Μετασχηματισμοί κλασικών κειμένων στην επικράτεια του παιδικού βιβλίου: Οι περιπλανήσεις του Δον Κιχώτη στον χώρο του ελληνικού παιδικού βιβλίου

Abstract

Adaptation is one of the most common and crucial intertextual devices throughout the history of children’s literature. The books that are most often adapted from adult literature, for commercial as well as pedagogic reasons, are usually among the books that belong to the so-called literary canon. One of the most typical and interesting examples of a classic text’s adventures in adaptation, is Don Quixote by M. De Cervantes. By studying this text’s adaptations, we aimed to study the historical dimension of the adaptation process as well as its influence on the reception of the so-called classic literary texts and the continuation of the literary canon. At the same time, an additional goal was to research the level to which publishers appropriate classic texts and therefore mislead less experienced readers. Finally, we intended to shed more light on the transformation mechanisms that are adopted during the adaptation process in order to make an adult-oriented text suitable for a younger audience.

In order to answer the above questions, we had to research and analyze the existing children’s adaptation of Don Quixote in Greek, and to conduct a comparative study between those and accredited translations of the original text. At the literature review of those adaptations, it became apparent that there is an issue of “adaptation fallacy”, which stems from old-fashioned publishing practices for book promotion and marketing, which have been historically misleading mainly the less experienced readers. At the same time, the comparative and historical study of secondary texts confirms the cultural overlaps the source text is being subject to as well as the extremely intricate net of consecutive re-adaptations that occur before the child’s own reading experience. This fact reinforces the view that most people get to know classical heroes and legends of literature through adaptations in various manifestations of artistic expression.

Furthermore, we analyze the transformation mechanisms used on the source-text by the adapting agents in order to transform it to a more accessible text for the child, the intended-reader of their respective times. The above aspects of the subject under investigation showcase, in their whole, the dynamic and complex field where children’s literature meets the literature for adults and confirm the complexity, the timelessness and the inter-disciplinary and inter-cultural character of the adaptation process.