Adapting the Brontës and Reviews

Some new Brontë-related papers:

Auteurs and Authenticity: Adapting the Brontës in the Twenty-First Century
Shelley Anne Galpin
Journal of British Cinema and Television. Volume 11, Issue 1, Page 86-100

This article examines two recent adaptations of Brontë novels and how they relate to discussions surrounding the adaptation of literary texts into film. The position of Cary Joji Fukunaga and Andrea Arnold as auteurs is considered, as is the way in which this was used in the marketing of the films prior to release. Fukunaga's Jane Eyre (2011) and Arnold's Wuthering Heights (2011) are evaluated as examples of British film-making in terms of heritage/anti-heritage discourses, concluding that while they both reject aspects of the traditional ‘heritage film’, overtly in Arnold's film but more subtly in Fukunaga's, neither can escape the notion of authenticity which is central to discussions surrounding adaptation of classic literature. Although apparently more ‘faithful’, Fukunaga's film stops short of the adherence to source material that was emphasised in the pre-release publicity, ironically suppressing Fukunaga's auteurist vision, while Arnold's more overtly auteurist vision is shown to present difficulties over the issue of authorship when adapting a ‘literary great’. Finally, the article considers the commercial and critical success of both films, noting that the status of both directors as auteurs is a selling point prior to release, but that when tackling period material it can be something of a hindrance in terms of both the commerciality and the artistic style of the piece.

A couple of reviews:

Romanticism. Volume 20, Issue 1, Page 88-91, April 2014
Rebecca White, University of Durham, UK
Christine Alexander (ed.), The Brontës: Tales of Glass Town, Angria, and Gondal. Selected Writings (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010)

Victoriographies. Volume 4, Issue 1, Page 93-95, May 2014
Helen Goodman, Royal Holloway, University of London
Eithne Henson, Landscape and Gender in the Novels of Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot, and Thomas Hardy: The Body of Nature (Farnham and Burlington: Ashgate, 2011)