Cultural Manifestations of Romanticism on the Contemporary Screen

TY - CHAP

T1 - Cultural Manifestations of Romanticism on the Contemporary Screen

AU - Shachar, Hila

PY - 2022

Y1 - 2022

N2 - In much the same way as the Romantics reworked, appropriated, and extended the contemporary material and visual culture of their own era by borrowing from the wider arts in their conceptualisations of the sublime and creativity, their own ideologies, works, and biographical personas have been extended and appropriated from the Victorian period, onwards. This chapter seeks to focus on how this extension and appropriation can be conceived of, and theorised in, the contemporary screen, focusing on films made specifically within the last few decades. There are several ways in which Romantic ideologies manifest on the contemporary screen: as direct representations of biographical films about Romantic authors; adaptations of later nineteenth-century novels; and new narratives, set in the contemporary era. This chapter explores all three manifestations of Romanticism on the contemporary screen, arguing that Romantic definitions of individuality and creativity pervade a diverse array of films that are primarily centred on narratives of female subjectivity in our own modern era. Using a close analysis of films such as, The Virgin Suicides (1999), Lost in Translation (2003), Bright Star (2009), Jane Eyre (2011), Mary Shelley (2017), Little Women (2019), and Emma (2020), this chapter examines how Romantic art and ideologies of the sublime, creativity, authorial identity, and gender, are reworked and complicated within recent cinema in complex ways that suggest Romanticism is still very much ‘alive’ in contemporary culture.

AB - In much the same way as the Romantics reworked, appropriated, and extended the contemporary material and visual culture of their own era by borrowing from the wider arts in their conceptualisations of the sublime and creativity, their own ideologies, works, and biographical personas have been extended and appropriated from the Victorian period, onwards. This chapter seeks to focus on how this extension and appropriation can be conceived of, and theorised in, the contemporary screen, focusing on films made specifically within the last few decades. There are several ways in which Romantic ideologies manifest on the contemporary screen: as direct representations of biographical films about Romantic authors; adaptations of later nineteenth-century novels; and new narratives, set in the contemporary era. This chapter explores all three manifestations of Romanticism on the contemporary screen, arguing that Romantic definitions of individuality and creativity pervade a diverse array of films that are primarily centred on narratives of female subjectivity in our own modern era. Using a close analysis of films such as, The Virgin Suicides (1999), Lost in Translation (2003), Bright Star (2009), Jane Eyre (2011), Mary Shelley (2017), Little Women (2019), and Emma (2020), this chapter examines how Romantic art and ideologies of the sublime, creativity, authorial identity, and gender, are reworked and complicated within recent cinema in complex ways that suggest Romanticism is still very much ‘alive’ in contemporary culture.

UR - https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-the-edinburgh-companion-to-romanticism-and-the-arts.html#product.info.contents

M3 - Chapter (peer-reviewed)

SN - 9781474484176

SN - 9781399557115

SP - 486

EP - 501

BT - The Edinburgh Companion to Romanticism and the Arts

A2 - McCue , Maureen

A2 - Thomas, Sophie

PB - Edinburgh University Press

CY - Edinburgh

ER -