
Mitchell, Margaret, 122 My Girl (song), 41
Mitchell, W.J.T., 66–68, 70, My Last Duchess (1842), 173, 175
94n2, 143, 168, 172, 176,
186–187, 190
Mitford, Mary, 106 N
Moby-Dick (1851, Harper & Nagib, Lúcia, 29
Brothers), 114, 118, 168, Nebel, Gustave, 74
176, 178, 182 Neill, John Rea, 2–3, 7, 160, 191n3
Moby-Dick (1950, Modern Nelson, Ann, 40
Library), 111 Nescafé France, 141
Moby Dick (1956, Warner Bros.), 111 The New Adventures of Tarzan
The Modern Library (publisher), 111 “Pop-up” (1935), 142
Modern Mississippi Writers: A Map Newell, Kate, 6, 94n1
of Literary Mississippi Newton-John, Olivia, 47
(1992, University Press Nifong, Alexander, 56
of Mississippi), 103 Nister, Ernest, 139
Modern Painters (1848), 180 Nodelman, Perry, 65–66, 68
Modern Promotions, 149 Novelization, 15
222 INDEX
Novelization (cont.) On the Medusa of Leonardo Da Vinci,

and adaptation, 36 in the Florentine Gallery
and alternate endings, 26–27 (1819), 175, 176
and audience, 27–30, 36–37 Opie, Iona and Peter, 137
character development in, 40–46 Origin of the Species: The Preservation
definitions of, 27 of Favoured Traces, 129
and ekphrasis, 31, 49 Osborne, Richard, 25
and emergent readers, 39 Ozma of Oz (1907, Reilly &
and fan fiction, 54–56 Britton), 2
of film serials, 28 Oz the Great and Powerful
history of, 27–30 (2013, Disney), 2
and intermediality, 31–33
and intertextuality, 51–53
junior novelizations, 38 P
in magazine serials, 27–30 Paget, Sidney, 125
marginalization of, 33–36 The Paignion (c. 1830, Westley), 146
marketing of (book covers), 28–30, Paley, Nicholas, 201, 203
33–34 Paper Blossoms: A Book of Beautiful
mass market, 30 Bouquets for the Table
and musicals, 47–50 (2010), 148
prenovelization, 58 Paper Blossoms, Butterflies & Birds: A
protonovelizations, 27, 31 Book of Beautiful Bouquets for the
in the studio era, 28 Table (2014), 148
surrealism and, 29 Paper doll books, 138
thematic development in, 40–46 Raphael Tuck’s Fairy Tale Series of
and variation, 30 Dressing Dolls, 146
S. and J. Fuller Paper Doll
Books, 138, 146
O Paris, Matthew, 137
Oates, Joyce Carol, 90 The Patchwork Girl of Oz (1913, Reilly
Obstetrics Tables: Comprising Graphic & Britton), 2, 169
Illustrations, With Descriptions Pathé, 35–36
and Practical Remarks, Peeters, Heidi, 33, 64
Exhibiting on Dissected Plates The Perils of Pauline (1914,
Many Important Subjects in Eclectic), 28
Midwifery (1848, Thomas, Perry, Steve, 35
Cowperthwait & Co.), 137 Persin, Margaret H., 170, 173, 187
O’Connor, Flannery, 121 Peter Pan: A Pop-up Adaptation
Ode on a Grecian Urn of J.M. Barrie’s Original Tale
(1820), 175 (2008, Little Simon), 142, 145
Odom, Mel, 38 Peter Pan’s Never Land (1953, Walt
Old Joe, 25 Disney, map), 106
INDEX 223
Phillips, Trish, 136–142 The Practical Step-by-Step Guide to

