Languages & Literatures 2011 | 1 | - Peter Lang

espond to the perceived authority of Shakespeare
as author, text, cultural icon, theatrical
tradition, and academic institution . This
study explores two central questions . First,
what efforts do directors make to justify their
adaptations and assert an interpretive authority
of their own? Second, how do those
self-authorizing gestures impact upon the
construction of gender, class, and ethnic identity
within the filmed adaptations of Shakespeare’s
plays? The chosen films and television
series considered take a wide range of
approaches to the adaptative process – some
faithfully preserve the words of Shakespeare;
others jettison the Early Modern language
in favor of contemporary idiom; some recreate
the geographic and historical specificity
of the original plays, and others transplant
the plot to fresh settings . The wealth of extratextual
material now available with film and
television distribution and the numerous
website tie-ins and interviews offer the critic
a mine of material for accessing the ways in
which directors perceive the looming Shakespearean
shadow and justify their projects .
Authorizing Shakespeare on Film and Television
places these directorial claims alongside
the film and television plotting and aesthetic
to investigate how such authorizing gestures
shape the presentation of gender, class, and
ethnicity .
l. Monique PittMan is Associate Professor
of English and Director of the J . N . Andrews
Honors Program at Andrews University in
Berrien Springs, Michigan . She earned her
PhD from Purdue University . Her previous
publications examine film adaptations of
Shakespearean drama .
Sven Rank
Twentieth-Century Adaptations
of Macbeth
Writing between Influence,
Intervention, and Cultural Transfer
Frankfurt am Main, Berlin, Bern, Bruxelles,
New York, Oxford, Wien, 2010 .
385 pp ., 1 fig ., 1 table, 2 graphs
Bayreuther Beiträge zur Literaturwissenschaft .
Bd . 33
Herausgegeben von Walter Gebhard,
Michael Steppat und Gerhard Wolf
hb . ISBN 978-3-631-60174-7
CHF 91 .– / € D 62 .80 / € A 64 .60 / € 58 .70 /
£ 52 .80 / US-$ 90 .95
T
he book traces individuals’ adaptive
inter ventions in the cultural sphere .
More specifically, it investigates the purposes
of dramatic adapting, which is basically re-
garded as a political activity . Following the
Langue et littératures anglaises · Anglistik · English Language and Literatures
intense micropolitical combat of an author
with the precursor Shakespeare, adaptation
becomes comprehensible as part of the ceaseless
motions of macrocultural change . At
each adaptation’s centre, an individual subject’s
identity act encounters external discourses,
and these transform each other and
destabilise ideologies . Moreover, they lay
siege to the cultural powerhouse Shakespeare .
The book thus explores adapters’ revolt against
the loop of eternal repetition, which is created
by canonic forces . In order to do so, the
author uses an innovative combination of
standard theories .
A
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Yomna Mohamed Saber
Brave to be Involved
lthough Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-2004)
was the first African American writer
to win the Pulitzer Prize, she occupies a
curious position in the larger black canon .
Despite her importance, with the exception
of very few critical accounts of her work, she
has been usually treated in critical isolation
from her black peers, be they male or female .
Brooks’s earlier stages were discarded by
many black critics as works directed to white
audiences, whereas black critics who became
interested in her nationalist phase limited
her to the Black Aesthetic perspective . Such
approaches to Brooks’s opus fail to do jus-
tice to her work which stood on equal foot-
ing with other groundbreaking works in
Antje Schumacher
Brian Moore’s Black Robe
Novel, Screenplay(s) and Film
Frankfurt am Main, Berlin, Bern, Bruxelles,
New York, Oxford, Wien, 2010 . 153 pp .
European University Studies . Series 14:
Anglo-Saxon Language and Literature . Vol . 494
pb . ISBN 978-3-631-60321-5
CHF 51 .– / € D 34 .80 / € A 35 .80 / € 32 .50 /
£ 29 .30 / US-$ 50 .95
S
tudying Brian Moore’s Black Robe (1985),
this book examines the dual adaptation
process of historical sources into fiction and
fiction into film . The fictionalisation process
is analysed on the basis of the Jesuit Relations
of the 17th century and Moore’s novel . Besides
transforming and compiling information
from these annual reports, Moore also uses
them to justify his choice of obscene language
for the indigenous characters . The visualisation
process is studied with the help of
various versions of the screenplay with respect
to the differences of narrative and narration
in fiction and film . A final exemplary
analysis illustrates in detail how the original
historical sources were transformed via the
novel and the screenplays into the final visualisation
in the motion picture .
Shifting Positions in the Poetry of Gwendolyn Brooks
Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Frankfurt am Main, New York, Oxford, Wien, 2010 .
211 pp .
pb . ISBN 978-3-0343-0504-4
CHF 58 .– / € D 39 .60 / € A 40 .70 / € 37 .– / £ 33 .30 / US-$ 57 .95
terms of her pioneering themes and tech-
niques . This book examines all of Brooks’s
stages while tracing the changes that marked
her voice throughout . By comparing and con-
trasting her work to Richard Wright, Mar-
garet Walker, Ralph Ellison, Lorraine Hans-
berry, Amiri Baraka and Sonia Sanchez, it
becomes possible to highlight the distinct
poetic legacy of Brooks . The aim of this book
is to assess the extent to which Brooks participated
in the black canon and to examine
how far her realistic settings and individualised
characters resulted in a poetry capable
of providing accurate reflections of black
life in America throughout five very vibrant
decades .
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