The Adaptive Afterlife of Texts: Entropy and Generative Decay

Abstract

Building on a tradition of exploring textual interrelationships through figurative readings and extended metaphors, this paper seeks to read adaptation as an active and creative practice of decay. The reading is couched within a broader exploration of the afterlife of texts and heterocosms via a conceptualization of textual embodiment as prey to particular kinds of entropy. Within this paradigm, Adaptation Studies becomes an inclusive methodology for exploring the ways in which texts metamorphose and are purposefully, posthumously altered by authors, readers, and adapters. Adaptation is proposed as a creative engagement of generative decay based in a broader universe of textual entropy, requiring interpretative burrowings from readers and adapters so that sources might be recycled and rewritten in the inks of their suppurations.