ENG 453 - Literary Alchemy

What happens when a literary genius takes hold of a mere suggestion and transforms it into literary gold?  By what process of imagination does a snippet of news in The New York Times become Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood or spawn Susan Orleans’s orchid thief, John Laroche, who reemerges as played by Chris Cooper in Spike Jonze’s conversion of The Orchid Thief into a film about the very matter of Adaptation?  How does Miss Kay grow from what Muriel Spark calls “the seeds of the future Miss Jean Brodie” into that fully formed character in her prime?  What happens when Shakespeare takes hold of a lackluster little narrative by Giraldi Cinthio, turns it on its ear, and produces Othello out of base metal?  Or when George Saunders spins Lincoln in the Bardo out of a line of history that concerns Abraham Lincoln’s visit to his son’s tomb?  This seminar will explore the literary imagination by focusing on such transformations into nonfiction, fiction, drama, and film-some from humble origins, others from already established masterpieces.