"Shakespeare, Film Studies, and the Visual Cultures of Modernity elucidates the ways in which Shakespeare as a cultural phenomenon has influenced the development of nearly every dimension of cinema. Challenging many deeply-embedded assumptions of theories of literature, film, media studies, art history, aesthetics, and the social sciences, Guneratne proposes a theory of adaptation that encompasses and relates the artistic products of a wide range of cultures separated by time and geographical distance, social and aesthetic conventions, and traditions of performance and spectatorship. An examination of interactions of words, images, music, dance, and theatrical styles, this book is an innovative history of the most globally pervasive medium of entertainment and a multidisciplinary insight into the continuing influence of the most revered and universal of Renaissance dramatists."--Jacket.