Th e Vastness of Context As Malcolm Bradbury suggests, even without any temporal updating or any alterations to national or cultural setting, it can take very little time for context to change how a story is received. Not only what is (re)accentuated but more importantly how a story can be (re)interpreted can alter radically. An adaptation, like the work it adapts, is always framed in a context-a time and a place, a society and a culture; it does not exist in a vacuum. Fashions, not to mention value systems, are context-dependent. Many adapters deal with this reality of reception by updating the time of the story in an attempt to fi nd contemporary resonance for their audiences: when Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941) was remade in 1978 as Heaven Can Wait, relevant anti-nuclear and environmental themes of the day were inserted (Seger 1992: 65).