Skip to main content
  • Book
  • © 2017

Representing the Eighteenth Century in Film and Television, 2000–2015

Palgrave Macmillan
  • Proposes a new way of thinking about popular culture and adaptation that views history as a form of adaptation
  • The first book to offer an extended study of the twentieth-century films and television productions of Gulliver’s Travels, Poldark, Crossbones, and Austenland
  • Addresses the need for prescient analyses of popular materials and vital new insights into the way culture and history are mutually constitutive categories
  • Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras
  • 761 Accesses

Buy it now

Buying options

eBook USD 44.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book USD 59.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book USD 59.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Other ways to access

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check for access.

Table of contents (5 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xi
  2. Introduction

    • Karen Bloom Gevirtz
    Pages 1-15
  3. Gulliver’s Travels: Silly, Silly Stories

    • Karen Bloom Gevirtz
    Pages 17-38
  4. Poldark: The Vampire That We Need

    • Karen Bloom Gevirtz
    Pages 39-61
  5. Austenland: The Past Is a Foreign Theme Park

    • Karen Bloom Gevirtz
    Pages 63-95
  6. Crusoe and Crossbones: Longitude and Liberalism

    • Karen Bloom Gevirtz
    Pages 97-129
  7. Back Matter

    Pages 131-134

About this book

This book analyzes early twenty-first century film and television’s fascination with representing the Anglo-American eighteenth century. Grounded in cultural studies, film studies, and adaptation theory, the book examines how these works represented the eighteenth century to assuage anxieties about values, systems, and institutions at the start of a new millennium. The first two chapters reveal how films like Gulliver’s Travels (2010) or the remake of Poldark (2015) use history to establish the direct relationship between the eighteenth century and the twenty-first. The final chapters examine pairs of productions for how they address and legitimate different aspects of contemporary ideology such as attitudes toward race and gender, or the connection between technological and social progress.



Authors and Affiliations

  • Department of English, Seton Hall University, South Orange, USA

    Karen Bloom Gevirtz

About the author

Karen Bloom Gevirtz is Associate Professor of English and Co-Director of the Women and Gender Studies Program at Seton Hall University, USA, specializing in eighteenth-century British literature. She is author of Life after Death: Widows and the English Novel, Defoe to Austen (2005) and Women, the Novel, and Natural Philosophy, 1660-1727 (2014), and co-editor of Gender and Space in British Literature, 1660-1820 (2014) with Mona Narain.

Bibliographic Information

Buy it now

Buying options

eBook USD 44.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book USD 59.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book USD 59.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Other ways to access