Photoplay, 28 Making Pop-Ups & Novelty
The Piano (1993, Miramax), 57 Cards: A Masterclass in the Art
Piatti, Barbara, 107, 108, 128 of Paper Engineering (2001,
The Pickwick Papers (1837), 66 Lorenz), 161
Pier 1 Imports, 141 Pretty in Pink (1986, Paramount), 16,
Pinocchio (Random House), 142 39–43, 55–56
The Pocket Paper Engineer (2005, Pretty in Pink (1986, Bantam), 16,
Popular Kinetics), 161 39–43
Polseno, Jo, 111 Pretty in Plaid, 55–56
The Pop-Up Book (1994, Pride & Prejudice (2005, Focus), 5
Holt), 161 Pride and Prejudice (1813,
The Pop-up Book of Gnomes (1979, T. Egerton), 5, 126, 160
Harry N. Abrams), 147 The Prince and the Pauper (1881,
The Pop-Up Book of Nightmares James R. Osgood & Co.), 122
(2001, St. Martin’s Press), 145 The Princess and the Pea (2002,
A Pop-Up Book of Nursery Rhymes Little Simon, pop-up), 142
(2009, Little Simon), 142 Psotka, Joseph, 145
The Pop-Up Book of Phobias Psycho (1960, Paramount), 57
(1999, HarperCollins), 145 Punch Magazine, 179
Pop-up books, 18 Puss in Boots (1934, Blue Ribbon
abridgement in, 151, 157 Books), 142
adaptation and, 136, 141–142
advertising and, 141
educational uses of, 137
Q
and hinge points, 148–149,
Queen Mab, or The Tricks of Harlequin
194–95, 200–201, 204
(1771, Sayer), 138
interactivity in, 135, 145, 161
paper engineering in, 143
sound in, 147–148
See also Moveable books R
Pop-up Classics, 142 Rabinowitz, Peter, 8
Pop-up of narrative Rajewsky, Irina O., 169–170, 190,
integration, 18, 136 192n5
Portrait of Henry James Random House (publisher), 142
(1913), 182 Rathbone, Basil, 127
Portrait of Innocent X (1650), Raw, Lawrence, 20n3
181–182 Rawlings, Marjorie Kinnan, 124
Portrait of a Lady (1920), 175 The Raymond Chandler Mystery
Portraits of Literary Michigan Map of Los Angeles (1986,
(1994, Library of Michigan, Aaron Blake), 121, 126
map), 103 Reading, 15, 19, 199
224 INDEX
Reading (cont.) Rouner, Jef, 34

and codes, 68–70 The Royal Punch and Judy (1859,
emergent readers, 39, 141 Dean & Son), 139
and interpretive communities, 8 Rubess, Balvis, 145
and making meaning, 168, 182 Rubin, Ellen G.K., 137, 140
through intertexts, 6–8, 79, 168, Ruby slippers, see Iconography
177, 203 Ruffin, Ellen, 138
words vs. images, 65–71 Rushdie, Salman, 13–14
Red Alice II (After Lewis Carroll) Ruskin, John, 180
(1990), 201, 202 Ryman, Geoff, 2
The Red Badge of Courage
(1951, MGM), 112
The Red Badge of Courage S
(1951, Modern Library), 111 Saberhagen, Fred, 58
The Red Badge of Courage Sabuda, Robert, 142, 145,
(1964, Folio Society), 111 146, 149–150, 155–159,
Red Riding Hood, 140 161n2
Reinhart, Matthew, 142–143, Sager Eidt, Laura, 173, 176,
145, 147 192n4, 192n6
Remmelin, Johan, 137 Saintsbury, George, 171–172
Return to 0z (1985, Disney), 2 Sanders, Julie, 1, 4
Riba, Paul, 131n5 Sargent, John Singer, 74
Richardson, Robert, 1 Sayer, Robert, 138
Riley, Ken, 131n5 Schejbal, Danusia, 86
Ringwald, Molly, 41 Schiffman, Suzanne, 29
Rischin, Abigail, 177–178, 181 Schwartz, Stephen, 2
Robertson, John S., 84 Scott, Grant F., 170–171, 175
Robillard, Valerie, 173 The Scribe Awards, 58n1
Robin Hood (Random House), 142 Seibold, J. Otto, 149, 151–155,
Robinson Crusoe (1964, map), 131n5 158–159
Robinson, Nicola, 149 The Servicemen’s Readjustment
Rockwell, Norman, 114 Act of 1944, 111
Rollins, Tim and K.O.S., 19, 197, See also GI Bill
199–206 Shelley, Mary, 63–64, 70–71
See also Kids of Survival Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 175, 176
Romaine, James, 199 The Sherlock Holmes Mystery
Romantic Movie Stories, 28 Map (1987, Aaron Blake), 127
Room (2010, book), 198, 207 Shubert, Franz, 202
Room (2015, film), 198, 207 Sieben, Michael, 3
Rosado, Annette, 202 Siebold, J., 137
Rose, Brian, 2, 198, 207 Silverman, Aaron, 121, 125
and culture text, 2, 20n1, 198, 207 Silver shoes, see Iconography
INDEX 225
The Simpsons, 130 description of Hyde, 82–83

