John H. O'Neill, the Edmund A. LeFevre Professor of English, will present "Jane Austen's Novels and Heritage Cinema: Thoughts on Adaptation," as the next guest in the Faculty Lecture Series, on Friday, April 4, at 4:10 p.m. in the Red Pit.
O'Neill explains: "Most of the films of Jane Austen's novels that were produced in the 1990's are part of a relatively new genre, which has been called 'heritage cinema.' Heritage films demonstrate a careful attention to recreating historically accurate dress and décor. Just as a performance of 17th-century or 18th-century music with original instruments seeks to reproduce the experience of listening to a concert 200-300 years ago, a heritage film adaptation seeks reproduce the narrative together with the environment that the first readers of the novel may have imagined when they read it. My lecture will identify three different kinds of film adaptations of novels and show how each kind interacts with the ideology implicit in Austen's works. I will illustrate my remarks with brief clips from some of the films."
Sponsored by the Office of the Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of the Faculty.
