Introduction: ‘Palimpsestuous Intertextuality’ and the Cultural Politics of Childhood

Abstract

Using Linda Hutcheon’s coinage ‘palimpsestuous intertextuality’ (A Theory of Adaptation. London and New York: Routledge, 2006, 21), this chapter (and the book) conceives of adaptations as ‘multilaminated’ texts, inscribed with memories and traces of other intersecting texts that resonate through ‘repetition without replication’ (21). This chapter argues that this way of understanding adaptation is particularly appropriate to scholarship related to children’s textual culture, given the radically intertextual nature of the primary material and the prevalence of retold stories. The chapter presents an overview and synthesis of contemporary theoretical approaches to adaptation and their relevance to the analysis of adaptations for young people. A common thread of the chapter and subsequent chapters is an interest in the politics of childhood; that is, how childhood is conceived and represented in adapted texts for and about children, and in the recurrence of certain texts and genres within the adaptation industry for young people.