Singer, Ben, 36 Hyde and sexual violence, 90–93
Sisters in Crime: Solving Mysteries Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll
Coast-to-Coast (1991, Sisters and Mr. Hyde (1928,
in Crime, map), 104 Macmillan), 84
Skal, David J., 1 Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll
Skilton, David, 70 and Mr. Hyde (1929, Random
Slash fiction, 54 House), 87
Sloan, Will, 38 Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll
Smith, Kiki, 12 and Mr. Hyde (1930, Bodley
Smith, Lawrence Beall, 80, 111 Head), 85
Snodgrass, Mary Ellen, 105 Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll
Snow Storm—Steam-Boat off a and Mr. Hyde (1952, Heritage
Harbour's Mouth (1842), 179 Press), 86
Snow White (Hallmark Children’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll
Edition), 142 and Mr. Hyde (1990, University
Sonstegard, Adam, 94n4, 182 of Nebraska Press), 88–91
Spader, James, 43 Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll
The Speaking Picture Book and Mr. Hyde (2008, Waverley
(c. 1893, Theodore Brand), 147 Books), 82–84
Spitzer, Leo, 171–172 Stratford-upon-Avon (1960, Pictorial
Spratt, George, 137 Maps Ltd., map), 106
Spy Kids (2001, Miramax Books Strong, Danny, 51
for Kids), 39 Sullivan, Edmund J., 84
Stallman, Robert Wooster, 111 Suskind, Alex, 34
Stam, Robert, 1, 6 Sussan, Rene Ben, 112
Stanton, Harry Dean, 41 Sutter, James L., 34
Stark, Joan S., 109 Swanson, Kristy, 51
Star Wars: A Galactic Pop-Up Swartz, Mark Evan, 13
Adventure (2012, Orchard), Sweeney, David, 34, 57
147–148
Star Wars: A Pop-up Guide to the
Galaxy (2007, Orchard), 143 T
Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire Tabulae Anatomicae Sex (1530), 137
(1996, Bantam), 35 Tacey (Goodreads), 44
Steig, Michael, 66 The Tale of Ivanhoe from the Novel
Stevenson, Robert Louis, 17, 65, 82 by Sir Walter Scott (1958,
Stone, Sharon, 44 Harris-Intertype), 110
Stotch, 145 A Tale of Two Cities (1859,
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll book), 112
and Mr. Hyde (1886, Longmans, A Tale of Two Cities (1935,
Green & Co.), 17, 65, 82 MGM), 112
226 INDEX
A Tale of Two Cities (1938, Heritage Truffaut, François, 29

