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Today's discussion in Grobstein's section really sparked my interest. We discussed adaptation and its meaning in both the biological and literary world. They actually have two very different meanings: In the biological world, adaptation has to do with change and growth, whereas in the literary world, adaptation is more of an homage to another work. This is actually how Smith defines her book, as an homage to Howard's End. We then discussed the various ways in which works in the literary world can be adapted. The first piece that came to my mind was Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. West Side Story is an adaptation in play form, Franco Zeffirelli made a movie in 1968, and Baz Luhrmann made a completely different movie in 1996 (there are of course many more adaptations of this play, but these are the first three that came to my mind). Each of these adaptations are fascinating on their own and in their relation to the original works. Luhrmann's adaptation is actually one of my very favorite movies, solely because he makes an adaptation using all of the original speech from Shakespeare's play, yet inserts this speech into modern times with modern people, places, and situations. Innovative? Definetly. Generative? I think so. I think this is a novel idea in which one can express oneself through a ceratin type of language that doesn't neccessarily bridge the ages (I mean, I wouldn't come up to your window asking "Romeo, Romeo, where for art thou....") and place it in a genre in which today's generation can identify with. I would have to agree with some of the ladies in our section when they say that the second half of this class could have dealt with evolution and adaptations in the artistic world as a whole rather than just having dealt with these two particular books.