This month's collection looks at a number of different adaptations of Jane Austen's novels for television and film.
Austen has proved immensely and enduringly popular on screen - the adaptations collected here span five decades - and there's plenty for students to get their teeth into...
The lessons linked to Pride and Prejudice encourage students to explore how two very different directors, working in very different decades, portray Lydia and Wickham's elopement, as well as the way they deal with Elizabeth Bennett's first visit to Pemberley.
But the comparisons need not stop there. Given the popularity of the BBC's 1995 version of Pride and Prejudice, there's real potential to compare and contrast this more accessible, modern interpretation with the less stylised 1967 adaptation, which draws on the traditions of theatre performance.
Then there's the question of authenticity. Do adaptations of plays and books for television and film have a responsibility to the original text? How concerned are the filmmakers behind these different versions with creating convincing period worlds? Of course, this debate also has implications for the definition of 'adaptation' - does it include TV programmes and films that draw on original sources but update language and setting or are 'inspired by' a particular text?
The art of adaptation is another theme. How do a screenwriters and directors reflect a character's inner emotions or essential background information that does not easily fit within a script?
In many of these adaptations, narration is rewritten as dialogue but the filmmakers also employ an arsenal of visual and editing tools to aid, for example, both characterisation and comedy.
Indeed, the characterisation of Mrs Norris in Mansfield Park is the subject of one lesson, in which students investigate how the officious widow's character has been translated from page to screen. A further lesson on Persuasion asks them to take the role of a director and imagine how to portray a crucial scene in which Anne Elliot reads a letter from Captain Wentworth.
Lastly, it's Austen's gentle (yet powerful) satirical take on 18th century social mores under the microscope. Two scenes, from Emma and Persuasion, are used to examine how directors have used, among other things, shot composition, colour and setting to highlight contemporary social hierarchies and prejudices.
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