Re/writing in text and light : adaptation, authority and human space in the script-film transformations of Bliss, Disgrace, The English patient and The namesake

Abstract

Adaptation and screenplay studies have often been cast in the role of the 'Other', in relation to the terrains of literature and film. While adaptation has enjoyed a recent resurgence due to the work of intertextual theorists, who view the source as 'just' another influence, there have been few analyses which have sought to analyse the various texts constituting the liminal script, due to the difficulty in acquiring these texts. Focusing on the depiction of human space, and on the adaptations of Bliss (1985), The English Patient (1996), The Namesake (2006) and Disgrace (2009), this thesis identifies the postcolonial strategies employed by the script and filmic author(s) in the different stages of creation, revealing a double-voiced discourse, which reflects the collective authorship of film and artistic vision. It adopts a theory of adaptation which stresses repetition-with-difference and the pleasure principle, creating a balance between intertextuality and fidelity, as well as conceptualising authorship as a layered negotiation between novelist, scriptwriter and director. This thesis employs a syncretic methodological approach, merging theories of postcolonial discourse analysis, specifically those of Edward Said, Homi. K. Bhabha and Gayatri Spivak, with Derridean deconstruction, Bakhtinian dialogism, the concept of the chronotope and adopting a descriptive analysis of discourse and imagism in the screenplays. The themes and images of rewriting the postcolonial, transcendental homelessness, embodied memory and the traumatic uncanny are revealed, illustrating adaptation as a split enunciation of negotiated, evolving, conscious and unconscious meaning which is different to and deferred from one successive draft to the next.