Television Series as Literature

Reto Winckler is an Associate Research Fellow at South China Normal University, Guangzhou, China. His research revolves around Shakespeare's plays and their multi-medial afterlives, concentrating on issues of madness and folly, ordinary language philosophy, and the adaptation of Shakespeare in contemporary television series and digital media. His articles have been published in Shakespeare, Adaptation, Cahiers É lisabé thains, and elsewhere.

Víctor Huertas-Martín is an Assistant Lecturer at the Facultat de Filologia, Traducció i Comunicació of the Universitat de València, Spain. Besides the hybridity of theatrical and filmic languages in TV Shakespeares, his research focuses on Serial Shakespeares, as well as space in Shakespearean performance. His work has been published in Atlantis, Shakespeare Bulletin, Sederi Yearbook, Cahiers Élisabéthains, and Literature/Film Quarterly, amongst others.

This book explores how television series can be understood as a form of literature, bridging the gap between literary and television studies. It goes beyond existing adaptation studies and narratological approaches to television series in both its scope and depth. The respective chapters address literary works, themes, tropes, techniques, values, genres, and movements in relation to a broad variety of television series, while drawing on the theoretical work of a host of scholars from Simone de Beauvoir and Yuri Lotman to Ted Nannicelli and Jason Mittel, and on critical approaches ranging from narratology and semiotics to empirical sociology and phenomenology.  

The book fosters new ways of understanding television series and literature and lays the groundwork for future scholarship in a number of fields. By questioning the alleged divide between television series and works of literature, it contributes not only to a better understanding of television series and literary texts themselves, but also to the development of interdisciplinary scholarship in the humanities.