The Enchantment of Re-Imagining

The author, Sam Leith, likened the recent Jane Austen project (in which six authors are tasked with rewriting Jane Austen for a modern audience) to “writing fiction as literary criticism.” In this course, we are invited to think more speculatively about the role of re-imagination in literature and society by reading texts which do not only re-imagine the past by reframing history but which also re-imagine life and the present to offer us an alternate view. In some cases, these texts re-write existing classics. We will engage closely with the texts and relevant works of criticism.