Adapting to the Novel Seminar Notes.
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De ning Children’s Literature
- Readership: written for children (as we see them today)? Read only by children? Read by
children and adults?
- Textual qualities: round child character, taking child’s point of view seriously, speci c tone?
- Product: categorised, sold and marketed as children’s lit? (in Britain: rise in 18th century)
- Origin: story told by an individual adult to individual children?
- Aim: fusion of education and entertainment?
Is Peter Pan Children’s Literature?
- Kind of.
- There is a lot of violence and racism.
- Racism is more prevalent in the lm, violence is more shocking in the book.
- Tinker bell dies
- Authority of the father, he believes at the end in escaping and in imagination.
- Stick to your imagination, don’t forget it when you grow up.
- You can be anything you like if you stick to your imagination.
- Peter is outside the window looking in and he can’t join them.
- In Disney you have the father looking out looking for Peter pan
- Disney with better with the American idea of the American dream.
- Barry ts more with the victorian idea of family and society.
- Peter was shut out by his mother when she got another child, she shut the window.
- In the Disney version, if you loose your imagination you become more like the father.
Cartmell’s Adapting Children’s Literature
- Individualism and optimism
- Escape, fantasy, magic imagination
- Innocence
- Romance and happiness
- Good triumphing over evil
It could be posited that one of the aims of children’s literature is the fusion of education and
entertainment. This can be done, among other things, by means of role models. Can you
identify (positive or negative) role models in Peter Pan? Are they the same in the lms?
- In the Disney version he seems very pleasant, yet in the book he was more childish and not
as pleasant.
- Wendy was traditionally very victorian feminine in the novel. In the hogan version she has
kind of a feminist intention. Wendy was a positive role model in the Hogan movie and a bit
bland in the Disney version.
- Peter is a role model of what not to do, he takes a good characteristic of having imagination,
but he never wants to grow up which would not allow him to have a family and function in
society.
- In hogan the man who plays mr darling also plays captain hook.
- Mr darling cares for his children, he learns to express his feelings.
- Captain Hook wants to have a relationship with wendy, he can’t express his feelings.
Would you agree that, following Rousseau, Barrie in Peter Pan suggests that the child and
the (natural) world of the child represent innocence, including sexual innocence, and the
(cultured) adult world decay and corruption?
- Tinker bell is walking over a mirror and she’s looking at herself.
- She’s thicc, she can’t t through the keyhole.
- She’s Marilyn Monroe-esque with her body.
- The disney movie further informs the image when making the mermaids look beautiful while
they are awful in the book.
- The father says we can’t a ord another child, the disney version leaves this out.
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, J.M. Barrie’s elder brother David, 7 years his senior, died at the age of 13, thus, in a sense,
remaining a child forever. It has been suggested that Barrie ctionalised this situation
in Peter Pan. Is Peter Pan dead and Neverland the underworld?
- …
Newell
- Tries to de ne adaptation with the help of the wizard of oz as an example.
- American point of view.
- The novel is not the source, there are all kinds of things that precede the novel.
Hutcheon
- Tries to ght the notion of delity.
- Art is formed by other art.
- Adaptations give new life to di erent experiences.
Childress
- Readers can derive di erent meanings from texts.
- Reading one’s life into a novel
- Weakness of the article: the intentions of the author were known, you can’t generalise this
and apply this to other works.
Week 2
Seminar 20/11/2020
PRESENTATION: Analysis of the letters in Mans eld Park
- Thesis
- Sir Thomas sends a letter to Mans eld park and it noti es us of the consequences for
Maria.
- Introduction: a short history of letters
- Series follows delity very well.
- Rozema’s lm focusses more on modern issues.
- Letters are used for exchanging information.
- Family members feel a need to stay in touch through letters.
- In Jane Austen’s time letters were supposed to be a social thing.
- Letters allow prolonged consideration —>access to someone’s deepest feelings.
- Letters & Development
- Fanny is later in the book forced to be more independent, forced to talk without the help
of edmund.
- Fanny states she must de ne ms Crawford’s proposal. Her disproval of marriage
develops her to become more independent.
- Morality & Feminism
- Fanny is the epitome of good morals.
- Good morals of Fanny vs the bad morals of the Crawford siblings
- Mary —> cold hearted ambitions.
- Henry —> thoughtless vanity
- Fanny does not adhere strictly to what is expected of her, but she decides that for
herself.
- Audience and the letters
- Fanny uses the letters and talking out Loud to establish a relationship with the audience
(in the lm).
- More shallow in the lm, rather than making a better connection in the audience through
soliloquies like happens in the book.
- Fanny as Jane
- Fanny in the novel is too slight, retiring and internal and perhaps judgemental to
shoulder lm.
- Rozema adds a bit of Austen into fanny to make her more interesting.
- Captivity of women is compared to the captivity of slaves.
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, - Fanny in the lm like Austen rejects the rules imposed on women.
- Conclusion
- Focus on feminism
- Narration through letters
- Fanny is a writer in the lm (like austen) which helps the more feminist approach.
Motives
- Fanny is very assertive —> attract modern audience in the movie, the fanny in the movie is
not suitable for the modern audience.
- Edmund is a wuss / pushover in the movie while sir Thomas is telling his niece she’s grown
up well.
- Tom is given more motivation at the cost of his father compared to the book.
- Cruelty is happening in the colonies and sir Thomas seems to be most responsible
Surroundings
- The door was already very shabby with chipped paint. In the book it was also a house that
she wasn’t used to but in the lm it was made more extreme.
- The whole point is that if you look at the shooting rather than the lming of the house in
Mans eld park. At the end of the movie there’s a scene where everything freezes for a
second. Everything could happen di erently, but it didn’t. She’s walking past the house but
when you look at Mans eld park you see that it is a ruin. It was shot in a house that was
largely a ruin. When you watch the lm carefully you will see.
- Even there, all though it’s a grand building, there are signs of dilatation —>there’s no money
to pay for the upkeep of such a house.
Slavery
- In the book it’s a small detail.
- It became very di cult to ignore it due to the context of that time.
- People had very little to say.
Birds
- Starlings —> bird that features in the book. They often y in ocks that make very interesting
patterns in the sky.
Writing is a metaphor for writing your own life, choosing your own destiny.
Bisexuality of Mary Crawford
- Rozema herself identi es as lesbian.
- Fanny price is an innocent girl, she does have feelings for her cousin but she doesn’t do that
in an erotic way.
- Mary wakes fanny up in that, through a bit of a lesbian irtation. That’s when she tries to
make herself attractive for edmund.
Windows —> metaphor for longing for something you’re not part of.
Week 3
Seminar 27/11/2020
PRESENTATION: Mr Rochester
- Thesis: In the 1943 and 2011 lm adaptations of Jane Eyre, Mr. Rochester;s byronic
characteristics are portrayed di erently in terms of their contemporary context.
- Byronic hero
- Byronic heroes are spectacles for wonder. They gain their power through a quasi-
magical…
- The notorious Byronic hero, the gloomy, brooding gure who scowls his way through his
early poems.
- Su ering from their past and they’re still experiencing trauma from the past.
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