De Austen a Dickens: adaptação cinematográfica dos anos 1990 como crítica literária

Abstract

This dissertation analyses the 1990s film adaptations Great Expectations, by Alfonso Cuarón, and Clueless, by Amy Heckerling, as tools of literary criticism. The focus centers on the comparative analysis between the novels — Jane Austen's Emma and Charles Dickens' Great Expectations — and their respective cinematic adaptations. The research posits that adaptations seek to establish functional and aesthetic equivalents capable of translating the verbal system into the visual materiality of cinema. Drawing on a theoretical framework that encompasses studies on medium specificity (such as Kracauer's and Bluestone's), minor character theory (Woloch), and the theory of the novel (Watt and Mazzoni), this study examines how “visual hypertrophy” alters the narrative hierarchy and the construction of subjectivities. The analysis demonstrates a dichotomy in gender approaches: whereas Estella is objectified in Cuaron's work, Heckerling's endows the protagonist (Cher) with a centrality of agency and gaze, recontextualizing the social structure of Highbury to the Beverly Hills elite. Methodologically, our analysis employs the technique of decoupage (shot breakdown) to understand how class and gender tensions reverberate in the motion pictures. We conclude that these adaptations, by displacing the works to new geographical and historical contexts, not only update them, but offer critical readings that foreground characters who, due to the novels' formal techniques, are otherwise obscured by the protagonists.