The article focuses on the problem of preserving classical fiction in the reading agenda of modern people as well as on methods of literary alteration of famous texts. The problem of retelling texts is considered from different perspectives: there exist three strategies for changing the source text, and the characteristic features of modern literary retelling. This theoretical basis is used to analyze David Harakal’s book “The Pilgrim’s Progress for the 21st Century” (2022), which is a retelling of John Bunyan’s allegorical story “The Pilgrim’s Progress” for a modern readership. The study showed that David Harakal used a combination of three strategies when adapting John Bunyan’s text: he replaced one main character with a family of personages, introduced new characters, added episodes that complemented the original plot; the setting of his retelling became provincial America, and the action takes place in our days; the change of place and time is reinforced by the introduction of modern realities into the text; the genre of the new work combined the features of a reise-roman and a bildungs-roman.
retelling, John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress, David Harakal, The Pilgrim’s Progress for the 21th Century
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