Thursday, December 28, 2006

Twice-told tales

In my latest post over at Spot-on, I ask:
What compels a novelist to try to retell another writer's story? I can imagine a number of reasons to take as one's inspiration a well-known story, including: as an homage, as a goof or a spoof, to expose the ideological or political underpinnings of the original work, or simply because the earlier story is so good that mimicking it is irresistible.
From there I ramble on about a number of my favorite examples of twice-told tales, including recycled stories based on works by Homer, Shakespeare, Dickens, Kate Chopin, William Golding, and others.

Check it out.

--Marshal Zeringue