Date of Award

8-2025

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts in English and Writing Studies

Department

English

First Reader/Committee Chair

Marshall, David

Abstract

This thesis discusses topics of adaptation and translation theory by looking at the way Frida Kahlo’s diary has been transformed through both adaptation and translations of it in the texts The Diary of Frida Kahlo: An Intimate Self-Portrait and The Diary of Frida Kahlo: A New Perspective. Scholars have paid much attention to the connections between Kahlo’s diary and her portraits, focusing on artistic critique and the painter’s diary as a drafting space for what eventually became her famous self-portraits. Researchers have also documented Frida Kahlo’s artistic and cultural influences in Mexico and abroad. However, none have addressed the translations and adaptations of her diary in literary editions as I have done in this thesis. The translations analyzed in this thesis, The Diary of Frida Kahlo: An Intimate Self-Portrait and The Diary of Frida Kahlo: A New Perspective, recast their respective presentations of her diary with translations and commentary functioning as a method of adaptation. Thus, I retitle these texts “adaptive translations,” acknowledging their potential to alter, and potentially “mythologize,” Kahlo’s diary and the artist herself. This research is significant, because it argues for careful attention that is always necessary to retelling the experiences of figures in history, particularly figures of color through anglophone lenses, such as in the case of Frida Kahlo and her intimate diary.

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