Film Adaptation as a Palimpsest: Deconstructing “Hamnet”

Abstract Book of the 3rd International Conference on Art Studies

Year: 2026

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Film Adaptation as a Palimpsest: Deconstructing "Hamnet"

Dr. Iuliana Borbely

ABSTRACT:

This study examines Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet (2020) and its film adaptation, Hamnet (2025), through a deconstructionist lens, exploring the binary oppositions the novel challenges and how adaptation functions as a palimpsest. At the basis of the analysis stands Derrida’s idea that meaning is never fully present, but it is deferred. Meaning is conveyed through binaries such as silence/unsaid and presence/absence in the novel, and represented through cinematic rhetoric in the film adaptation. Thus, the notion of the text as a palimpsest emerges as Hamnet is not a standalone text; the novel is in conversation with the film adaptation, and both are in turn in conversation with Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The film adaptation serves as a palimpsest, reinterpreting the novel’s interpretation, adding new interpretations to Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
The research centers around the following questions: 1) What binary oppositions does the novel Hamnet challenge, and how does the film adaptation’s cinematic rhetoric represent, reinforce, or further destabilize these oppositions? 2) How do the novel and the film adaptation Hamnet function as a palimpsest, filling in historical gaps, juggling Shakespearean intertextuality, and contemporary narrative to create meaning? 3) How do silences and the unsaid function as deconstructive elements within O’Farrell’s narrative, and what cinematic rhetoric is employed to convey these elements in the film adaptation?

Keywords: Deconstruction, Palimpsest, Adaptation, "Hamnet"