'Disquiet' novella and screenplay : adaptation and creative hybridity

Abstract

The major creative work of this thesis consists of ‘Disquiet’, the novella and the screenplay. It is a twice-told tale. In the exegesis I explore the writing practice of working between two narrative forms. To do this I begin by establishing that the traditional focus of adaptation studies has been book-to-film adaptation. Within this field the issue of ‘fidelity’ has been a dominant concern although it is hard to find any scholar who is actively arguing for fidelity. I look at types of adaptation and then outline some possible new directions for adaptation studies. I pay attention to two areas that adaptation studies have largely overlooked and which are pertinent to ‘Disquiet’: the screenplay and the novelisation. Having loosely situated ‘Disquiet’, the novella, within the experimental end of the novelisation continuum I then develop the concept of the creative hybrid. I revisit the assumption that where there are two creative works based on the same story then one work must have come into being before the other. I also query whether the term ‘adaptation’ is appropriate to describe the creative process for hybrids. I look at other modes of speaking about ‘adaptation’ proposed by recent scholars and venture some terms of my own. Turning to the case studies I first make the case for why Graham Greene’s novella The Third Man – which was written before his screenplay for a film of the same name – does in fact sit on the continuum of novelisations and/or could be called a hybrid. The second case study is Pier Paolo Pasolini’s so-called novel, Theorem. The third case-study is Ingmar Bergman’s hybrid text, The Best Intentions. I then address ‘Disquiet’ in both its forms, highlighting the writing practices I adopted. I conclude that ‘Disquiet’ does not readily fit within either book-to-film adaptation or novelisation. I suggest that acknowledgment of creative hybrids invites a deeper understanding of the practice of adaptation.