ABSTRACT
As has been observed on numerous occasions, adaptation studies has broadened its scope of enquiry for better or worse from the relatively narrow field of literature to film adaptations. This Companion is a case in point where the chapters in sections such as history, identity, reception and technology go far beyond the limited novel-to-film model. Adaptation studies now encompasses studies that engage with rewriting, appropriation, intertextuality and intermediality as examples of processes and products of adaptation. For some scholars, such proliferation is a step (or three) too far and they offer a convincing argument why adaptation studies needs to undergo a process of disambiguation and pay more attention to the development of a more particular definition of adaptation (see, for example, Cardwell in this collection) in order to establish more clearly a much-needed analytical aesthetics of adaptation. Furthermore, adaptation studies has yet to excise its, arguably, over-reliance on the case study at the expense of more detailed consideration of the conceptual framework within which we read adaptations. And while the case study is a well-established and rigorous methodology, it will only move the field of adaptation studies on if it becomes a means to a conceptual end rather than an end in itself.
