Who is the Movie For?: The Audience’s Role in the Film Adaptations of “Enoch Arden,” “The Raven,” The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Washington Square

When a director decides to adapt a literary work into film, there are many things for them to consider: structure, character, setting, plot, and the audience. One of the most important aspects of turning a literary work into a film is attracting a wide audience. The attraction to film adaptations of literature is because people like to see books visualized or see famous actors play recognizable characters. However, because of the limitations of film, the director must make decisions on what aspects of the original work stay or are cut, resulting in adaptations that can be categorized by least to most faithful: loose, intermediate, and close. In the case of “Enoch Arden,” “The Raven,” The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Washington Square, the changes between the literary source and the film adaptation were made by the directors, writers, and all the other film crew were chosen in order to broaden the appeal of the adaptation to not only the original fan base of the literary work, but to a wider audience.

Masked Love: The Metaphor Behind “Love” in Wyatt’s “Farewell, Love” and Sidney’s “Not at first sight, nor with a dribbèd shot”

The typical life of a courtier living during sixteenth century England, also known as theTudor period, was not as glamourous as those involved with it may have liked. The court was the center of power but was also the center of cultural influence, with holds in fashion, art, theater, and poetry, and whatever was popular in the courts shaped the entire country’s thoughts about culture. However, despite the court being a place for advancement when it came to politics, wealth, and influence, it was also a dangerous place for those in close proximity to the King/Queen. The Norton Anthology of English Literature directly states that “the courtiers were torn between the need to protect themselves and the equally pressing need to display themselves” (533), meaning that putting oneself into the public sphere also puts one into the spotlight where secrets and faults could potentially be exposed to all of the court, which could ruin someone’s life, and even get them killed. Since both Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503 - 1542) and Sir Philip Sidney (1554 - 1586) were not only courtiers but influential courtiers and poets, they had to be especially careful when it came to expressing their true thoughts and feelings since their works would be most likely widely distributed and read by all. Wyatt’s sonnet “Farewell, Love” and the second sonnet of Sidney’s famous sonnet sequence Astrophil and Stella, titled “Not at first sight, nor with a dribbèd shot” are both about the hardships of being in love but they have a common feature: within both poems, the word “love” is capitalized, which not only personifies the concept, but also creates an extended metaphor where “Love” represents not only love itself but the person whom the poem is really about.