Rewriting: Reaching an Impasse

What is rewriting? What does this practice imply and what are the reasons for its use? These are the questions I was confronted with regarding my research subject. To answer these crucial questions, I’ve searched the word in several search engines, but it came back as inconclusive. I found that rewriting was a very general word to designate several practices such as translation for instance, and whenever I did find articles or works related to rewriting, they were case studies . Thus I had reached an impasse. Fortunately, I did find an article from a French professor called Anne-Claire Gignoux, a specialist in French literature, which treated the notion of “rewriting” which she compared to the one of intertextuality: De l’intertextualité à la récriture^[1].

In French, we notice that there are two spellings that sound the same but whose practice differs slightly. Indeed, on the one hand, we have the term “réécriture,” with two ‘é’, and on the other hand, there is the term “récriture” with only one ‘é.’ The one that interested me was the term “récriture” which can be defined as a correlation between two works; one being stable—the original text—, and the other introduced as a “new text” or a “new style.” One important thing to note is that rewriting is not clonic and does not aim at repeating a story, with the same words and characters. Rewriting aims at giving a new version of a text, that is why when studying the rewriting of a novel, you do not only have to look at the similarities but also the differences, the varieties between both texts and analyze why such author changed this or that element.

I could also delve deeper into this concept of rewriting thanks to Gignoux’s book entitled La récriture : formes, enjeux, valeurs autour du Nouveau Roman which explains in more detail the notions of intertextuality and rewriting through the use of examples, techniques used by authors/rewriters, and for what purposes those techniques are employed.

  But as complete and helpful as Gignoux’s works on rewriting may be, it poses the problem of language and comprehension. Indeed, these two sources can only be exploited by French-speaking students or researchers, which means their ‘access’ is limited. But other sources can be useful when studying rewriting. Indeed, you can look for instance at the Cambridge Companion to Narrative, and especially at two specific chapters: Story, Plot, and Narration^[2] (by Abbott H. Porter), and Characters^[3] (by Uri Margolin). Those two chapters are very useful for understanding fiction writing and telling, two notions found at the core of ‘rewriting’.

Also, we need to keep in mind that rewritings, just as visual adaptations of literary works, are unique works in their own right, and can be studied for themselves. Consequently, when studying a rewriting, you should not study it in terms of faithfulness, but as a new interpretation of the original text.  

[1] Anne-Claire Gignoux, « De l’intertextualité à la récriture », Cahiers de Narratologie [Online], 13 | 2006, Online since 25 September 2016. DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/narratologie.329

[2] Abbott, H. Porter. “Story, Plot, and Narration.” The Cambridge Companion to Narrative, edited by David Herman, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2007, pp. 39–51.

[3] Margolin, Uri. “Character.” The Cambridge Companion to Narrative, edited by David Herman, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2007, pp. 66–79.

[4] Photo Credits: Canva / Licence Free Media.