Film, television and radio have, since their birth, been fascinated by nineteenth-century France. This module both investigates why modern media continue to turn to the works of this era for inspiration and how they adapt them. While work on adaptation is dominated by the study of cinema and theatre, this module turns instead to assess adaptation in a multimedia context by concentrating on radio and television. These two media have very different aesthetic frameworks and practical requirements from cinema. Consequently they produce very different adaptations. The module evaluates specific authors in relation to a specific medium with which they enjoy a telling affinity: Flaubert and radio, Maupassant and television, Zola and film. In their affinities with specific media, such adaptations help us better to read the theories, form and content of the authors in question. 

• This module will enable students to engage in detailed close readings of specific texts and their adaptations, providing them with the analytical tools to assess both their form and language.
• The module will facilitate the comparison of such texts/adaptations, enabling students to construct a broad evaluation of adaptation across media.
• Harnessing its case studies to theoretical perspectives, the course will give students the necessary critical tools to engage with contemporary critical debates on adaptation theory in a media-specific context.

The module’s contact hours divide into three blocks, each one dedicated to a different adaptive media (radio, television and film). The module is lecture and seminar based. The lectures are designed to introduce students to the overarching themes of each source text and the media into which it has been translated. Students will then engage with and apply this knowledge as they interrogate in groups specific textual extracts/media clips, debating and presenting their interpretations as they come to their own conclusions (learning outcome 1). The final class in each block will focus on comparative analysis in both lecture and group format as the texts and media studied to that point are considered alongside each other (learning outcome 2). Each of the blocks making up the module will be introduced with a theoretical perspective drawn from adaptation theory, a theoretical perspective which will subsequently be evaluated in both lecture and group work (learning outcome 3).

The module has been designed to hone the analytical skills of students as they focus closely on extracts from specific works. It also works to exercise their comparative analytic skills, requiring them to work across media, processing and selecting from a considerable amount of information. Presentation skills will be improved as students formulate and express their own conclusions in both oral group work and the written assessment. The assessment of the module has also been designed to hone the organisation and research skills of the students in question.

The module will be assessed in one coursework essay (due mid-way through the semester) and one final examination. The coursework will focus on one specific instance of adaptation (learning outcome 1), requiring students to engage with aspects of adaptation theory (learning outcome 3). The final examination will feature two sections. The first section will mirror the pattern of the coursework essay by focusing on an adaptation not considered in the coursework (learning outcomes 1 and 2). The second section will require the comparative analysis of at least two of the adaptations studied (learning outcome 3). The assessment is entirely summative but the students receive formative preparation for the theories, topics and analysis required in the group work/coursework feedback session built into the classes.

Topic 1 – Adaptation and Radio – Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary and its adaptation for Radio 4 by Diana Griffiths.

Topic 2 – Adaptation and Television – Guy de Maupassant and his reworking for the small screen in France 2’s Chez Maupassant.

Topic 3 – Adaptation and Cinema – Emile Zola’s La Bête humaine and its adaptations for the large screen by Jean Renoir and Fritz Lang.

Primary Texts

Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary (Paris: Garnier, 1971)

Fritz Lang Human Desire 1954 (film)

Maupassant, Guy de, Contes et nouvelles (Paris: Gallimard, 1974-79)

Gérard Jourd’hui, Chez Maupassant (television series)

Jean Renoir, La Bête humaine1938 (film)

Emile Zola, La Bête humaine (Paris: Gallimard, 2001)

Secondary Reading

Flaubert

Bloom, Harold (ed.), Gustave Flaubert’s ‘Madame Bovary’ (New York and Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 1994)

Brombert, Victor: The Novels of Flaubert: A Study of Themes and Techniques (Princeton: PUP, 1994) 

Culler, Jonathan: Flaubert: The Uses of Uncertainty (London: Elek, 1974)

Donaldson-Evans, Mary, ‘Madame Bovary’ at the Movies: Adaptation, Ideology, Context (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2009)

Fairlie, Alison: Flaubert: Madame Bovary (London: Arnold, 1962)

Heath, Stephen, Flaubert: ‘Madame Bovary’ (Cambridge University Press, 1992)

Ippolito, Christophe, Narrative Memory in Flaubert’s Works (New York: Peter Lang, 2001)

Knight, Diana, Flaubert’s Characters: The Language of Illusion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985)

Lowe, Margaret: Towards the Real Flaubert: A Study of Madame Bovary (Oxford: Clarendon, 1984)

Lloyd, Rosemary, Flaubert: ‘Madame Bovary’ (London: Unwin Hyman, 1990).

