Jane Austen: tra brand e desiderio

Donata Meneghelli

doi:10.13125/2039-6597/1358

Donata Meneghelli Università di Bologna

DOI: https://doi.org/10.13125/2039-6597/1358

Keywords: Jane Austen, Adapatation, Literature, Film, Popular Culture

Abstract

“It is a truth universally acknowledged” that Jane Austen, after her canonization in the pantheon of Western literature, has recently gained unprecedented visibility in the global pop and media culture.

The essay analyses the ways, the forms, the supports and channels through which Jane Austen herself as well as her novels (with particular attention to Pride and Prejudice) have crossed the threshold of academia, university curricula, and professional readers, to enter another cultural space – YouTube, fan communities and websites, pop music, blogs, romance, horror, and chick-lit – so becoming both one of the popular mythologies of Twentieth-first century and a powerful brand, that is, the centre of gravity of multiple economic interests, ranging from film and TV production, to publishing and tourism industry. Nowadays Austen is a means for catalysing (and exploiting) the desires, projections, and expectations of new typologies of readers. The essay especially focuses on Jane Austen fan fiction, which is the problematic ground where different media (litterature, cinema, TV, web and digital media in general), where producers and consumers, where reading and writing, where top down strategies and bottom up pressures, converge.

The Jane Austen case study highlights a host of ground-breaking transformations in the field of cultural production and consumption: on the one hand, a new textuality, multiple, rhizomatic, euphoric, emerges, which scorns any metaphysic of the original and perversely realizes some famous critical utopias. On the other hand, such a phenomenon points to some crucial contradictions that are inherent to any process of cultural democratization.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Author Biography

Donata Meneghelli, Università di Bologna

Donata Meneghelli is Associate Professor at the University of Bologna, where she teaches Comparative Literature and Literature and Visual Studies. Her interests focus on the theory and history of the novel, intermediality, narratology, adaptation, literature and visuality, Henry James, the nouveau roman. Amongst her publications: Una forma che include tutto (1997), Teorie del punto di vista (1998), “Quadri senza cornici, cornici senza quadri: il romanzo nello specchio della pittura”, La cornice, Ed. Federico Bertoni - Margherita Versari (2006), “Narrazione”, Dizionario tematico della letteratura, vol. III (2007), “Sophie Calle: tra fotografia e parola”, Guardare oltre, Ed. Silvia Albertazzi - Ferdinando Amigoni (2008), “La tension entre la forme et l’informe dans le roman du XXe siècle”, Formules (2009), Storie proprio così. Il racconto nell’era della narratività totale (2012), “Periodization, Comparative Literature, and Italian Modernism”, CLCweb: Comparative Literature and Culture (2013). She also works as a translator of critical and literary texts both from English and French.

References

Albrecht-Crane, Christa – Cutchins, Dennis (eds.), Adaptation Studies: New Approaches, Madison, NJ, Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 2010.

Austen, Jane, Pride and Prejudice, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, Penguin, 1972.

Barthes, Roland, “Introduction à l’analyse structurale des récits”, Communications, 8 (1966): 34-65, trad. it. “Introduzione all’analisi strutturale dei racconti”, L’analisi del racconto, AA. VV., Milano, Bompiani, 1969: 5-46.

Barthes, Roland, S/Z, Paris, Seuil, 1970, trad. it. S/Z, Torino, Einaudi, 1973.

Baetens, Jan, La Novellisation. Du film au roman, Bruxelles, Les Impressions Nouvelles, 2008.

Bompiani, Ginevra, Lo spazio narrante, Milano, La Tartaruga, 1978.

Bremond, Claude, “La logique des possibles narratifs”, Communications, 8 (1966): 60-76, trad. it. “La logica dei possibili narrativi”, L’analisi del racconto, AA. VV., Milano, Bompiani, 1969: 97-122.

Bremond, Claude, Logique du récit, Paris, Seuil, 1973, trad. it. Logica del racconto, Milano, Bompiani, 1973.

Brown, Susan J., Jane Austen Junkie, get your fix! A compilation of over 600 books and 50 movies inspired by Jane Austen, CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2013.

Brownstein, Rachel, Why Jane Austen?, New York, Columbia UP, 2011.

Campbell Webster, Emma, Lost in Austen. Create Your Own Jane Austen Adventure, London, Riverhead, 2007.

Cartmell, Deborah, Screen Adaptations. Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice: A Close Study of the Relationship between Text and Film, London, Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2010.

Collins, Jim, Bring on the Books for Everybody. How Literary Culture Became Popular Culture, Durham and London, Duke UP, 2010.

