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When people don’t express themselves, they die one piece at a time. You’d be shocked at how many adults are really dead inside—walking through their days with no idea who they are, just waiting for a heart attack or cancer or a Mack truck to come along and finish the job. It’s the saddest thing I know.
<p>The character who says this is the art teacher, Mr. Freeman. He is sort of my mouthpiece throughout the story.</p>
<p>According to Amazon, this is the most highlighted passage of the Kindle edition of the book.</p> (via <a href=”http://lauriehalseanderson.tumblr.com/” class=”tumblr_blog”>lauriehalseanderson</a>)
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Vile Bodies/Bright Young Things
One of the Intermodern novels I thought about teaching in LIT218 was Evelyn Waugh’s novel Vile Bodies, which was made into the film Bright Young Things a few years ago. Waugh was easily outvoted by Mrs. Dalloway, but I think I will keep the novel as one of the options for the adaptation report.
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Speak
Without getting too deeply into it, let’s just say Laurie Halse Anderson’s young adult novel Speak is something very close to my heart. It is an absolutely wonderful novel about a survivor of sexual assault’s coming of age and reclamation of her situation. Many students may have read the novel in high school as well. I know when I worked in a middle school, our eighth graders read it.
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Dracula
Dracula was an obvious choice for me for a few reasons. First, its adaptation is difficult because of the numerous literary forms (narrative, journals, etc) used in the novel. How does one go about implementing these forms into an adaptation? Second, I wrote my Master’s Thesis on the novel, so I have probably way too much to say about it.
Mrs. Dalloway
One of the most obvious choices I had for LIT218 was using my favourite novel, Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway for the class. I am quite knowledgeable about the novel because I wrote three papers in graduate school about Woolf and also write for the Blogging Woolf weblog. This is my favorite novel and one of my absolute favorites stories of any kind.
The 1990’s adaptation starring Vanessa Redgrave is well done and will fit the course sufficiently. This is the one I will be looking forward to the most.
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V For Vendetta
I definitely wanted to include a graphic novel on our reading list, and given the recent usage of V For Vendetta’s imagery by the Occupy Wall Street movement Alan Moore’s classic graphic novel seemed like an obvious choice. The cinematic adaptation brings up some interesting issues given Moore’s disgust with the film and problems with publishers. I think this will be the one students look forward to the most.
Jane Eyre
The newest adaptation of Jane Eyre, a very artsy version that is cinematically beautiful, was one that a student turned me onto while I was planning LIT218. It doesn’t fit into the regular schedule, it’s somewhere between Dracula and Mrs. Dalloway I guess, but I will definitely add it to the list for final papers.
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Orlando
At some point, I had hoped to have a section on queer issues in literature and film, and already kind of regret not doing it. Perhaps next time. Four works of literature came to mind right away. Virginia Woolf’s Orlando has a wonderful adaptation starring Tilda Swinton. The World Unseen is a great novel and film about queer issues in the Arab world. Two Shakespeare plays also came to mind: My absolute favourite As You Like It, with its disguises, and Cymberline, which Woolf writes a lot about.
I can always teach those if/when I teach Shakespeare.
Easy A
I’m not a huge fan, but a book I considered using for lit218 was The Scarlet Letter. I wanted to use this so I could show the excellent feminist adaptation of the novel Easy A. Easy A is a great, modern, retelling of the story that is equal parts critical and funny. As I said though, I’m not a big fan of The Scarlet Letter, so I decided to pass.
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Hamlet
One of the smartest things I did while prepping lit218, I think, was having the Shakespearian Tragedies collection ordered for the course. This collection contains Othello, Macbeth, King Lear, and Hamlet. I already teach Othello and Lear in eng102 and lit207 respectively, so I think we will rotate between Macbeth and Hamlet.
Anyone who knows me knows the obvious choice for an adaptation of Hamlet is the David Tennant/Patrick Stewart adaptation from the RSC a few years back. Tennant is marvellous, just off of Doctor Who, and does the best performance of Hamlet I have seen. The modern setting also brings up questions of adaptation and how Shakespeare’s plays can be seen beyond time and place.
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