Adaptation, Parody, and Pastiche

Whole texts built on other texts

The earlier lessons dealt largely with local intertextual moves — an allusion here, a genre signal there. This lesson turns to intertextuality at the scale of the whole text: works whose entire existence depends on an earlier text or body of texts. Three key forms are adaptation, parody, and pastiche. They overlap but differ in intent, and telling them apart sharpens your ability to describe what a derivative text is doing and why.

Adaptation

Adaptation reworks an existing text into a new form, medium, or context: a novel becomes a film, a myth becomes a musical, a fairy tale is relocated to a modern city. Adaptation is fundamentally about transformation with fidelity in tension — the adapter must decide how faithful to remain to the source and where to dep