Adapting Jane Austen | Summer School

ADAPTING JANE AUSTEN

Emerita Associate Professor Lesley Marx, Centre for Film and Media Studies, University of Cape Town

Monday 26–Wednesday 28 January  3.00 pm  COURSE FEES R345; Staff and students R173

Jane Austen’s 250th birthday on 16 December 2025 is being widely celebrated – in events both scholarly and carnivalesque – by readers and writers who cherish the gift of her novels. Among her most avid beneficiaries are those screenwriters and film directors who rejoice in her sharply observed characters, exquisite scene construction, lively dialogue and perfectly fashioned narratives. No wonder that film and television adaptations of her work have burgeoned during the last century, including the mostly reverential BBC productions of the 1980s, the imaginative work of the 1990s and 2000s, and the controversial, even bizarre, efforts of recent years.

This course, richly illustrated with clips, will focus on adaptations of Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice and Emma. We will explore how these films and television serials have either given deft expression to the complexities of their source material, or have subsumed those complexities into the generic conventions of romantic comedy. Comment will be made on the particular challenges faced by those who have attempted adaptations of Northanger Abbey, Mansfield Park and Persuasion.

The course will be shaped around ‘the sense of an ending’: how are endings in the novels crafted, what do they tell us about the story and its characters, what feelings do they evoke and what worlds and ideas do they summon? Furthermore, how are the tools of film and television – screenwriting, casting, cinematography, score, lighting, costume, set design, direction, editing – used to adapt and interpret these endings? And how does social context inform both the novels and the adaptations?

Lecture titles

Sense and Sensibility
Pride and Prejudice
Emma

Recommended reading

Austen, J. 1811. Sense and Sensibility. London: Thomas Eagerton. Austen, J. 1813. Pride and Prejudice. London: Thomas Eagerton. Austen, J. 1815. Emma. London: John Murray.

Any editions of the above novels.

TO BOOK: https://www.webtickets.co.za/performance.aspx?itemid=1575239475

Lesley was born in Johannesburg and educated in schools across the Witwatersrand, in Windhoek and in Cape Town. Once she entered UCT, she stayed, completing all her degrees there and going on to become a teacher and researcher. She served as head of the English Department, Deputy Dean in the then-new Faculty of Humanities and Founding Director of the Centre for Film and Media Studies. She received a Distinguished Teacher Award in 1992.

She held fellowships to Harvard and Emory universities and to the University of Delaware.

She taught and published on a wide range of literature, film and topics in South African and American history and culture. Over a period of many years, she presented lectures and chaired discussions at various festivals and to cultural groups, schools and universities in South Africa and abroad. She also hosted a film column for “Woman Today” on SAfm Radio. She was a regular presenter on topics in film and literature at UCT’s Summer School from 1985 to 2020, the year she retired from UCT.