Literature and Film

Robert Stam is University Professor at New York University. His many books include Film Theory: An Introduction (Blackwell, 2000), Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media (with Ella Shohat, 1994), and Subversive Pleasures: Bakhtin, Cultural Criticism and Film (1989). With Toby Miller, he is the editor of Film and Theory (Blackwell, 2000) and The Blackwell Companion to Film Theory (2000).Alessandra Raengo is finishing her PhD in the Cinema Studies Department at New York University. Her dissertation explores race and vernacular social criticism in American culture between 1945 and 1968. Among her publications are The Birth of Film Genres (1999) and The Bounds of Representation (2000), both multilingual volumes edited with Leonardo Quaresima and Laura Vichi.

“Stam and Raengo's Literature and Film offers a wonderful collection of approaches to the multifaceted and sometimes contradictory relationship between the written word and the filmic image, bringing into the discussion a refreshing series of examples drawn from international and minority cinemas.”Richard Pea, Columbia University

• List of Illustrations viiiNotes on Contributors ixPreface xiiiAcknowledgments xvIntroduction: The Theory and Practice of Adaptation 1Robert Stam1 Improvements and Reparations at Mansfield Park 53Tim Watson2 Keeping the Carcass in Motion: Adaptation and Transmutations of the National in The Last of the Mohicans 71Jacquelyn Kilpatrick3 The Discreet Charm of the Leisure Class: Terence Davies’s The House of Mirth 86Richard Porton4 In Search of Adaptation: Proust and Film 100Melissa Anderson5 The Grapes of Wrath: Thematic Emphasis through Visual Style 111Vivian C. Sobchack6 Cape Fear and Trembling: Familial Dread 126 Kirsten Thompson7 The Carnival of Repression: German Left-wing Politics and The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum 148Alexandra Seibel8 Serial Time: Bluebeard in Stepford 163Bliss Cua Lim9 Boyz N the Hood Chronotopes: Spike Lee, Richard Price, and the Changing Authorship of Clockers 191Paula J. Massood10 Defusing the English Patient 208Patrick Deer11 Carnivals and Goldfish: History and Crisis in the Butcher Boy 233Jessica Scarlata12 Passion or Heartburn? The Uses of Humor in Esquivel’s and Arau’s Like Water for Chocolate 252Dianna C. Niebylski13 Beloved: The Adaptation of an American Slave Narrative 272Mia Mask14 Oral Traditions, Literature, and Cinema in Africa 295Mbye Cham15 Memory and History in the Politics of Adaptation: Revisiting the Partition of India in Tamas 313Ranjani Mazumdar16 The Written Scene: Writers as Figures of Cinematic Redemption 331Paul ArthurIndex 343