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What are the ethical implications of reworking, adapting, or reinterpreting pre-existing texts? This course explores the complexities of book adaptations, prequels, translations, and critical interventions into so-called Western classical literature. It engages with questions of faithfulness, originality, and creativity, examining how these literary practices challenge established norms. Through the study of works of literature and critical theory from Postcolonial and World Literature, we will explore how these fields confront the canon and use aesthetics to question social and political power structures. From Maryse Condé’s reworking of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights to Jean Rhys’ prequel to Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, from Jorge Luis Borges’ short story of Pierre Menard, who rewrites Cervantes’ Don Quixote line by line without copying it, to Saidiya Hartman’s call to use fiction to resist the silences of historical archives on slavery, these works unsettle traditional hierarchies of center and periphery, original and copy. Together, they prompt vital questions about gender and race, history and fiction, and highlight the transformative power of literature.