Paper on Carlyle and Elizabeth (1998)

Maddalena Pennachia’s “Culturally British Bio(e)pics” in Adaptation, Intermediality and the British Celebrity Biopic brings in some Carlyle to explain the ideology behind Elizabeth (1998), arguing that Elizabeth’s femaleness makes her a less embarrassing subject for such heroic treatment than a male character would. If Carlyle had admitted the category of female heroes, he might have written the script for Elizabeth. An interesting paper regarding Carlyle as it posits his ideological positioning as still having some allure, while also being too embarrassing (Pennachia uses the term “embarrassment” to describe our reaction to Carlyle on page 40) to be directly appropriated.