Alice Munro's story "The Bear Came Over the Mountain" deals complexly with the question of what constitutes fidelity. Accordingly, perhaps it could not help but anticipate issues confronting Sarah Polley as she filmed her adaptation of the text, Away from Her. The case demonstrates that conceptions of fidelity with regard to artistic adaptation are more than incidentally connected to the kinds of interpersonal fidelity examined by Munro's story. Not least, an adapting artist may choose to take up the symbolic role of the source text's lover or of its filial legatee, even while this opposition obscures ways in which the roles overlap. The prominent use of Canadian settings and intertexts in Away from Her suggests that the same symbolic positions stand as options in relation to an artist's national cultural milieu. In that light, adaptation emerges as a significant trope and practice in Canadian literature.
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