As citizens of contemporary India, our earliest memories of Sanskrit epics and other classics from Sanskrit literature are most often through adaptations of these works in various forms. Given their critical role as mediators of works that shape our consciousness, our beliefs, and at times our very view of ourselves, there is a need to study these adaptations and analyse them critically. Each new adaptation adds to the original by introducing new ideas, new layers to characters, or new representations of either events or people. These are the result of a series of choices made by the creators of such adaptations, and the principal goal of this course is to enable students to study and understand these choices and how they affect the audience. Students of this course will thus undertake critical analyses of a number of different kinds of adaptations, primarily in the fields of film, drama, television, and graphic novels. This course will be especially useful for those interested in literary adaptations and intertextuality, those who intend to pursue a career in media criticism or adaptation studies, or those desiring to produce or create adaptations of their own.
This course will be conducted primarily in English; however, some knowledge of Hindi will be useful as some of the popular film and TV adaptations that will be studied are originally in Hindi. Adaptations of Sanskrit literature into plays in various regional languages will be studied as English translations. English subtitles will be provided for audiovisual media wherever possible.
- Teacher: Saurabh Singanapalli