Adaptations, Versions and Perversions in Modern British Drama

This book aims at exploring what plays were deemed 'suitable' to be reworked for foreign or local stages; what transformations - linguistic, semiotic, theatrical - were undertaken so as to accommodate international audiences; how national literary traditions are forged, altered, and diluted by means of transnational adapting techniques; and, finally, to what extent the categorical boundaries between original plays and adaptations may be blurred on the account of such adjusting textual strategies. It brings together ten articles that scrutinise the linguistic, social, political and theatrical complexities inherent in the intercultural transference of plays. The approaches presented by the different contributors investigate the modern British theatre as an instance of diachronic and synchronic transnational adaptations based upon a myriad of influences originating in, and projected upon, other national dramatic traditions. These traditions, rooted in relatively distant geographies and epochs, are traced so as to illustrate the split between the state-imposed identity and personal, subjective identity caused by cultural negotiations of the self in an age of globalism. International frontiers are thus pointed at in order to claim the need to be transcended in the process of cultural re-appropriation associated with theatre performance for international audiences.

Dr. Ignacio Ramos Gay is a Senior Lecturer in French and Comparative Literature at the University of Valencia, Spain. He holds a BA in English and French, an MA in Translation Studies, and a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Valencia. His research focuses on nineteenth-century European drama and popular culture. He is the author of Oscar Wilde and French Boulevard Theatre (2007) and has published a wide range of articles on transnational theatre adaptation in journals like Revue de Litterature Comparee, Romantisme, Cahiers Victoriens et Edouardiens, Revue des Sciences Humaines and Nineteenth-Century Prose. He is the team leader of a Research Project funded by the University of Valencia, titled French Drama in England (1843-1914): Theatre Adaptation, Transnationality and Authorship, and is currently editing a volume on the literary representations of France in Victorian England.