Jane Austen’s novels will be the basis of this seminar, where 18th century cultural contexts informing women’s positions in English society are the departure point for interrogating the translatability of Austen’s plots and politics into more contemporary settings. While Hollywood cinema and British television adaptations of Austen’s works captivate today’s audiences, showing how her writing resonates on a global level, the relevance of Austen’s work to non-Western contexts is not always apparent. The Bollywood-style adaptations of Austen’s texts to be examined in this class illustrate the practice of adapting ‘the culturally accredited eighteenth- and nineteenth-century novel’ for film (Hutcheon, 5), which relies on the ‘value of the novel for the Indian subcontinent’ as a feasible resource for the Indian film industry (Ponzanesi, 175). In this light, one might ask, what induces such transcultural comfort in transposing Austen’s works onto late 20th and early 21st century South Asian cultural landscapes? Presentations will be a required part of the class. A reader will be made available. Students are required to have acquired the novels and read them before the class takes place. Please consider getting the Penguin Classics editions so that we can all be on the same page when engaging with the texts for class work. Texts: Novels by Jane Austen 1. Sense and Sensibility (1811) 2. Pride and Prejudice (1813) 3. Emma (1815) Film Adaptations: 1. Rajiv Menon. Kandukondain Kandukondain. (2000) 2. Gurinder Chadha. Bride and Prejudice. (2004) 3. Rajeshree Ohja. Aisha. (2010) |
