The Origins of Transmedia Storytelling in Early Twentieth Century Adaptation

verfasst von: Alexis Weedon

Verlag: Springer International Publishing

Enthalten in: Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" , Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

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Über dieses Buch

This book explores the significance of professional writers and their role in developing British storytelling in the 1920s and 1930s, and their influence on the poetics of today’s transmedia storytelling. Modern techniques can be traced back to the early twentieth century when film, radio and television provided professional writers with new formats and revenue streams for their fiction. The book explores the contribution of four British authors, household names in their day, who adapted work for film, television and radio. Although celebrities between the wars, Clemence Dane, G.B. Stern, Hugh Walpole and A.E.W Mason have fallen from view. The popular playwright Dane, witty novelist Stern and raconteur Walpole have been marginalised for being German, Jewish, female or gay and Mason’s contribution to film has been overlooked also. It argues that these and other vocational authors should be reassessed for their contribution to new media forms of storytelling. The book makes a significant contribution in the fields of media studies, adaptation studies, and the literary middlebrow.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Frontmatter

Chapter 1. Introduction

Abstract

This chapter outlines the contribution of different research disciplines to understanding of cross-media cultural production in the interwar years, mapping the significant contributions of research in Book History, the Middlebrow, Adaptation, Film Studies and New Media. This leads to the central argument of the book tracing the history of British storytelling poetics and the connections between the processes of literary adaptation and its descendant transmedia fiction. Between the wars, vocational authors, Clemence Dane, Hugh Walpole, G.B. Stern and A.E.W Mason, ventured into the new media forms of radio, film and television each with their own professional production processes receiving the financial and economic benefits. They entered a competitive multi-media mass-market still highly stratified and faced unfamiliar worlds of competing critical values and aesthetic choices.

Alexis Weedon

Chapter 2. Storytellers and the Participatory Audience

Abstract

This chapter outlines four routes to understanding the way authors navigated the social and commercial power flows of their changing profession. Firstly how the economic drivers for writers made certain lines of work attractive. Secondly how authors became bricoleurs, transforming an aesthetic form into a pragmatic writing process. Thirdly how authors positioned themselves as fans, and interpolated themselves into their readership. Finally how these authors viewed their fiction as part of a ‘geneological tree’ through which stories descend. These four routes enable us to place the legacy of these authors—Clemence Dane, Hugh Walpole, G.B. Stern and A.E.W. Mason—in contemporary media practices.

Alexis Weedon

Chapter 3. Writing Across Media: the Techniques of Clemence Dane

Abstract

Clemence Dane (Winifred Ashton) was a precursor of modern cross-media authorship. This chapter analyses how she honed her artistic versatility through the professional opportunities as a playwright and translator, novelist and scriptwriter for the BBC on radio and television, and in Hollywood films at RKO. It examines her techniques of collaborative writing, co-authorship and storytelling in films. Her reflections on the processes of adaptation and understanding of visual, aural and textual codes are explored though her writings on Will Davenant and Shakespeare and her work in Hollywood and with British film companies.

Alexis Weedon

Chapter 4. Adaptations of Elizabeth I and Shakespeare by Clemence Dane

Abstract

Clemence Dane (Winifred Ashton) deserves attention because of the longevity of her ideas through her adaptions and their legacy in contemporary film. This chapter traces her characterisation of Queen Elizabeth I in Will Shakespeare: An Invention (1921) her verse play, and the radio, television and film adaptations she made. Her Elizabeth has influenced and shaped subsequent twentieth-century portrayals.

Alexis Weedon

Chapter 5. Novelist as a Pierrot: G.B. Stern on Women and Role-Playing Identity

Abstract

In her fiction, Gladys Bronwyn Stern captured the power shifts between generations and personal and community identity of the naturalised German-Jewish immigrant in Britain at a time of war. This chapter examines Stern’s role-play through her portrayal of the Pierrot, a sentimental type popular in the period which captures within his character a gender fluidity, a nexus of European identity and an underlying comedic role. Role-play is explored through the promises of advertising and the aspiration to inhabit another role through swapping places. Stern’s ability with dialogue in plays and conversation and her delineation of the youthful generation of the twenties led her to Hollywood.

