2. Adapting The Quiet Man

Cronin explores the web of adaptive relations that constitutes John Ford’s The Quiet Man (1952), using the adaptive history of Ford’s film as a means of thinking about the nature of adaptation as both process and product. The first half of the chapter counters popular conceptions of cultural oppositions in and around The Quiet Man by revealing this particular process of adaptation as a palimpsestuous site of cross (intra and inter)-cultural exchange. The second half of the chapter remediates recurring debates regarding Ford’s film by establishing a core ambivalence in Ford’s work and cultural vision. The adaptive relations and textual dynamics explored in this chapter inform, and are adapted by, the “Making of” The Quiet Man sites explored in later chapters.