Most books on film adaptation -- the relation between films and their literary sources -- focus on a series of close one-to-one comparisons between specific films and canonical novels. This volume identifies and investigates a far wider array of problems posed by the process of adaptation.

Beginning with an examination of why adaptation study has so often supported the institution of literature rather than fostering the practice of literacy, Thomas Leitch considers how the creators of short silent films attempted to give them the weight of literature, what sorts of fidelity are possible in an adaptation of sacred scripture, what it means for an adaptation to pose as an introduction to, rather than a transcription of, a literary classic, and why and how some films have sought impossibly close fidelity to their sources.

After examining the surprisingly divergent fidelity claims made by three different kinds of canonical adaptations, Leitch's analysis moves beyond literary sources to consider why a small number of adapters have risen to the status of auteurs and how illustrated books, comic strips, video games, and true stories have been adapted to the screen. The range of films studied, from silent Shakespeare to Sherlock Holmes to The Lord of the Rings, is as broad as the problems that come under review.

大多数关于电影改编的书籍--电影和其文学来源之间的关系--集中在特定电影和经典小说之间的一系列密切的一对一的比较上。本书确定并研究了由改编过程所带来的一系列更广泛的问题。

首先，托马斯-雷奇研究了为什么改编研究经常支持文学体制而不是促进文学实践，他考虑了默片创作者如何试图赋予它们文学的分量，在改编神圣的经文中，什么样的忠实度是可能的，改编作品作为文学经典的介绍而不是抄写意味着什么，以及一些电影为什么以及如何寻求对其来源不可能的忠实度。

在研究了三种不同类型的经典改编作品所提出的令人惊讶的保真要求之后，Leitch的分析超越了文学来源，考虑了为什么少数改编者已经上升到了作家的地位，以及绘本、连环画、视频游戏和真实故事是如何被改编到屏幕上的。所研究的电影范围，从无声的莎士比亚到福尔摩斯再到《指环王》，就像接受审查的问题一样广泛。