In the steps of adaptation towards the heterotopias of the literary canon

Abstract

The core topic of this paper is the interaction of adaptation and literary canon. As starting points serve Diderot’s idea of changing the “standard according to the circumstances” and T. S. Eliot’s notion of “an ideal order” of “existing monuments”, “which is modified by the introduction of a new work of art” or author. Semantic doublings inherent to the concept of adaptation are outlined which indicate that what the phenomenon effectively accomplishes is not a unilateral influence but a bilateral interaction between the subject and the environment or media. A literary analysis by Auerbach is discussed as an example of the latter. Characteristics of the Biblical and the secular literary canons as well as the conservative and the liberal understandings of the canon are juxtaposed. The etymology of the latter is traced back to Aristotle’s Nicomachean Еthics. In conclusion, the paper provides an intertextual approach by means of which adaptation forms heterotopic structures in the literary canon.

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