Screen adaptation as reading transaction: A creative application of Louise M. Rosenblatt's transactional theory of readin

This part critical, part creative study is both traditional and experimental in that it employs Louise Rosenblatt's Transactional Theory of Reading as a methodological basis for critical analysis and as a theoretical catalyst for creative writing. These two parts take the forms of an analytical critical essay and an adapted screenplay. Both are in response to the short story, "A Little Respect," by Hubert Selby, Jr.;First, various facets of Rosenblatt's theory and its place in the field of reader-response theory are explored. In particular Rosenblatt's identification of "efferent" and "aesthetic" modes of reading inform a methodology of unrestricted and specifically directed approaches to reading and interpretation.;Secondly, the strains of cinema criticism concerned with the relationship between literature and film that have collectively come to be known as adaptation studies are reviewed in order to affirm a view of adaptation criticism and practice beyond the foundational question of a film's "fidelity" to its source text.;Subsequently, through close reading of two key scenes in the novel, adapted screenplay, and film "Sideways," a new view of the adaptation process is formulated based not only on the translation of word to image but also on the transferability of narrative functions between media.;The combination of the two fields, transactional and adaptation studies, points toward the writing of a creative text as a novel application of Rosenblatt's theory. Specifically, a conscious awareness of the structural and elemental congruities between prose and film narratives, combined with textually grounded interpretive decisions involving translation, amplification, and emphasis drawn from the more traditional analytical critical essay, guide the writing of an adapted screenplay.;In addition to demonstrating that the adapted screenplay is a variety of creatively expressed interpretation that can be substantially derived from the transactional reading process, this study simultaneously asserts the importance of screenplay analysis in adaptation studies and makes a case for considering the screenplay as a unique literary form distinct from its typical position, as an intermediate text, which must be produced as a film before it is recognized as a work of art.