Gullivers Afterlives: 300 Years of Transmedia Adaptation

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The first deep dive into the afterlives of Jonathan Swifts enduring Gullivers Travels in literature and culture, this book explores how the strange adventures of Lemuel Gulliver have been retold and adapted in the nearly 300 years since it was first published. Exploring illustrated books, comics, graphic novels, films, animations, poetry, plays and pantomimes, among other things, Daniel Cook brings together an engaging account of how this British classic has been continued and reworked over the years and across media.

Considering all the major and unjustly neglected authors and artists who have extended and engaged with the novel, from Alexander Pope and Eliza Haywood to Alison Fell and Michael Ryan, leading comics artists and scripters, including Martin Rowson and Alan Moore, pioneering filmmakers such as Georges Mlis and Gullivers appearances in television programmes from Star Trek to Doctor Who, the book examines more than 50 novels and short stories, 6 plays, 24 films and animations, 22 comics and graphic novels as well as various illustrations and objects such as statues. Challenging discussions surrounding literary adaptation in different settings, Cook delves into topics such as the adaptation as a process; the history of fiction and the periodical; performance, comics, character and authorship studies; visual culture; and tensions between Gulliver as narrator and character.

Incredibly comprehensive and compelling with arch and amusing moments, Gullivers Afterlives asks us why has Gulliver and his story endured for the past three centuries, and how Why have so many writers and artists around the world sought to endow his character with personhood, or otherwise reduce him to a puppet-like figure, and even displace him altogether

Author Bio

Daniel Cook is Daniel Cook is Associate Dean and Reader in English Literature at the University of Dundee, UK. He is the author of Walter Scott and Short Fiction (2021), Reading Swifts Poetry (2020), and Thomas Chatterton and Neglected Genius, 1760-1830 (2013). His most recent books include The Cambridge Companion to Gulliver's Travels, with Nicholas Seager (2023), Gullivers Travels: The Norton Library (2023), Scottish Poetry, 1730-1830 (2023), and Austen After 200: New Reading Spaces, with Annika Bautz and Kerry Sinanan (2022).