MACMILLAN Jane Austen and William Shakespeare: A Love Affair in Literature, Film and Performance

This volume explores the multiple connections between the two most canonical authors in English, Jane Austen and William Shakespeare. The collection reflects on the historical, literary, critical and filmic links between the authors and their fates. Considering the implications of the popular cult of Austen and Shakespeare, the essays are interdisciplinary and comparative: ranging from Austen’s and Shakespeare’s biographies to their presence in the modern vampire saga Twilight, passing by Shakespearean echoes in Austen’s novels and the authors’ afterlives on the improv stage, in wartime cinema, modern biopics and crime fiction. The volume concludes with an account of the Exhibition “Will & Jane” at the Folger Shakespeare Library, which literally brought the two authors together in the autumn of 2016. Collectively, the essays mark and celebrate what we have called the long-standing “love affair” between William Shakespeare and Jane Austen―over 200 years and counting. Review “From improvisational theater to protestant martyrology, from vampire romances to green worlds, from small jewels to broad genres, Cano’s and Garcìa-Periago’s collection of essays expansively yet coherently explores how restrained Jane Austen and sprawling William Shakespeare intersect in cultural history, literary features, performance, and cultural utility. Using the Barchas-Straub exhibition on Will and Jane at the Folger as a connecting thread, this volume weaves its essays and its authors together in enlightening and intriguing ways.” (Sayre Greenfield, co-editor, Jane Austen in Hollywood (1998)) From the Back Cover This volume explores the multiple connections between the two most canonical authors in English, Jane Austen and William Shakespeare. The collection reflects on the historical, literary, critical and filmic links between the authors and their fates. Considering the implications of the popular cult of Austen and Shakespeare, the essays are interdisciplinary and comparative: ranging from Austen’s and Shakespeare’s biographies to their presence in the modern vampire saga Twilight, passing by Shakespearean echoes in Austen’s novels and the authors’ afterlives on the improv stage, in wartime cinema, modern biopics and crime fiction. The volume concludes with an account of the Exhibition “Curating Will & Jane” at the Folger Shakespeare Library, which literally brought the two authors together in the autumn of 2016. Collectively, the essays mark and celebrate what we have called the long-standing “love affair” between William Shakespeare and Jane Austen―over 200 years and counting. About the Author Marina Cano is Teaching Fellow in English at the University of Limerick, Ireland. She is the author of Jane Austen and Performance (Palgrave, 2017). Her research interests include women’s writing, the long nineteenth-century, performance and gender theory. Rosa García-Periago is Lecturer at the University of Murcia, Spain. She is currently on leave as Research Fellow at Queen’s University Belfast with a Marie Curie Individual Fellowship awarded by the EU. Her research interests include Jane Austen, Shakespeare and Bollywood and adaptation in Indian Cinema.