Cutchins, Denny – Raw, Lawrence – Walsh, James M. (eds.), Redefining Adaptation Studies, Lanham, Maryland, Scarecrow Press, 2010.

Demory, Pamela, “Jane Austen and the Chick Flick in the Twenty-first Century”, Albrecht-Crane – Cutchins 2010: 121-149.

Fergus, Jan, “The Professional Woman Writer”, A Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen, Eds. Edward Copeland – Juliet McMaster, Cambridge, Cambridge UP, 2011: 1-20.

Garroni, Emilio, “Interpretare”, Il testo letterario. Istruzioni per l’uso, Ed. Mario Lavagetto, Roma-Bari, Laterza, 1996: 245-282.

Genette, Gérard, Palimpsestes. La littérature au second degré, Paris, Seuil, 1982, trad. it. Palinsesti. La letteratura al secondo grado, Torino, Einaudi, 1997.

Giglioli, Daniele, “Postfazione”, Fredric Jameson, Postmodernismo ovvero La logica culturale del tardo capitalismo, Roma, Fazi, 2007: 417-434.

Harman, Claire, Jane’s Fame. How Jane Austen Conquered the World, Edinburgh, London, New York, Melbourne, Canongate, 2009.

Hutcheon, Linda, A Theory of Adaptation, New York and London, Routledge, 2006 (trad. it. Teoria degli adattamenti, Roma, Armando, 2011).

James, Henry, “The Lesson of Balzac”, The Question of Our Speech, The Lesson of Balzac. Two Lectures, Boston and New York, Houghton Mifflin, 1905: 55-116.

Jameson, Fredric, The Political Unconscious, London, Methuen, 1981, trad. it. L’inconscio politico, Milano, Garzanti, 1990.

Jameson, Fredric, Postmodernism or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, Durham, Duke UP, 1991, trad. it. Postmodernismo ovvero La logica culturale del tardo capitalismo, Roma, Fazi, 2007.

Jenkins, Henry, Convergence Culture, New York, New York UP, 2006, trad. it. Cultura convergente, Milano, Apogeo, 2007.

Pugh, Sheenagh, The Democratic Genre. Fan Fiction in Literary Context, Nolton Street, Bridgend, CF31 3BN, Seren, 2005.

Prince, Gerald, Narrative as Theme, University of Nebraska Press, 1992.

Ryan, Marie-Laure, Narrative as Virtual Reality, Baltimore and London, The Johns Hopkins UP, 2001.

Troostr, Linda V., “The Nineteenth-century Novel on Film: Jane Austen”, The Cambridge Companion to Literature on Screen, Eds. Deborah Cartmell – Imelda Whelehan, Cambridge and New York, Cambridge UP, 2007, pp. 75-89.

Wells, Juliette, Everybody’s Jane. Austen in the Popular Imagination, London, New Delhi, New York, Sidney, Boomsbury, 2012.

Yaffe, Deborah, Among the Janeites. A Journey Through the World of Jane Austen Fandom, Boston and New York, Hiughton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013.

Sitografia

Ayden's Story Page, http://ayden.mrsdarcy.com/, web (ultimo accesso 30/08/2014).

Click lit, http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chick_lit, web (ultimo accesso 30/08/2014).

Confessions of a Jane Austen Addicted, http://www.amazon.com/ Confessions-Austen-Addict-Laurie-Rigler/dp/B001G8WRGU, web (ultimo accesso 30/08/2014).

Jane Austen in Popular Culture, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Jane_Austen_in_popular_culture, web (ultimo accesso 30/08/2014).

Jane Austen’s Fight Club, https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=r2PM0om2El8, web (ultimo accesso 30/08/2014).

Jasna. Jane Austen Society of North America, http://www.jasna.org/ index.html, web (ultimo accesso 30/08/2014).

Pemberley Digital, https://www.youtube.com/user/PemberleyDigital, web (ultimo accesso 30/08/2014).

Regency History, www.regencyhistyory.net, web (ultimo accesso 30/08/2014).

Tanya’s Story Page, http://tanya3.mrsdarcy.com/, web (ultimo accesso 30/08/2014).

The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ pemberleydigital/the-lizzie-bennet-diaries-dvdand-more/posts/435025, web (ultimo accesso 30/08/2014).

Filmografia

Pride and Prejudice, Dir. Joe Wright, Stati Uniti, 2005.

Lost in Austen, serie televisiva ITV, Dir. Dan Zeff, Gran Bretagna, 2008.

Jane Austen: Between Brand and Desire

Abstract

Downloads

Author Biography

References

Most read articles by the same author(s)