From the Comic to the Romantic: Cinematic Reshaping of Pride and Prejudice

Kuo-Jung Chen

novel and film ； comic and romantic ； Jane Austen ； Pride and Prejudice

小說與戲劇

17期（2007 / 03 / 01）

3 - 42

英文

Jane Austen's status as the grandmaster of the novel of manners in English literature has long been established. Following and observing many of the conventions of the comedy of manners, Austen's subject matter consists mainly of the courtship and marriage of the country gentry class. Though her lifetime spans the Romantic period, Austen remains inexplicably detached from the poetics of the Romantic Movement. A.C. Bradley considers her ”anti-romantic,” and Charlotte Brontë's condemnation of Austen's being simply ”shrewd and observant” and lack of ”passions” has almost become a literary myth. However, with the advancement of cinema, film adaptation of a literary work often changes not only its fade and structure but also the receptive perception of the reader-audience. This essay attempts to analyze three proposal scenes-Collins's and Darcy's two proposals to Elizabeth Bennet-in four film adaptations of Pride and Prejudice by Robert Z. Leonard (1940), Cyril Coke (1980), Simon Langton (1995), and Joe Wright (2005), respectively. The main purpose of such analyses is to trace the development and reshaping of Pride and Prejudice from a novel of manners, which emphasizes comic and ironic elements and the importance of sense and propriety, to a great love story, which foregrounds romantic passions and defiance of social conventions.

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