Jane Austen and Co.
Remaking the Past in Contemporary Culture
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Examines recent Austen remakes as well as other “post-heritage” films and television shows to show how the past is reshaped for a contemporary market.
Description
Jane Austen and Co. explores the ways in which classical novels—particularly, but not exclusively, those of Jane Austen—have been transformed into artifacts of contemporary popular culture. Examining recent films, television shows, Internet sites, and even historical tours, the book turns from the question of Austen's contemporary appeal to a broader consideration of other late-twentieth-century remakes, including Dangerous Liaisons, Dracula, Lolita, and even Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Taken together, the essays in Jane Austen and Co. offer a wide-ranging model for understanding how all of these texts—visual, literary, touristic, British, American, French—reshape the past in the new fashions, styles, media, and desires of the present.
Contributors include Virginia L. Blum, Mike Crang, Madeline Dobie, Denise Fulbrook, Deidre Lynch, Sarah Maza, Ruth Perry, Suzanne R. Pucci, Kristina Straub, James Thompson, Maureen Turim, and Martine Voiret.
Suzanne R. Pucci is Associate Professor of French at the University of Kentucky. James Thompson is Professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Reviews
"This is an interesting, often witty, and absolutely informative book. What makes the revisiting of Austen a box office commercial phenomenon—witness Clueless and Bridget Jones's Diary—is our postmodern climate, what the editors call 'present cultural concerns. ' We already live within a type of reality Austen has constructed, and our remodeling of that reality in the present at once displays varieties of clashes, lacunae, significations, parodies, and dilemmas. " — Joseph Natoli, author of Postmodern Journeys: Film and Culture 1996-1998