Eurhythmatic analysis: A rhetoric of adaptation

This article proposes that many of the persistent and nagging problems that plague adaptation studies can be solved by consideration of the ancient and modern invocations of the rhetorical term Eurhythmia. Adaptation studies – or the analysis of the ways texts are changed as they are transplanted from mode to mode – constantly struggles to resist the impulse to denigrate new textual instantiations out of hand as ‘less than’ a revered form, bestowing a metaphor of emanation and corruption on the adaptation. A eurhythmatic approach, conversely, advocates the use of rhetorical strategies arising out of considerations of audience, purpose and context, in order to analyse these modal shifts. Being first concerned with ‘the right fit for the right purpose’, eurhythmia gives us the tools to see adaptations in a constellation of textual associations and material contexts that in turn allow us to understand why some adaptations succeed and why others fail.