ABSTRACT
An adaptation is a massive and officially stated transcoding of another text. Adaptation is a form of hypertextuality, wherein an original source text (the hypotext) is transformed or imitated by a later text (the hypertext). Following theories of adaptation, this essay considers the produced hypertext as a transposition of the hypotext, which involves a shift in medium, genre, and/or context; it considers the process of creation, which means reinterpreting the hypotext; and it considers the process of reception, which reads the hypertext as an intertext. This essay reads Leopold Maurer’s graphic novel Miller & Pynchon (2012) as an adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s novel Mason & Dixon (1997). Reading Maurer’s Miller & Pynchon as an adaptation from prose literature to comics literature helps us to understand transmediation, which is the process of transposing a work from one medium (in this case, associated with “telling”) to another (in this case, associated with “telling and showing”).
