A close study of the relationship between text and film versions of Great Expectations. Literature and film studies students will find plenty of material to support their courses and essay writing on how the film versions provide different readings of the original text. Focussing on David Lean's film of Great Expectations, the book discusses: the literary text in its historical context, key themes and dominant readings of the text, how the text is adapted for screen and how adaptations have changed our reading of the original text. There are numerous excerpts from the literary text, screenplays and shooting scripts, with suggestions for comparison. The book also features quotations from authors, screenwriters, directors, critics and others linked with the chosen film and text.

Literature and film studies students will find plenty of material to support their courses and essay writing on how the film versions provide different readings of the original text. Focussing on numerous film versions, from Percy Stow's 1908 adaptation to Peter Greenaway's Prospero's Books, the book discusses: the literary text in its historical context, key themes and dominant readings of the text, how the text is adapted for screen and how adaptations have changed our reading of the original text. There are numerous excerpts from the literary text, screenplays and shooting scripts, with suggestions for comparison. The book also features quotations from authors, screenwriters, directors, critics and others linked with the chosen film and text.

Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, published in 1960, is one of the most popular and acclaimed novels to appear in 20th century America. The book's appeal to readers both young and old shows no signs of diminishing in the new millennium. The 1962 film version, an enduring, much-loved classic, ranks 25th of the American Film Institute's Greatest American Movies list. And yet, neither Lee's novel nor the film version has attracted much critical discussion. This book, by a leading literary and film scholar, shines light on the complex and fascinating adaptation process that brought Lee's work to the commercial screen. R. Barton Palmer deftly places Mockingbird within both its fictional setting—a 1930s Southern town marked deeply by racial injustice—and the postwar Civil Rights era that saw the novel and film emerge to such popularity. Palmer demonstrates, with learning and subtlety, how the indirect indictment of the insupportable evil of Jim Crow in both novel and film has proven spectacularly successful in changing hearts and minds for nearly half a century.

This close study of film adaptations of King Lear looks atseveral different versions (mainstream, art-house and cinematic'offshoots') and discusses: the literary text in its historicalcontext, key themes and dominant readings of the text, how the text isadapted for screen and how adaptations have changed our reading of theoriginal text. There are many references to the literary text and screenplays andthe book also features quotations from directors and critics. There isplenty of discursive material here to support student work on both filmand literature courses.

This close study of the relationship between text and film versions of Romeo & Juliet will offer plenty of material to literature and film studies students to support their courses and essay writing on how the film versions provide different readings of the original text. Focusing on West Side Story and Baz Luhrmann's William Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet, the book discusses the literary text in its historical context, key themes and dominant readings of the text, how the text is adapted for the screen, and how adaptations have changed our reading of the original text. There are numerous excerpts from the literary text, screenplays, and shooting scripts, with suggestions for comparison. The book also features quotations from authors, screenwriters, directors, critics, and others linked with the chosen film and text.

The study of literature adapted for the screen is a growing area of study in schools and universities. Many students have to produce critical essays comparing the novel and film versions of a particular text. The Screen Adaptations series offers a wealth of study material, from the literary context of the original work to thought-provoking comparisons of the screen versions to critical commentary and the afterlife of the films. Pride and Prejudice is a classic piece of literature, and any new adaptation is a major event. With several well-known TV and film versions available (featuring stars such as Keira Knightley) as well as a Bollywood version, discussions around how these films interpret the story, themes, and characters are a popular classroom choice for students and teachers alike. This new title in the Screen Adaptations series provides a rich source of material to help students understand and write about the reciprocal relationship between film and literature. In addition to in-depth analysis of the various screen versions and alternative readings, the book contains an interview with writer Andrew Davies, best known for his 1995 adaptation. Following from Shakespeare, Jane Austen on screen is now an established part of literary studies, and the volume will conclude with a survey of the growing body of literature in the field.

Hamlet is the most often produced play in the western literary canon, and a fertile global source for film adaptation. Samuel Crowl, a noted scholar of Shakespeare on film, unpacks the process of adapting from text to screen through concentrating on two sharply contrasting film versions of Hamlet by Laurence Olivier (1948) and Kenneth Branagh (1996). The films' socio-political contexts are explored, and the importance of their screenplay, film score, setting, cinematography and editing examined. Offering an analysis of two of the most important figures in the history of film adaptations of Shakespeare, this study seeks to understand a variety of cinematic approaches to translating Shakespeare's "words, words, words" into film's particular grammar and rhetoric