Jane Goes to Bollywood: Austen’s Novels and Indian Cinema

Abstract

Jane Austen never set foot in India, and she rarely mentions the in her novels—despite the fact that the period in which she composed and published her novels coincided with the colonization and control of the subcontinent. How and why Austen’s novels have since been transported across continents, translated into foreign cultures, and transformed into such popular Bollywood-style films as Kandukondain Kandukondain, Bride and Prejudice, and Aisha (based respectively on Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, and Emma) is an important cross-cultural and post-colonial question that this presentation will explore and analyze.