ABSTRACT
2 Macbeth, Macbeth is a complex case of transmodalisation promoting an expansion or a sequel in its paratextual frame. Although the title announces engagement with both the object and discourse of Macbeth, the project avoids tying in with the source and refrains from repetition and a recycling of either characters or plots, thus radically reducing recognisability to the title and a selection of epiphanic moments set in a new story. Written by Ewan Fernie and Simon Palfrey, complemented with visual material by Tom de Freston, the fragmentary form is immersed in heteroglossia and goes beyond reimagining, explaining, and commenting on the announced source either explicitly or parodically. On the contrary, the chapter proposes that the new work – the hypertext – converges on what is absent from the inspiring text and what has been defined, at its best, as the off-stage area of Duncan’s chamber, a subtext and a metaphorical wound. Deploying a myriad of fragmentary quotations and images, Macbeth, Macbeth incorporates them verbally and visually to produce a hybrid generative compost. The chapter argues that the project breaks the boundaries of adaptation, by consistently withdrawing from the binary concepts that operate in adaptations and which have been dominant in adaptation studies, as well as in academic protocols isolating theory from practice, and literature from criticism, in order to recognise their coexistence in a “hopeful” hybridity that combines literary experimentation and creative criticism.
