Appalachia in Serena and The World Made Straight: From Fiction to Film

Abstract

This thesis focuses on American author Ron Rash as an Appalachian writer and it is divided into two parts. The first part begins with an overview of the history of Appalachian literature in order to examine Ron Rash’s novels The World Made Straight (2006) and Serena (2008) and investigate the ways in which Appalachian culture and landscape are therein represented. The second part begins by presenting the main theories of adaptation from fiction to film, and then focuses on Susannne Bier’s and David Burris’s adaptation of Rash’s novels.