ABSTRACT
Mise-en-scene is conventionally understood as referring to the visual attributes of film; to some, it even captures the essence of what is a singularly cinematic experience. This chapter discusses presupposition by contributing to a sonic or auditory expansion of the familiar cinematic concept and explores its relevance to the contemporary adaptation of Jane Austen’s fiction. Although there has been heightened scholarly interest in the proliferation of Austen films in criticism over the past two decades, remarkably little attention has been paid to the role of sound within these works. Austen’s novels function in conversation with one another as well as in conversation with other literary and extra-literary works of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
