Adapting Nineteenth-Century France: Literature in Film, Theatre, Television, Radio and Print

by Andrew Watts, Kate Griffiths

Overview

Arguing that we need to reconceptualize the study of adaptations, Andrew Watts and Kate Griffiths examine six canonical French novelists and the recreations of their works in a variety of media. Rather than viewing the works of Balzac, Hugo, Flaubert, Zola, Maupassant, and Verne as authentic original versions to be defended from the impurities of adapting hands, the authors demonstrate that these “originals” are themselves fashioned from the adapted voices of a host of earlier artists, moments, and media. Analyzing reworkings of canonical literary texts across time and media to emphasize the ways adaptations cast new light on source texts, Adapting Nineteenth-Century France reveals the complexities of both nineteenth-century and contemporary notions of originality and authorial borrowing.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781783163083
Publisher:	University of Wales Press
Publication date:	08/15/2015
Series:	French and Francophone Studies
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Andrew Watts is a lecturer in French studies at the University of Birmingham, UK.


Kate Griffiths is a lecturer in French and translation at Cardiff University, UK.

Table of Contents

Series Editors’ Preface

Acknowledgements

Introduction

      Kate Griffiths

Chapter 1: Labyrinths of Voices: Emile Zola, Germinal and Radio

      Kate Griffiths

Chapter 2: Diamond Thieves and Gold Diggers: Balzac, Silent Cinema and the Spoils of Adaptation

      Andrew Watts

Chapter 3: Fragmented Fictions: Time, Textual Memory and the (Re) Writing of Madame Bovary

      Andrew Watts

Chapter 4: Les Misérables, Theatre and the Anxiety of Excess

      Andrew Watts

Chapter 5: Chez Maupassant: The (In) Visible Space of Television Adaptation

      Kate Griffiths

Chapter 6: Le Tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours: Verne, Todd, Coraci and the Spectropoetics of Adaptation

      Kate Griffiths

Conclusion

      Andrew Watts

Bibliography

Index

Editorial Reviews

Adapting Nineteenth-Century France throws into relief the profoundly intertextual debate on the nature of authorship itself at play between these key writers and some of the best of the adaptations made of them.”
 
“The case study authors underline that in adaptation, true artistry may be found.

SirReadaLot.org

Griffiths and Watts break new ground in their invigorated intermedial exploration of the adaptive afterlives of leading nineteenth-century French novelists. This significant contribution traverses literary criticism, adaptation studies, and media studies, bringing compelling insights, not least in the rarely studied areas of radio and television adaptation.

Susan Harrow

In this volume, key literary works are situated within a highly active network of diverse impulses that extend the critical focus beyond the usual concern of scholars. . . . This major study attentively probes the multimedia and multifaceted dynamics of adaption.

Bradley Stephens