Reading Adaptations: Novels and Verse Narratives on the Stage, 1790-1840Reading adaptations provides an original introduction to the widespread and popular practice of stage adaptation in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Through a series of specific case studies, the book offers readings of stage versions of works by writers such as William Godwin, Walter Scott and Charles Dickens and establishes important new contexts within which to view the production and reception of the period's canonical literature. The plays engage with the original texts' treatment of issues such as social and political justice, the construction of individual and national identity and the emergence of the professional writer. Adaptations created both a literal and metaphorical site for public debate about a text's meaning and significance and, taken as a whole, the plays discussed within the present study allow a unique insight into the development of modern distinctions between 'literary' and 'popular' culture. The book's argument demonstrates the significance of theatrical adaptation for an improved understanding of the cultural complexity of the Romantic period and rediscovers a fascinating but critically neglected area of literary production. Reading adaptations will be of interest to all lecturers, postgraduate and advanced undergraduate students working on the literary or theatrical culture of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. |
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Reading Adaptations: Novels and Verse Narratives on the Stage, 1790-1840 Philip Cox (Lecturer.) No preview available - 2000 |
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Allan-Bane appears artistic attempts audience Bois-Guilbert Brian British Theatre Caleb Williams Cambridge University Press Cedric character Charles Dickens Clarendon Press closet closet drama contemporary critics cultural Dibdin Dickens's discussion drama dramatist earlier effect Egan's Elizabeth Inchbald English essay example Eyre Eyre's fiction Forster Frankenstein Galt genre gesture Godwin Hazlitt Hebrew ideological implicitly Inchbald Iron Chest Isaac Ivanhoe Ivanhoe's Knight of Snowdoun Lady Lake literary London Lukacs Mary Shelley melodrama Moncrieff narrative Nicholas Nickleby nineteenth century novelist Oliver Twist original Oxford performance Pickwick Papers play playwright poet poetic political popular present production provides quoted reader reading Rebecca representation revealed Review Rob Roy Roderick Romantic Sam Weller scene Scott's novel Scott's poetry seen sense Shakespeare Shelley's Sir Walter Scott social song speech stage adaptations suggests theatrical Three Acts tion Tories vulgar Weller Whilst William Godwin William Hazlitt William Wordsworth Wordsworth writing