This last week my class has been exploring some adaptation theory and theologizing to frame their own exploration of Pilgrim's Progress adaptations. A good number of these can be sampled online, but some need a physical encounter.
So I booked a small seminar room a few doors down from my office and transferred materials to set up an Adaptations Fair. Like Christian and Hopeful at Vanity Fair, the students were not to buy or take anything. Unlike that fair, they were encouraged by a Christian Professor to take a good look. On display were boardgames, artwork of DVD and CD cases, maps, book illustrations, children's book adaptations, Christian school curricula, graphic novels, magic lantern slides, a mixed materials collage print, and a set of table top theater set backgrounds and character figures.
There are different ways to assess adaptations in relation to the target audience, the genre of the final product, and the creativity and/or fidelity of the adaptation form to the originating text.
Do you have a favorite adaptation? Or a few, for different reasons?
My students will pick a couple of adaptations to compare to each other in regard to a discrete episode from Bunyan's text. Triangulating, they will assess either the aesthetic success of the adaptations or the theological success. This even allows for the judgment that for a particular audience, a change in genre is an improvement in communicating what Bunyan wants to get across compared to reading his 17th century English today.
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