Representations of the past on British television: screen adaptations of Jane Austen's novels

Student: Gubanova Kseniya

Supervisor: Ekaterina Lapina-Kratasyuk

Faculty: Faculty of Media Communications

Educational Programme: Bachelor

Year of Graduation: 2014

This bachelor thesis is my attempt to understand how screen adaptations of classic novels, describing the reality of the late 18th- and early 19th century, can reflect the modern society's demand for certain nostalgic images. The study includes comparative analysis of different concepts of historical representation on British television. According to my hypothesis, historical and cultural self-determination of British society, which is commonly known as a traditional and even a conservative one, is highly dependent on the nostalgic phenomenon. Exploring nostalgic images from the Britain's past, presented in a modern era by television, we can get a rather accurate impression of how the British see their national identity today and how it is connected with the country's history.The object of this research is screen adaptations of Jane Austen's novels, produced and shown on British television from 1995 to 2013. The subject of the study is the ways of historical representation in screen adaptations of classics and the phenomenon of the audience's nostalgia for the past it has never actually witnessed. The purpose of my research paper is to analyze and compare the films and TV-series, based on Jane Austen's works, and to establish the main principles which influence on how the contemporary historical, cultural and national identity of the British is being built. After watching the TV adaptations of Austen's novels, investigating the ways they represent historical realities and detecting those images of the past which are demanded by the audience (and, according to my hypothesis, by the British<span

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