Lorenzo Spurio, “Jane Eyre una rilettura contemporanea”

If one feature distinguishes today’s literary criticism, it is multimedia and the combination of “high” literature with unconventional and not immediately related means of expression, from genre fiction to cinema and role-playing games. The demystification of the mother text is accompanied by an extreme simplification of the critical language.

In “Jane Eyre, a contemporary reinterpretation”, Lorenzo Spurio approaches the original text by Charlotte Bronte, and then moves away from it, making an excursus on a series of subsequent rewritings and adaptations, including film and television, starting from the famous 1966 prequel, “ Wide Sargasso Sea”, ending with the 2010 mash-up parody, “Jane Slayer”, where the protagonist turns into a vampire slayer.

Instead of focusing on the classic and typical aspects of Bronte’s novel, such as Jane’s troubled childhood in Lowood and romantic love for the dark Rochester, Spurio highlights secondary but interesting features, amplified by subsequent rewrites.

The first of these peculiarities is the gothic aspect of the text, with constant references to “Northranger Abbey” by Jane Austen.

The other is undoubtedly the focal importance given to the minor character of Bertha Mason. Where Bronte does not explain the reasons for the madness that afflicts Rochester’s first wife, in the prequels and sequels examined by Spurio, Bertha looms with her tropical past. There is compassion, and even re-evaluation, of her…