Guidelines:
Use direct quotations from the original and/or adaptation that you view to support the arguments being put forth.
You should write the review as if you were writing for a newspaper and provide a judgment about the adaptation (successful/unsuccessful? accurate/inaccurate? etc.). As such, you should think about the adaptation you watch or read in two ways:
1) How successful the adaptation is overall. What have the writer or director, actors, and creative team done that has made the adaptation either a success or a failure (or something in between)?
2) The adaptation’s relationship to the original. How is it an accurate/inaccurate portrayal of the original? (if known) Were any interesting choices made that affected your understanding of either the original or the adaptation? For instance, was the story modernized? For instance, did you watch a version of Twelfth Night that was set in the 19th century instead of Shakespeare’s late 16th/early 17th? If so, did this enhance or detract from your understanding in any way? Or did a minor character become a major character in the adaptation? What was the effect?
Assignment options:
1. Watch a film adaptation, live performance or videotaped live performance of any literary work and write a review of the film/stage adaptation.
2. Watch an adaptation of a literary work. Since you may not be familiar with the original work if you pick this extra credit option, instead of addressing how successful the adaptation was (if you cannot), you should focus on what you felt the major themes being put forth by the adaptation were and how successful you think the film was in conveying those themes. You should also address how the themes you identified in the adaptation relate to the rest of the course. (ie. Was courtly love parodied? Was it an adaptation of a lyric that relates to one of the lyrics read in this course? Does it seem representative of what you learned of the author from the course thus far?)
3. Watch a film about any literary figure, event, or time period. This film could be an artistic/dramatic film or a documentary film. For your review, you should focus on how accurate a portrayal of the figure, event or time period the film presents. How does the film enhance your understanding of the time period and/or materials covered in this class?
4. Read any literary adaptation (such as a comic book, or spinoff novel, etc.) of a work and write a review.
