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In 1995 and 1996 six film or television adaptations of Jane Austen's novels were produced -- an unprecedented number. More amazing, all were critical and/or box office successes. What accounts for this explosion of interest? Much of the appeal of these films lies in our nostalgic desire at the end of the millennium for an age of greater politeness and sexual reticence. Austen's ridicule of deceit and pretentiousness also appeals to our fin de siècle sensibilities. The novels were changed, however, to enhance their appeal to a wide popular audience, and the revisions reveal much about our own culture and its values. These recent productions espouse explicitly twentieth-century feminist notio...
Devoted to the study of women from 1660 to 1817 (the so-called 'long' 18th century).
The Lives of Texts: Exploring the Metaphor examines various instances of “textual subsistence” implied by the title. Drawing on the parallel between a text and a living organism, the contributors analyze various literary texts ranging from the Middle Ages to postmodernity, as well as film adaptations and the graphic novel. Apart from the works of canonical writers, attention is also drawn to some long-forgotten authors, along with the most recent instances of popular literature and culture. The exploration of the title metaphor allows the contributors to trace life-like phenomena (e.g. textual birth, maturation, dissemination, death and resurrection) in the texts of writers so remote from each other as Layamon, Thomas More, Mary Shelley, Charles Williams, Ursula Le Guin, A. S. Byatt, Peter Ackroyd, Iain Banks, J. K. Rowling, or Neil Gaiman.
The first book to investigate Jane Austen's popular significance today, Everybody's Jane considers why Austen matters to amateur readers, how they make use of her novels, what they gain from visiting places associated with her, and why they create works of fiction and nonfiction inspired by her novels and life.The voices of everyday readers emerge from both published and unpublished sources, including interviews conducted with literary tourists and archival research into the founding of the Jane Austen Society of North America and the exceptional Austen collection of Alberta Hirshheimer Burke of Baltimore.Additional topics include new Austen portraits; portrayals of Austen, and of Austen fans, in film and fiction; and hybrid works that infuse Austen's writings with horror, erotica, or explicit Christianity.Everybody's Jane will appeal to all those who care about Austen and will change how we think about the importance of literature and reading today.
This book explores contemporary transformations of the female Bildungsroman, showing that the intersection of the genre and gender brought to critical attention in the context of second wave feminism remains of equal importance in the era of postfeminism. The female Bildung narrative has acquired an important position in twentieth – and twenty-first century literature through its continuing depiction of female self-discovery and emancipation as a process of negotiating the traditional divisions of female and male roles in relation to the private and public spaces. Recognizing the seminal contribution of feminist criticism to the definition of the genre and the role of feminist cultural pro...
Feminist Film Studies is a readable, yet comprehensive textbook for introductory classes in feminist film theory and criticism. Karen Hollinger provides an accessible overview of women’s representation and involvement in film, complemented by analyses of key texts that illustrate major topics in the field. Key areas include: a brief history of the development of feminist film theory the theorization of the male gaze and the female spectator women in genre films and literary adaptations the female biopic feminism and avant-garde and documentary film women as auteurs lesbian representation women in Third Cinema. Each chapter includes a "Films in Focus" section, which analyzes key texts related to the chapter’s major topic, including examples from classical Hollywood, world cinema, and the contemporary period. This book provides students in both film and gender/women’s studies with a clear introduction to the field of feminist film theory and criticism.
The BBC television series Downton Abbey (2010-2016), highly rated in the UK, achieved cult status among American viewers, harking back to the days when serial dramas ruled the airwaves. The show's finale was one of the most watched in all of television history. This collection of new essays by British and American contributors explores how a series about life in an early 20th century English manor home resonated with American audiences. Topics include the role of the house in literature and film, the changing roles of women and the servant class, the influence of jazz and fashion, and attitudes regarding education and the class system.
"Explores gender stereotypes and the transgression of these gender stereotypes in recent films, television series and music videos. Films that are cited include Pride and Prejudice, Bridget Jones' Diary, Bride and Prejudice, Magnolia, American Beauty, Fight Club, High Noon, Brokeback Mountain and the Shrek movies. Sex and the City and Desperate Housewives, and the music videos of 50 Cent and the G Unit are also explored."--Source inconnue.
“Hamlet” by Olivier, Kaurismäki or Shepard and “Pride and Prejudice” in its many adaptations show the virulence of these texts and the importance of aesthetic recycling for the formation of cultural identity and diversity. Adaptation has always been a standard literary and cultural strategy, and can be regarded as the dominant means of production in the cultural industries today. Focusing on a variety of aspects such as artistic strategies and genre, but also marketing and cultural politics, this volume takes a critical look at ways of adapting and appropriating cultural texts across epochs and cultures in literature, film and the arts.
Expanding Austenland: The Pride and Prejudice Fanfiction Archive explores Jane Austen’s reception in popular culture through an exploration of the ever-expanding terrain of online fanfiction, professionally published (profic) texts, and other intertextual reworkings inspired by the author’s most popular novel, Pride and Prejudice. The book argues that given its pervasiveness, Pride and Prejudice could be usefully considered not as a single novel, but as an entire ‘archive’ of interrelated texts, or as a portal that opens a ‘virtual world’ for readers to expand and explore. By examining the Pride and Prejudice archive of interrelated texts, this book analyses the process through which an individual novel can develop a virtual life, or afterlife. The evolving world that is opened by Pride and Prejudice, and extended and enriched through fanfiction, is conceptualised in the monograph as ‘Austenland’.