18th-Century Fiction (344-0-20)

Topic

Radical Jane Austen: Reading Austen at 250

Instructors

Jennifer Comerford

Meeting Info

Parkes Hall 224: Tues, Thurs 3:30PM - 4:50PM

Overview of class

2025 marks the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen's birth (December 16th, 1775), and at 250, she seems more alive than ever. Lurking just beneath the seemingly placid surface of Austen's writing is a messy range of bad feelings, scathing wit, vicious cruelty, suppressed rage, and unsparing critique. How are these feelings oriented, where can they find expression, and at what point do they burst through the delicate veneer of social etiquette? What are the political stakes embedded in such moments? In this course, we will examine the persistence of Austen's radical edge across her juvenilia, major novels, and final, unfinished work. We will also consider the ways in which Austen's writing engages with eighteenth-century concerns and discourses around sensibility, race and empire, gender and marriage, and class and social mobility. How does Austen play with form and genre, from the first-person epistolary correspondence of her early work to her tyrannical third-person narrator? What are the limits of parody and satire as modes of critique? And how do film adaptations frame Austen's subversiveness 250 years later?

Class Materials (Required)

Possible texts may include Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, and Persuasion as well as selected juvenilia and shorter works. Austen's novels may be paired with excerpts from Mary Wollstonecraft, Phillis Wheatley Peters, Ann Radcliffe, and Mary Prince. Possible films and shows include Mansfield Park (1999), Persuasion (2022), and selected episodes of Sanditon (2019) or Bridgerton (2020). This course may also include archive visits and a virtual tour of Jane Austen's House Museum in Chawton, England.

Class Attributes

Advanced Expression
Literature and Arts Foundational Discipline
Literature & Fine Arts Distro Area