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Heritage and the Literary Biopic ‘Template’: Shakespeare, Austen, Wilde, and the Author as Product

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Screening the Author

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Adaptation and Visual Culture ((PSADVC))

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Abstract

Focusing on key representative films, including Becoming Jane (2007), Shakespeare in Love (1998), and Wilde (1997), Shachar theorises the dominant template of representation of the author on screen in the literary biopic. This analysis provides some much-needed critique of the dominant screen ‘template’ of the author in both aesthetic and wider cultural and economic terms. Using the case studies of these three films, Shachar argues how the literary biopic borrows from earlier iterations of heritage-inspired representations of the past to create a visual ‘language’ for the literary biopic that is based on capitalistic and cultural ‘worship’ of the Western author as a figure of cultural and national importance. She concludes by arguing that the screen ‘language’ of the literary biopic morphs with the online consumption of the author through social media and blogs as well as through fan by-products in websites such as Etsy and YouTube.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. De Montfort University, Leicester, UK

    Hila Shachar

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  1. Hila Shachar
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Correspondence to Hila Shachar .

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Shachar, H. (2019). Heritage and the Literary Biopic ‘Template’: Shakespeare, Austen, Wilde, and the Author as Product. In: Screening the Author. Palgrave Studies in Adaptation and Visual Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18850-4_2

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