LITERARY INTERPRETATIONS AND SCREEN ADAPTATIONS: MANSFIELD PARK

Abstract

The text discusses Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park in view of two screen adaptations of the novel, Patricia Rozema’s of 1999 and Iain MacDonald’s of 2007, treating them as interpretations of the original but also creations with their own ideological agenda. On the one hand, such an approach is influenced by the Romantic notion of authorship, which copyrights the originator of a text. On the other hand, it reads later-date versions of novels as expressive of their contemporary concerns and formative of readers’ perceptions.