ENGL 24018 - Fidelity and Betrayal: the 19th Century British Novel On Film

Course Credit: 1
(CMLT, FILM, WGSS)
In this course, we will investigate 19th century fictions and their contemporary film adaptations, debating the cultural work performed by both genres: what purposes did these novels serve for their first readers, what drives our own culture’s obsession with an imagined Victorian past, and how do discourses of nostalgia and of fidelity to the “original” shape adaptations of canonical novels? Readings will include 5-6 novels by authors like Jane Austen, Emily Brontë, Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Lewis Carroll, Robert Louis Stevenson and Bram Stoker, as well as literary and film theory; students should also be prepared to attend 8-10 evening screenings. [Before 1900] [AH]