Orr, Mary: Flaubert: Writing the Masculine (Bern: Peter Lang, 2000)

Prendergast, Christopher: The Order of Mimesis: Balzac, Stendhal, Nerval, Flaubert (Cambridge: CUP, 1986)

Roe, David: Gustave Flaubert (Basingstoke: MacMillan, 1989)

Sherrington, R. J., Three Novels by Flaubert: A Study of Techniques (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970)

Unwin, Timothy (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Flaubert (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

Maupassant

Besnard-Coursodon, Micheline, Etude thématique et structurale de l’œuvre de Maupassant (Paris: Nizet, 1973)

Bury, Mariane, La Poétique de Maupassant (Paris: SEDES, 1994)

, Maupassant (Paris: Editions Nathan, 1992)

Harris, Trevor, Maupassant: Quinze Contes (London: Grant and Cutler, 2005)

Lecarme, J., and B. Vercier (eds), Maupassant miroir de la nouvelle (Saint-Denis: Presses Universitaires de Vincennes, 1988)

Lloyd, Christopher and R. Lethbridge (eds), Maupassant conteur et romancier (Durham: University of Durham, 1994)

Reboul, Yves (ed.), Maupassant multiple (Toulouse: Presses Universitaires du Mirail, 1995)

Sullivan, Edward D., Maupassant: The Short Stories (London: Edward Arnold, 1962)

Zola

Cousins, Russell, ‘Was Judas a Woman? Re-inventing Zola for the Cinema’, in New Approaches to Zola, ed. by H Thompson, (London: Emile Zola Society, 2003)

J Duffy: ‘Blood and Money: Symbolic Economies in La Bête humaine’, Romance Quarterly 44, 3 (1997), pp. 143-158

M Fol: ‘Compulsion répétitive, rites et tabous: Jacques Lantier, Emile Zola dans La Bête humaine’, Cahiers naturalistes, 65 (1991), pp. 177-88

D Franchi and R. Ripoll: ‘Douceur et intimité dans La Bête humaine’, Cahiers naturalistes, 51 (1977), pp. 80-90

Griffiths, Kate, Emile Zola and the Artistry of Adaptation (Oxford: Legenda, 2009)

Griffiths, Kate, and Andrew. Watts, Adapting Nineteenth-Century France (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2013)

Gural-Migdal, Anna and Robert Singer (eds), Zola and Film: Essays in the Art of Adaptation (Jefferson: McFarland, 2005)

R Lethbridge: ‘Zola and the Limits of Craft’, in Zola and the Craft of Fiction ed. by Robert Lethbridge and Terry Keefe (Leicester: LUP, 1990)

B. Nelson (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Emile Zola (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007)

A Possot, ‘Thèmes et fantasmes de la machine dans La Bête humaine’, Cahiers naturalistes, 57 (1983), pp. 104-15

Warren, Paul, Zola et le cinéma (Sainte-Foy: Presses de l’Université Laval, 1995)

Jean Renoir

Braudy, Leo, Jean Renoir: The World of his Films (London: Robson, 1977)

Davis, Colin, Scenes of Love and Murder: Renoir, Film and Philosophy (London: Wallflower, 2009)

Renoir, J., Ma Vie et mes films (Paris: Flammarion, 1974)

Sesonske, Alexander, Jean Renoir: The French Films (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980)

M Lagny, ‘The Fleeting Gaze: Jean Renoir’s La Bête humaine (1938)’, in French Film: Texts and Contexts, ed. by S Hayward and G Vincendeau, (London: Routledge, 2000)

Fritz Lang

Eisner, Lotte, Fritz Lang, (New York: Da Capo, 1986)

Gunning, Tom, The Films of Fritz Lang (London: BFI, 2000)

McGilligan, Patrick, Fritz Lang: The Nature of the Beast (London: Faber, 1997)

Radio

Barnard, Stephen, Studying Radio (London: Arnold, 2000)

Crisell, Andrew, Understanding Radio (London: Routledge, 1994)

Drakakis, John, (ed.), British Radio Drama (Cambridge: CUP, 1981)

Gielgud, Val, British Radio Drama: 1922-1956 (London: Harrap, 1957)

Rodger, Ian, Radio Drama (London: MacMillan, 1982)

Television

Bignell, Jonathan, An Introduction to Television Studies (London: Routledge, 2004)

Ellis, John, Visible Fictions: Cinema, Television, Video (London: Routledge, 1992)

Fiske, John, Television Culture (London: Routledge, 1989)

Adaptation Theory

Cartmell, Deborah, and I. Whelehan (eds), Adaptations: From Text to Screen, Screen to Text (London: Routledge, 1999)

Genette, Gérard, Palimpsestes: la littérature au second degré (Paris: Seuil, 1982)

Giddings, Robert, Keith Selby and Chris Wensley, Screening the Novel: The Theory and Practice of Literary Dramatization (London: Palgrave, 1990)

Hutcheon, Linda, A Theory of Adaptation (New York and London: Routledge, 2006)

Marcus, Filmmaking by the Book: Italian Cinema and Literary Adaptation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993)

McFarlane, Brian, Novel to Film: An Introduction to the Theory of Adaptation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996)

Naremore, James, Film Adaptation (London: Athlone, 2000)

Sanders, Julie, Adaptation and Appropriation (London and New York: Routledge, 2006)

Stam, Robert, and Raengo, Alessandra, Literature and Film: A Guide to the Theory and Practice of Film Adaptation (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005)