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Deborah Cartmell and Imelda Whelehan, eds. The Cambridge Companion to Literature on Screen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. 288 pp., $80.00 hard cover; 273 pp., $24.99 paper.
The Cambridge Companion to Literature on Screen covers much the same ground as T he Literature /Film Reader, and even contains some of the same contributors (Brian MacFarlane, Sarah Cardwell). In many ways, however, it is a very different kind of book: the editors observe that, in view of the fact that Cambridge University Press has seen fit to publish it, adaptation studies has finally arrived as a "suitable" subject for academic debate (1).
MacFarlane's and Timothy Corrigan's contributions provide useful surveys of theoretical developments in the field from the beginning of the last century to the present. While acknowledging the contributions made by George Bluestone (1957), both of them hope that the fidelity question can finally be laid to rest: greater attention should be paid to "exploring the gap between disciplinarity and adaptation, between literature and film [. . .] adaptation studies necessarily trouble and open disciplinary boundaries" (42).
The following chapters focus on the shifting historical contexts of adaptation. Douglas Lanier's survey of Shakespeare on film begins in the late nineteenth century and culminates with Luhrmann's Romeo +Juliet (1996) and Shakespeare in Love (1998). He concludes that Shakespeare has been constructed in recent times as a filmmaker rather than a literary giant (73). Linda V Troost offers a comprehensive guide to Jane Austen adaptations, although I can't help but feel that she prefers Joe Wright's Pride and Prejudice (2005) to all the previous versions of the novel,...