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@article{208096,
        author = {Indu K},
        title = {Animating the Unimaginable: Reimagining Narrative, Memory and Identity in Literary Adaptations},
        journal = {International Journal of Innovative Research in Technology},
        year = {2026},
        volume = {13},
        number = {4},
        pages = {305-313},
        issn = {2349-6002},
        url = {https://ijirt.org/article?manuscript=208096},
        abstract = {Literary adaptation is not merely the transfer of a written narrative into another medium; it is a complex process through which stories are reconstructed, memories are reorganized, and identities are reimagined. Adaptation transforms not only the form of a literary work but also its relationship with history, culture, memory, and the audience. This article examines the relationship between literature and cinema through Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) and Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day (1989), together with their film adaptations directed by John Duigan (1993) and James Ivory (1993), respectively. Drawing primarily on Linda Hutcheon’s theory of adaptation, the article argues that adaptation should be understood as a creative and interpretive process rather than as a secondary reproduction of an original text. Rhys’s novel reconstructs the silenced history and fractured identity of Antoinette Cosway, while Duigan’s film translates this psychological and postcolonial narrative into a visual language of landscape, embodiment, colour, and confinement. Similarly, Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day employs retrospective narration to expose the unreliability of memory and the suppressed emotional identity of Stevens, while Ivory’s film externalizes his interiority through performance, gesture, framing, silence, and visual composition. By comparing these two adaptations, the article demonstrates how cinema animates what literature leaves psychologically or imaginatively unrepresented. Adaptation thus becomes a form of cultural memory: it remembers, revises, challenges, and sometimes contests the meanings embedded in the source text.},
        keywords = {Index Terms—literary adaptation, narrative, memory, identity.},
        month = {September},
        }