Quatrième de couverture : Atonement « The attempt was all » This book provides a close reading of Ian McEwan's novel Atonement and its adaptation by Joe Wright, examining the relevance of various critical or theoretical movements such as narratology, adaptation theory and ethical criticism. It shows that the intertextuality and metafiction in McEwan's novel are adapted by Wright in a film which taps into the intermedial logic of metaadaptation. To study how both the novel and the film question the possibilities of their respective medium, this book analyses the ways Atonement disrupts the chronologies of creation and engages in an intricate game with focalisation and narration. The second part investigates the generic, linguistic and aesthetic distortions which aim at breaking and sexing the medium. Lastly, the book tackles the formal and ethical quandaries of Atonement and its « conversation with modernism », suggesting several philosophical and political interpretations of Briony's final confession that « the attempt was all » and of its aesthetic implications in the novel and on screen.
Biographie de l'auteur : Laurent Mellet is Professor of British literature and film at the University Toulouse Jean Jaurès (CAS - EA 801). His research fields are modernist and contemporary British fiction, film studies and adaptation. His work focuses on the ethics of form and partakes of a political criticism of aesthetics. He is the co-author with Shannon Wells-Lassagne of Étudier l'adaptation filmique. Cinema anglais - cinema americain, the author of L'OEil et la voix dans les romans de E. M. Forster et leur adaptation cinématographique and of Jonathan Coe. Les politiques de l'intime. He is the co-editor with Sophie Aymes of In and Out. Eccentricity in Britain and with Elsa Cavalié of Only Connect. E. M. Forster's Legacies in British Fiction.
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