I Am Mordred Comparison Essay

Many works of literature from historical ones to modern ones can be rewritten in form of an adaptation. An adaptation is simply when a story is rewritten by using several techniques such as extension or expansion. Just as old movies are remade today, books can also be rewritten, either having a similar or a slightly different outcome. An adaptation, however, could also have specific changes such as how the stories are told by using different perspective. The excerpts from Palimpsests: Literature in the Second Degree by Gerald Genette describe many literary devices that are used when writing a hypertext, which is adaptation. Nancy Springer’s novel I am Mordred is an example of an adaptation of a fifteenth century book by Sir Thomas Malory called
Expansion, as described by Genette, is not directly expanding the hypotext by adding massive additions but through a “kind of stylistic dilation”. Genette states that “in grossly oversimplified terms, the procedure consists in doubling or tripling the length of each sentence in the hypotext” (Genette 260). This is exactly what Springer did to her adaptation of Mordred; she wrote the book in the perspective of Mordred, which created ample descriptions of Mordred as a character figure. For example, in the beginning of the book, Mordred says ‘“When I was a baby, my father tried to kill me”’ (Springer3). This statement tells us that Mordred has greatly been affected by the relationship of him and his father, Arthur. In addition, we, the readers feel sympathetic towards him. In Le Morte D’arthur, Malory did not use expansion to depict his Mordred as sophisticated as Springer’s Mordred. Rather, Malory wrote his story without deep character analysis, which lacked the extra touch or feel of the characters; then again, unlike “I am Mordred”, which is primarily about Mordred’s life, Le Morte D’arthur is a collection of stories about other Arthurian figures