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.

Reto Winckleris an Associate Research Fellow at South China Normal University, Guangzhou, China. His research revolves around Shakespeares 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 inShakespeare, Adaptation, Cahiers É lisabé thains, and elsewhere.

Víctor Huertas-Martínis 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 inAtlantis, Shakespeare Bulletin, Sederi Yearbook, Cahiers Élisabéthains, and Literature/Film Quarterly, amongst others.

Introduction.- Block 1: TV Series as Literature in Theory.- Adapting Balzic for Television: Literariness and Authorial Identity on the Small Screen.- The Poetics of Screenwriting: Approaching the Teleplay from a Literary Perspective.- From Frenetic to Vivid: Phenomenological Reading to Immersive Television Narratives.- Literary Remediations of The Contemporary Television Series From the Familiar to Storyttelling Originals.- The Literary in Television, or Why Should We Teach TV Series in Literature Departments.- Toward Sphere Theory: Redefining the Narrative Genres of the Novel and the TV Drama Series.- The Academic Canonization of Media and Its Connections to Industry.- Literary Value and the Case of the Teleserye in the Philippines.- Block 2: Television Literature as Literature in Pratice.- Its the Beauty that Hurts the Most: Rectify as Televisual Novel.- Angry Old Men? Reading ITVS Morse Through the Lends of the Campus Novel.- Read a Fucking Book!: Healing Trauma Through Reading in Boardwalk Empire.- Not Exactly Shakespeare? ShakespeareS Plays, Ben Eltons Upstart Crow and the Problem of Literature on Television.- A Shift in Storytelling: Television Series over the Garden Wall as a Literary Reconstruction of DanteS Divine Comedy.- Breaking Bad: Reading Freedom Through the Fragility of Private Space.- Rat Phones, Alligators, Lemon Pepper Wet: The Poetic Absurd of Atlanta.- Reading a Police Procedural as a Lyrical Text.- Audible Paratexts: Song Lyrics in Television Series.- Adult Fables in the Digital Age: A Literary Approach to Black Mirror.- Literature/Film/Mad Men.- Married at First Sight: A TV Literature Experiment.