Press), 112 Tucci, Michael, 47
A Tale of Two Cities (1948, Grosset Tuck, Raphael, 139, 146
and Dunlap), 112 Turner, J.M.W., 179–180, 182
A Tale of Two Cities (1950, Modern Twain, Mark, 113, 122
Library), 111 Twilight (2004–2008, Little, Brown
Tale of Two Cities (1958, Rank), 111 and Company), 56
A Tale of Two Cities from the Book
by Charles Dickens (1957,
Harris-Seybold), 112
V
Taxi Driver (1976, Columbia), 30
Van Parys, Thomas, 27–31, 37
Taylor, Maria, 149
and protonovelizations, 27, 31
Television novelizations, 30
Veblen, Thorstein, 155
Tenniel, John, 150, 156–157,
Velázquez, Diego, 181–182
159–160, 202
Venuti, Lawrence, 4, 7
Thackeray, William Makepeace, 180
Veslaius, Andreas, 137
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Veteran’s Adjustment Act, 109
(1937, J.B. Lippincott), 105
Vincent, Howard P., 192n7
Thomas, Julia, 70
The Virginian (1951, Heritage
Thompson, Ruth Plumly, 2, 160
Press), 111
Thorne, Jenny, 149, 150
The Virginian (1962, Revue), 111
Through the Looking-Glass,
The Virginian (1963, Grosset
and What Alice Found There
and Dunlap), 111
(1871, Macmillan), 160
Vogue, 10–12, 14
Thumbelina (Hallmark Children’s
Voyage of the Pequod from the Book
Edition), 142
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
Tietjens, Paul, 2
(1956, Harris-Seybold),
Tin Man (2007, Sci Fi), 2
114–115, 117, 119
Tintner, Adeline R., 182
Titmarsh, Samuel, 180
Tolkien, J.R.R., 104
To the Lighthouse (1927, W
Hogarth), 206 Wagner, Peter, 173
Tracey (Amazon), 38 Walker, Kara, 12
Transformers: The Ultimate Pop-Up Wallace, John, 206
Universe (2013, LB Kids), 143 Wallace, Robert K., 179, 180
Travolta, John, 47 Warren, Robert Penn, 122
Treasury Collection, 149 Was (1992, Harper Collins), 2
Tripplehorn, Jeanne, 25 Washington Square (1880, Harper
Troost, Linda, 158 and Brothers), 17, 65, 69, 79
INDEX 227
Washington Square (1963, Folio The Wizard of Oz (1933,

Society), 81 Film Laboratories
Washington Square (1971, Heritage of Canada), 2, 13
Press), 80 The Wizard of Oz (1939, MGM), 2, 3,
Washington Square (1997, 10, 188, 198
Alchemy), 79 as inspiration for games, 3
Wehr, Julian, 140 as inspiration for theme
Welsh, James, 20n3 attraction, 3
Westley, F.C., 146 The Wizard of Oz (1993,
Westvaco (publisher), 74, 79 Scholastic), 2, 50
Whalers(1845), 179 The Wizard of Oz (2005, Vogue), 10,
What Happened to Mary (1912–13, 12, 14, 199
Edison), 28 The Wizard of Oz: A Classic Story
Whedon, Joss, 51 Pop-Up Book with Sounds
Whelehan, Imelda, 20n3 (2010, Silver Dolphin), 147
Whistler, James McNeill, 74, 77 Wizard of Oz: Giant Pop-Up
White Alice (After Lewis Carroll) Book (1983, Modern
(1984–1987), 201 Promotions), 149
White Alice III (After Lewis Carroll) The Wizard of Oz: A Pop-up
(1992), 201 Classic (1968, Random
White Noise: A Pop-up Book for House), 142, 161n2
Children of All Ages (2009, The Wizard of Oz with
Little Simon), 147 Three-Dimensional Pop-Up
Who Censored Roger Rabbit? (1981, Scenes (2012, Insight
St. Martin’s), 19, 171, 176, Kids), 149
183–188 The Wiz Live! (2015, NBC), 2
Wicked (2003, musical), 2, 189 Wolf, Gary, 19, 171, 182
Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wolnick, Jim, 127
Wicked Witch of the West The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
(1995, HarperCollins), 2, 6, 188 (1900, George M. Hill
Williams, True, 114 Company), 4, 146,
Williams, William Carlos, 175 191n1, 208
Wilson, Edward A., 84, 111 sources for, 4
Winik, Marion, 208 The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
Winterreise (1828, song cycle), 202 (1910, Selig Polyscope), 2, 12
Witte, Stephen P., 70 The Wonderful Wizard of Oz: A
The Wiz (1978, Universal), 2, 6, 10 Commemorative Pop-Up
The Wizard of Oz (1902, musical), 2, 13 (2000, Little Simon), 144
The Wizard of Oz (1925, Wood, Denis, 101, 107, 108
Chadwick), 2, 13 Woolf, Virginia, 205
228 INDEX
Wrightson, Bernie, 63–65, The Yearling (1938, Charles

68, 70–71 Scribner’s Sons), 124
The Wrigley Zoo, 140 The Yearling (1946, MGM), 124
Wyler, William, 79 Youd, Tim, 19, 197, 203–207
Y Z
Yacobi, Tamar, 173, 177, 192n8 Zwerger, Lisbeth, 3

Expanding Adaptation Networks From Illustration To Novelization by Kate Newell (Auth.)

