La implantación, en los años setenta del siglo XX, de una asignatura obligatoria para todos los estudiantes de filología en España denominada "Introducción a los Estudios Literarios" y, pocos años después, "Teoría de la Literatura", ha permitido el desarrollo de un discurso teórico que pretende legitimar un método distinto, original y heterogéneo en relación con los discursos empleados tradicionalmente en el estudio de la literatura, entre los que destacaban el discurso historicista y el estrictamente filológico. El punto de partida de este libro es que estos dos métodos resultan insuficientes para abordar la enorme complejidad del hecho literario: entre la fijación material de un texto y su ubicación en el seno de una cultura, existen múltiples aproximaciones a la literatura, ofrecidas por disciplinas tan varias como la estilística, la sociología, el psicoanálisis, la hermenéutica o la comparatística.

Los textos aquí reunidos proceden en su práctica totalidad del ciclo de conferencias "Literatura comparada. Relaciones literarias hispano-inglesas (Siglo XX)" que, organizado por el Grupo de Investigación "Poesía y Traducción", en colaboración con el Vicerrectorado de Investigación de la Universidad de Almería y con ayuda de la Consejería de Educación y Ciencia de la Junta de Andalucía, se celebró en la Universidad de Almería los días 29 de abril, 5 y 6 de mayo de 1997. Este volumen (como los dos anteriores en esta serie, Imagen de la mujer en la literatura inglesa, 1997, y Traducir poesía. Luis Cernuda, traductor, 1998), sin embargo, no es una mera recopilación de actas, ya que las conferencias fueron posteriormente reelaboradas por los autores para su publicación como partes de un libro, en el que, asimismo, se incluyen algunos trabajos no presentados entonces. Hemos agrupado los estudios seleccionados procurando guardar, en lo posible, un orden cronológico de acuerdo con los autores y temas que abordan.

Paperback reprint. Originally published: 2020.

Hollywood's conversion to sound in the 1920s created an early peak in the film musical, following the immense success of The Jazz Singer. The opportunity to synchronize moving pictures with a soundtrack suited the musical in particular, since the heightened experience of song and dance drew attention to the novelty of the technological development. Until the near-collapse of the genre in the 1960s, the film musical enjoyed around thirty years of development, as landmarks such as The Wizard of Oz, Meet Me in St Louis, Singin' in the Rain, and Gigi showed the exciting possibilities of putting musicals on the silver screen. The Oxford Handbook of Musical Theatre Screen Adaptations traces how the genre of the stage-to-screen musical has evolved, starting with screen adaptations of operettas such as The Desert Song and Rio Rita, and looks at how the Hollywood studios in the 1930s exploited the publication of sheet music as part of their income. Numerous chapters examine specific screen adaptations in depth, including not only favorites such as Annie and Kiss Me, Kate but also some of the lesser-known titles like Li'l Abner and Roberta and problematic adaptations such as Carousel and Paint Your Wagon. Together, the chapters incite lively debates about the process of adapting Broadway for the big screen and provide models for future studies.

In this pioneering new book, authors Klastrup and Tosca explore the many ways that transmedial worlds are present in people’s everyday life, proposing a new theory of (trans)media use for the digital age. People are not only reading, watching and playing in fictional worlds like never before, but also using them to reflect about their lives through Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and other channels, commenting on their marriages or their life at the office, analyzing current news, or reminiscing on the role these worlds played in their childhood. The book’s unique methodological approach combines an aesthetic and literary perspective that looks closely at the different fictional universes, with an empirical user perspective that builds upon 15 years of sustained work on transmediality. The result is a theory that covers both the personal, experiential dimension of fictional worlds and the social dimension of sharing with each other. A fascinating and contemporary examination of media worlds and their communities, this book offers students and scholars of fandom, media, cultural and reception studies a new theoretical and methodological framework, through which to understand the phenomenon of transmedial worlds, and people's engagement with them.

"From Show Boat (1936) to The Sound of Music (1965) and from Grease (1978) to Chicago (2002), many of the most beloved film musicals in Hollywood history originated as Broadway shows. And in the three years since the original publication of the chapters in this volume (as The Oxford Handbook of Musical Theatre Screen Adaptations, 2019) the phenomenon has persisted, with new adaptations such as Cats, In the Heights, Tick, Tick...Boom!, Dear Evan Hansen, and Spielberg's remake of West Side Story. Yet in general, the number of screen adaptations of Broadway musicals and operettas is far greater than the number that have met with success, especially both critical and commercial success (i.e., good reviews and a profit at the box office). This is all the more surprising since Hollywood tended almost (if not quite) exclusively to buy the rights to musicals that had been successful on the stage as a means of guaranteeing a profitable outcome. After all, musicals that had already enjoyed long runs and nationwide productions on the stage ought to have a readymade audience. One might also think that because the authors had puzzled over the individual challenges posed by such properties in their stage incarnations, it ought to be easier to turn them into strong film musicals. But for every West Side Story there were several Finian's Rainbows, Man of La Manchas, and Carousels: movies that simply did not do justice to the 'enchanted evenings' these works provided in their stage incarnations"--