Tara Wallace on Jane Austen
Professor Tara Wallace was interviewed last month in the Washington Post about The Complete Jane Austen, to be aired on PBS. The interview was reprinted in the Honolulu Advertiser, Buffalo News, Charleston Post, Tulsa World, San Jose Mercury, Columbus Dispatch and Miami Herald. Professor Wallace is a popular teacher of eighteenth-century literature as well as the Director of Graduate Studies.
Here’s an excerpt from the Post interview, on why Austen films so well:
“I think that the novels are so open-ended and subtle that they allow us to speak to ourselves,” said Tara Ghoshal Wallace, an associate professor and Austen scholar at George Washington University. “People love these novels and they can’t get enough of new versions of them” on screen.
One reason why Austen’s novels are well-suited to television adaptation, Wallace said, is that Austen is “so good at dialogue.”
“She’s a scriptwriter’s dream,” Wallace said, “because there’s so little to do.”
Mark your calendar now: Look for Professor Wallace live on the WETA videoblog on 25 March, in connection with their Austen extravaganza.
