Web Essay

For this assignment, you will create an essay related to a literary text and a film adaptation. The essay should feature materials that are available on the Web. You can locate online source materials, or create your own, and then incorporate them into the essay.

For the topic, you might choose one of the following possibilities:

• Explore the decision making associated with an adaptation. This essay should be less about "the book/story did this, but the film did that" and more about mediums and choices. Consider the ways the mediums of written literature and film tell stories. Identify key moments in an adaptation or story text and then discuss then in terms of the medium and the decisions made by authors.
• Identify a film that is not directly based on a work of literature, and then demonstrate the ways in which it can be viewed as an "intertext." For this assignment you may want to spend some time exploring the ways all texts borrow from one another and exist in a Web of textual and cultural elements. Then, examine the film to trace some of its connections within that Web. (Note that this assignment could actually be done for a film that is an adaptation--like O' Brother Where Art Thou?)
• Analyze an adaptation to describe what you take to be a filmmakers interpretation of a literary text. Rather than focus on what is similar or different, focus on how aspects of the film reveal a reading of the story. As you explore the filmmakers interpretation, relate it to your own or alternative approaches to the story text.
• You can take another approach to the Web essay; just check with me.

You will compose the essay on the Web site using the Web Essay option. Save regularly. The final version of the essay is due on Tuesday, July 6th at midnight.

Your first step might be to begin looking at some examples: http://siteslab.org/pitjournalv1/node/192 (an adaptation essay) http://pitjournal.unc.edu/volume1/issue1/evans (an example of an intertextual approach to the topic) http://pitjournal.unc.edu/node/104 (an essay that uses a thematic angle to talk about adaptations) http://siteslab.org/pitjournalv1/node/206 (an essay on O' Brother Where Art Thou? and adaptation)