Book contents
- The Cambridge Companion to Gulliver’s Travels
- The Cambridge Companion to Gulliver’s Travels
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Notes on Contributors
- Abbreviations
- Note on the Text
- Chronology
- Introduction
- Part I Contexts
- Part II Genres
- Part III Reading Gulliver’s Travels
- Part IV Afterlives
- Chapter 14 Critical Reception
- Chapter 15 Further Voyages
- Chapter 16 Visual Culture
- Chapter 17 Screen Media
- Further Reading
- Index
- Cambridge Companions to Literature
Chapter 17 - Screen Media
from Part IV - Afterlives
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 October 2023
- The Cambridge Companion to Gulliver’s Travels
- The Cambridge Companion to Gulliver’s Travels
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Notes on Contributors
- Abbreviations
- Note on the Text
- Chronology
- Introduction
- Part I Contexts
- Part II Genres
- Part III Reading Gulliver’s Travels
- Part IV Afterlives
- Chapter 14 Critical Reception
- Chapter 15 Further Voyages
- Chapter 16 Visual Culture
- Chapter 17 Screen Media
- Further Reading
- Index
- Cambridge Companions to Literature
Summary
“Gulliver has been a regular inspiration for film-makers since the earliest days of cinema. This chapter considers the various reasons for his popularity on screen and the challenges inherent in adapting Swift’s text. Among the latter are its lack of narrative unity and the discrepancies between what people think they know of the book and how it actually conducts itself. From silent French films to groundbreaking animations and Hollywood blockbusters, such concerns have always informed the kinds of Gulliver presented to the world. At the same time, each adapter of Gulliver’s Travels explicitly or implicitly considers its relevance for cinema as form and spectacle. Swift’s capacity to disorientate, both in the shifting physical proportions of his characters and in the questionable literary dignity of his text, helps to align him with the experience of cinematic audiences and innovators worldwide. When we assess not only the changing figure of Gulliver but also the different varieties of otherness encountered through his screen afterlives, we can better appreciate the adaptation process as one in which our ideas of history and literature are themselves subject to interrogation.”
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge Companion to Gulliver's Travels , pp. 224 - 236Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023