In one of the more surprising current-day mentions of an eighteenth-century work, a 2013 Vulture article on Terrence Malick's 2012 film, To the Wonder, names Pamela (1740) as central to the film:

Malick's film, which primarily portrays the beginnings of a passionate love affair between Neil (Ben Affleck) and Marina (Olga Kurylenko) in twenty- first-century Paris and its subsequent breakdown in Oklahoma, certainly is not an adaptation of Pamela in terms of its story; rather, as Malick states, the film adapts the narrative effect of unmediated life created by Pamela's episto- lary form, a cinematic version of “writing to the moment.”

Discovering the connection between Pamela and To the Wonder led me to wonder what it might do to consider adaptation in terms of narrative effect and form, rather than in terms of story, when thinking about and teaching eighteenth-century texts. With that objective in mind, this chapter first con- siders how we might define such adaptations. Second, it considers Pamela and To the Wonder as a case study of how adaptation of narrative effect and form is peculiarly well suited to teaching eighteenth-century literature.

Teaching adaptations that focus on narrative effect and form can be particularly helpful to students, often more helpful, I suggest, than teach- ing more traditional adaptations. These days, thinking about why and how to teach any adaptation in the classroom requires justification. Not only do most of us teach at institutions where the increasing pressures to assess a course's transferable skills mean that we must defend our every syllabus choice, but most of us know that we cannot rely on our students experienc- ing the pleasure of recognition, or at least of immediate recognition, that so many theorists of adaptation position as essential to enjoyment and pur- pose.