The Cambridge Companion to Literature on Screen

Abstract

Deborah Cartmell and Imelda Whelehan, eds. The Cambridge Companion to Literature on Screen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. 288 pp., $80.00 hard cover; 273 pp., $24.99 paper. The Cambridge Companion to Literature on Screen covers much the same ground as T he Literature /Film Reader, and even contains some of the same contributors (Brian MacFarlane, Sarah Cardwell). In many ways, however, it is a very different kind of book: the editors observe that, in view of the fact that Cambridge University Press has seen fit to publish it, adaptation studies has finally arrived as a "suitable" subject for academic debate (1). MacFarlane's and Timothy Corrigan's contributions provide useful surveys of theoretical developments in the field from the beginning of the last century to the present. While acknowledging the contributions made by George Bluestone (1957), both of them hope that the fidelity question can finally be laid to rest: greater attention should be paid to "exploring the gap between disciplinarity and adaptation, between literature and film [. . .] adaptation studies necessarily trouble and open disciplinary boundaries" (42). The following chapters focus on the shifting historical contexts of adaptation. Douglas Lanier's survey of Shakespeare on film begins in the late nineteenth century and culminates with Luhrmann's Romeo +Juliet (1996) and Shakespeare in Love (1998). He concludes that Shakespeare has been constructed in recent times as a filmmaker rather than a literary giant (73). Linda V Troost offers a comprehensive guide to Jane Austen adaptations, although I can't help but feel that she prefers Joe Wright's Pride and Prejudice (2005) to all the previous versions of the novel, simply because it drags the text out of the prison-house of "literature" and transforms it into a teen-oriented romance. Martin Halliwell's and Peter Brooker's essays focus on the modernist and postmodern aspects of adaptation; both identify Stephen Daldry's The Hours (2002) as a film containing both elements. I found both contributions invaluable in their determination to show what elements render an adaptation modernist or postmodern, while simultaneously showing how it can "open out an alternative, underdeveloped, or suppressed trace" in its source-material (115). This comment is strongly reminiscent of Tom Leitch's observation (made in his recent book Adaptation and its Discontents [2007]) that adaptations need to be treated as creative works in their own right. A further section "Genre, Industry, Taste" shows how adaptations are shaped by several criteria-institutional, and cinematic-as well as audience taste. Eckard Voigts-Virchow rehearses familiar arguments about "Englishness" and the heritage film, but provides an interesting sideline in his analysis of German television adaptations of Rosamund Pilcher's Mills and Boon novels, that create a Germaninspired view of Englishness. Imelda Whelehan's discussion of Now Voyager (1942) also follows a well-trodden scholarly path, as it shows how Irving Rapper's film version was shaped by Bette Davis's star image. Deborah Carimeli looks at how different genres of children's literature, ranging from classics such as The Wizard of 0% to more commercial texts such as P. L. Travers's Mary Poppins, have been adapted by various film studios. She is particularly convincing in her discussion of "Disneyfication" (168-74). The book's final section suggests new approaches for adaptation studies that are very different from those proposed in The Literature /Film Reader. …