Sub/versions - Cultural Status, Genre and Critique (Hardcover, Unabridged edition)

Sub/versions draws together recent work analysing texts that exist in a complicated relationship to issues of "high" and "low" culture. An important aspect of this debate is the manner in which the critical reception of "original" versions can act to resist the validity of new or re-imagined adaptations. Equally important is the reception of works that are self-consciously intertextual, or exist in various forms and different media. The research represented here examines these issues, exploring the changes that are made between versions and the ways in which these transformations might subvert the original text. The approach of this collection is therefore fundamentally interdisciplinary, drawing on a range of topics related to subversion and "sub/versions", including translation, parody, satire, metafiction, performance, allegory, and genre. "An incisive and innovative collection of essays that combines a theoretical enquiry into the nature of subversive texts, with scholarly readings of key contemporary authors such as Kazuo Ishiguro, Jeanette Winterson, Neil Gaiman, Grant Morrison, and Philip Pullman, and artists and filmmakers such as Terry Gilliam, Mary Harron and Orson Welles."-Professor Marion Wynne Davies, University of Surrey"A diverse collection of papers exploring the emerging territories of subversion in literature, comics and film. A useful guide for undergraduate and research students working in these areas. "-Professor Peter Kitson, President of English Association"Nearly all the greatest stories are re-tellings - Sophocles, Shakespeare, Milton, Tennyson, and hosts of others of like stature, were all in the re-tale trade. Their tales go on being recycled in a cultural economy that recognises no boundaries of genre or nationality. In the twentieth century the pace has intensified, in line with the growth of new cultural forms, and we now encounter cannonical tales re-born in graphic novels, animated cartoons, operas (of both the soap and thehigh-art kind), art installations, poems, stories, and digital media. This book is a lively and much-needed examination of the processes of textual subversion and metamorphosis which remain a major force in our culture."-Professor Peter Barry, Aberystwyth University