The Imperial Child and the Romantic Child: Film Adaptation as Cultural Capital

Abstract

Chapter 2 focusses on a small selection of ‘classic’ children’s texts that have been adapted multiple times, and that span the three so-called golden ages of children’s literature (1865–1910, 1950–1970, and 1990–2010). Focussing on multiple film versions of single texts from different historical periods, the chapter examines the impact of changing cultural and ideological contexts for the representation of childhood and the function of adaptations for the survival, modification and transmission of cultural ideologies. The three focus texts, Treasure Island and the first two recent Chronicles of Narnia adaptations, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and Prince Caspian, all depict children who are displaced into an ‘adult’ world where they must take on adult roles and responsibilities. This displacement functions to explore the nature of childhood in the late nineteenth century, the middle of the twentieth century, and the early twenty-first century. C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles and Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel in particular have also been subject to shifting interpretations, and successive adaptations reflect those shifts.