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Expanding Adaptation Networks From Illustration To Novelization by Kate Newell (Auth.)

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Palgrave Studies in Adaptation

and Visual Culture

More information about this series at

Palgrave Studies in Adaptation and Visual Culture

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017

Cover illustration: MirageC/ Getty Images

Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature

Many colleagues, friends, and family members have supported this

1 Introduction: Not in Kansas Anymore: Adaptation

2 “It Wasn’t Like That in the Movie”: Novelization

3 Imagining the Unimaginable: Illustration as Gateway 63

4 Literary Maps and the Creation of a Legend 99

5 Pop-up Books: Spectacle and Story 135

6 “All Text is Lost”: Ekphrastic Reading 167

7 Conclusion: Like an Open Book 197

Fig. 1.1 “Troubles Melt Like Lemon Drops,” photographed

Introduction: Not in Kansas Anymore:

Writing about adaptation poses several problems. Most pressingly, what is

© The Author(s) 2017 1

for and generated by a given work), as the speciﬁc deﬁnition determines

by contemporary illustrators in a range of styles all quite distinct from that of

adaptation. John Bryant’s deﬁnition, for example, synthesizes Hutcheon’s:

Qualiﬁers such as “extended” and “sustained” seem reasonable in the short

performance-focused and interactive iterations of Oz, and also the inﬂuence

Such processes, interesting in the comparison of two adaptations, become

translated into another work’s form or medium (Andrew 1984; McFarlane

iconic through repetition, appearing as they do in every image of Dorothy

Fig. 1.1 “Troubles Melt Like Lemon Drops,” photographed by Annie

“Home” has become such a scattered, damaged, various concept in our

promised to take us home, but are metaphors of homeliness comprehensible

…more powerful than the golden cap and Glinda’s kiss

travels with a companion. It is through the reinforcement of speciﬁc

inspiring a reluctant reader or critical thinker than the experience of a

Chapter Three also addresses adaptation’s ability to enlarge readers’

of word/image binaries that associate particular characteristics of the writ-

———. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Illustrated by W.W. Denslow. Chicago:

Richardson, Robert. Literature and Film. Bloomington: Indiana University Press,

“It Wasn’t Like That in the Movie”:

© The Author(s) 2017 25

through with panic” as she repeats, “Please don’t—don’t—” to no avail.

earned additional publicity from newspapers and magazines, and the

The post-sound, post-World War II decades saw additional experiments

novelization, explaining that this material transition had a profound impact

the reputation of the novelization—in comparison to the early photoplay

Novelization and tie-ins abound in the 1960s–1980s (Larson 1995),

WHAT NOVELIZATION IS NOT

almost or totally unrecognizable, novelizations distinguish themselves,

visualizations, indicates that the marketing and packaging of novelizations

AND THE AWARD FOR BEST ADAPTATION

the opposite form of adaptation—ﬁlms based on novels—novels based on

Debates over the relative difﬁculty levels of writing a screenplay based on a

WHO READS NOVELIZATIONS AND WHY?

a subgenre of novelizations, are geared speciﬁcally to young readers. The

IT WASN’T LIKE THAT IN THE MOVIE: VARIATIONS,

Pretty in Pink offers an even more dramatic example of variation in

mistaken for anything but a piece of standard-issue San Francisco Police

As does that of the South of Market area:

These descriptions undergird the novel’s theme of shifting identities,

THE NON-MUSICAL MUSICAL

De Christoforo’s novelization of the 1978 ﬁlm musical Grease, which is

years of the 1950s.4 This shift allows De Christoforo to replace actual

We shimmied, short-stepped, ﬂipped and turned, changed partners once