Alexis Weedon

Chapter 6. Race and Migration in Fiction, on Stage and Film: G.B. Stern

Abstract

This chapter covers Gladys Bronwyn Stern’s exploration of identity and nationality in World War 1, her screen writing in Hollywood in the thirties and then her film work in Britain in World War 2. In her family saga, The Rakonwitz Chronicles Stern weaves a semi-autobiographical story of her Austrian and German parentage and her large Jewish family whose fortunes were lost in the Vaal river diamond crash. Her humour and pierrotism slipped into the dialogue of the adaptations of Little Women (1933) and Last Days of Pompeii (1934) as she worked for RKO. In the forties she had a contract with MGM and wrote a screenplay about R.L. Stevenson.

Alexis Weedon

Chapter 7. Live Radio and Film Dialogue: Hugh Walpole’s Creation of Fictional Friends

Abstract

Hugh Walpole was a novelist and raconteur, and is perhaps best known as the film adapter of Hollywood’s version of David Copperfield and Little Lord Fauntleroy. He broadcast on radio from its earliest days to World War 2. He was a friend of Clemence Dane and they served on the selection committee of The Book Society, Britain’s first celebrity book club. They were both in Hollywood in 1933. Walpole has the characteristics of a cross-media author: a strong personality or celebrity as an author, competence in co-operative writing practices, high productivity and a capacity for understanding visual and oral modes of storytelling. This chapter evaluates Walpole’s contribution to cross-media storytelling as a teller of stories and creator of characters for the page, the ear and the screen.

Alexis Weedon

Chapter 8. A Story in Pictures: A.E.W. Mason’s Film Writing

Abstract

A.E.W. Mason (1865–1948) is probably best known now as the author of The Four Feathers (1902) a story of courage conquering fear, duty, redemption and sacrifice in the face of military action which has been adapted six times for the big screen, most recently in 2002 (Shekhar Kapur). Set in the 1890s British military campaign in Sudan, it was adapted twice during the silent era alone. Aficionados of detective fiction will know him as the British author of a detective story At the Villa Rose. For literary and film historians and scholars of contemporary publishing he is interesting because in the twenties and thirties his stories were adapted across the media in an early form of today’s common practice of transmedia publication. He wrote over twenty stories in these two decades and had an equal number of film adaptations. His works were adapted for the stage and for the new medium of BBC radio and by both British and American studios.

Alexis Weedon

Chapter 9. A Collaborative Radio Serial with Clemence Dane and Hugh Walpole

Abstract

In 1930 the BBC invited well-known writers to write different chapters in a thriller for a radio. ‘Behind the Screen’ was dubbed an experiment by the Talks department, but it was followed a year later by ‘The Scoop’. The stories were published in The Listener magazine the following week. The contributing authors were Dorothy L. Sayers, Agatha Christie, Hugh Walpole, E.C. Bentley, Anthony Berkeley Cox, Ronald Knox, Freeman Wills Crofts and Clemence Dane. Their attitudes to the experiment—and to publishing their creative work on the radio—varied considerably. This chapter analyses this historical cross-media experiment.

Alexis Weedon

Chapter 10. Conclusion

Abstract

The conclusion brings the arguments of the book through to 2017 Reith Lectures. Historical novelist and Man-Booker prize-winning author Hilary Mantel was asked how had her experience of TV and film adaptations influenced her writing of her novels. Using her response, it reviews the contribution of Clemence Dane, G.B. Stern, Hugh Walpole and A.E.W. Mason and assesses the results which can be obtained by the micro-analysis of historical practice, and the conditions—the boundaries, connectivity and properties—which give rise to the new.

Alexis Weedon

Backmatter

Titel: The Origins of Transmedia Storytelling in Early Twentieth Century Adaptation
verfasst von: Alexis Weedon
Verlag: Springer International Publishing
Electronic ISBN: 978-3-030-72476-4
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-72475-7
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72476-4