By the end of the course:
• You will be able to analyse a representative range of nineteenth-, twentieth- and twenty-first-century novels in detail in relation to important elements of their own social and cultural context and to issues of continuing relevance.
• You will understand better how the medium of film can convey and also transform the conventions and formal features of nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first century fiction.
• You will be introduced to relevant, recent critical and theoretical discussions in the field of adaptation studies, such as the fidelity debate, generic definitions of period drama and the role of production and reception histories in shaping our response to literary adaptations.
• You will be able, moreover, to apply this critical knowledge of adaptation studies to your close reading of different adaptations.
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Adaptations are everywhere. They have been an influential cultural form since the dawn of film and the beginnings of television. Before 1992, 85% of all Oscar-winning Best Pictures had been adapted from existing literary works. The scholarly study of adaptations has been slower to develop, but is now a burgeoning interdisciplinary field in literary, film and media studies. This course focuses in particular on the cinematic adaptation of nineteenth-, twentieth- and twenty-first-century British fiction. It situates the close study of selected, significant examples of British fiction and their film adaptations in the context of a thorough introduction to the field of adaptation studies, considering such issues as the fidelity debate, the narratological study of the transition from literature to film, generic definitions of adaptation, and the role of production and reception histories in shaping our response to the phenomenon in an age of digital convergence. Authors to be discussed will vary from year to year, but are likely to include such figures as Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Virginia Woolf, E. M. Forster and Ian McEwan. To provide a clear sense of the development of the novel-to-film adaptation industry over time, a wide variety of productions will be considered, from classic period dramas, to updated, transcultural and postmodern adaptations.
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B1 course Reading Literature or an equivalent introductory course in literary theory.
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