Eleven essays analyze the adaptations of novels by eight popular writers such as Jane Austen and Harriet Beecher Stowe, and examine the ways in which those writers' themes are reinterpreted, updated and often misconstrued by the filmmakers who bring them to the screen. No index. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Byronic Heroes in Nineteenth-Century Women's Writing and Screen Adaptation charts a new chapter in the changing fortunes of a unique cultural phenomenon. This book examines the afterlives of the Byronic hero through the work of nineteenth-century women writers and screen adaptations of their fiction. It is a timely reassessment of Byron's enduring legacy during the nineteenth century and beyond, focusing on the charged and unstable literary dialogues between Jane Austen, Elizabeth Gaskell, George Eliot and a Romantic icon whose presence takes centre stage in recent screen adaptations of their most celebrated novels. The broad interdisciplinary lens employed in this book concentrates on the conflicted rewritings of Byron's poetry, his 'heroic' protagonists, and the cult of Byronism in nineteenth-century novels from Pride and Prejudice to Middlemarch, and extends outwards to the reappearance of Byronic heroes on film and in television series over the last two decades.

This book brings together the experiences of Anglo-American teachers and discusses some of the challenges which face teachers of nineteenth-century fiction, suggesting practical ways in which these might start to be overcome by considering the constantly changing canon, issues related to course design and the possibilities offered by film and ICT.

This handbook offers students and researchers a compact introduction to the nineteenth-century American novel in the light of current debates, theoretical concepts, and critical methodologies. The volume turns to the nineteenth century as a formative era in American literary history, a time that saw both the rise of the novel as a genre, and the emergence of an independent, confident American culture. A broad range of concise essays by European and American scholars demonstrates how some of America‘s most well-known and influential novels responded to and participated in the radical transformations that characterized American culture between the early republic and the age of imperial expansion. Part I consists of 7 systematic essays on key historical and critical frameworks ― including debates aboutrace and citizenship, transnationalism, environmentalism and print culture, as well as sentimentalism, romance and the gothic, realism and naturalism. Part II provides 22 essays on individual novels, each combining an introduction to relevant cultural contexts with a fresh close reading and the discussion of critical perspectives shaped by literary and cultural theory.

This interdisciplinary collection presents new research on the Brontës' intense and varied relationship to the wider world of the arts. With essays by scholars who represent the fields of literary studies, music, art, theatre studies, and material culture, the volume brings together the strongest current research and suggests areas for future work on the Brontës and their cultural contexts.

Jane Austen's novels are loved because they possess a comedic power that is often conveyed through the singular voice of the narrators. Film adaptations, however, have often been unsatisfactory because they lack or awkwardly render features, particularly the voice of the narrators. This work argues for a fresh approach that begins with a reading of the novels that emphasizes their auditory and visual dimensions. Building on their examination of Austen's inherently cinematic features, the authors then develop productive new readings of the films. Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.

Many monsters in Victorian British novels were intimately connected with the protagonists, and representative of both the personal failings of a character and the failings of the society in which he or she lived. By contrast, more recent film adaptations of these novels depict the creatures as arbitrarily engaging in senseless violence, and suggest a modern fear of the uncontrollable. This work analyzes the dichotomy through examinations of Shelley's Frankenstein, Stoker's Dracula, H. Rider Haggard's She, Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Wells's The Island of Dr. Moreau, and consideration of the 20th century film adaptations of the works.

By contrast, in the works of black writers from Oscar Micheaux to Toni Morrison, the black experience has been more fully, more accurately, and usually more sympathetically realized; and from the early days of film, select filmmakers have looked to that literature as the basis for their productions.".

Jane Austen's career as a novelist began in 1811 with the publication of Sense and Sensibility. Her work was finally adapted for the big screen with the 1940 filming of Pride and Prejudice (very successful at the box office). No other film adaptation of an Austen novel was made for theatrical release until 1995. Amazingly, during 1995 and 1996, six film and television adaptations appeared, first Clueless, then Persuasion, followed by Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, the Miramax Emma, and the Meridian/A&E Emma. This book traces the history of film and television adaptations (nearly 30 to date) of Jane Austen manuscripts, compares the adaptations to the manuscripts, compares the way different adaptations treat the novels, and analyzes the adaptations as examples of cinematic art. The first of seven chapters explains why the novels of Jane Austen have become a popular source of film and television adaptations. The following six chapters each cover one of Austen's novels: Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Emma, Mansfield Park, Persuasion, and Northanger Abbey. Each chapter begins with a summary of the main events of the novel. Then a history of the adaptations is presented followed by an analysis of the unique qualities of each adaptation, a comparison of these adaptations to each other and to the novels on which they are based, and a reflection of relevant film and literary criticism as it applies to the adaptations.

This collection offers students and scholars of Eliot’s work a timely critical reappraisal of her corpus, including her poetry and non-fiction, reflecting the latest developments in literary criticism. It features innovative analysis ­exploring the relation between Eliot’s Victorian intellectual sensibilities and those of our own era. A comprehensive collection of essays written by leading Eliot scholars Offers a contemporary reappraisals of Eliot’s work reflecting a broad range of current academic interests, including religion, science, ethics, politics, and aesthetics Reflects the very latest developments in literary scholarship Traces the revealing links between Eliot’s Victorian intellectual ­concerns and those of today