Adaptation Of The Film Adaptation As A Literary Interpretation: On The Austin Film In The 1990s

In the past few decades, critics and scholars have grown increasingly interested in the relationship between novels and their film adaptations. Adaptation studies have moved beyond fidelity to analysis of literary interpretation and criticism, intertexuality and intermediality. This thesis, drawing on film, literature, and adaptation theories, analyzes four film adaptations of Jane Austen: Emma Thompson has a thematic interpretation of Sense and Sensibility by celebrating love and in the search for love, her protagonists learn that neither sense devoid of sensibility nor sensibility devoid of sense is desirable; Douglas McGrath has a character interpretation of a deified heroine in Emma who makes some random mistakes and such interpretation deflates the irony and the moral growth of Emma in the novel; Amy Heckerling has a sociological interpretation of Emma in Clueless which satirizes the contemporary world of appearance and snobbishness; Patricia Rozema takes a feminist approach toward Mansfield Park and highlights slavery, sexuality, and feminism. The thesis shows that adaptation is a process of re-reading and re-writing. A primary text of itself, adaptation is an important interpretive and critical tool for literary works.Furthermore, the thesis illustrates that film adaptation supplements, rather than replaces, the novel. They encourage viewers to go back to novels. This is because adaptation offers a different and modern angle toward certain plots and certain characters, which adds understanding and which relates to the modern readers more than the novel. And finally the discussion moves to the fact that these films link Austen's world with ours. By illustrating that adaptations in fact adapt to changing environments and changing tastes, as well as to a new medium, literary canon undertakes new meanings and gain immortality among modern readers. In the process of moving from texts to films, and returning from films to texts, adaptations not only provide important interpretive tool but also help their source novel survive, thus maintain literary canon.