Believing in Jane Austen

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

“Believing in Jane Austen” can mean several things. It can mean believing that her fiction has value today, 250 years after her birth. It can mean entering into her fictional worlds as if they were real—despite their sometimes unrealistic endings. It can evoke her representations of characters who hold beliefs of various kinds, with various degrees of intensity. And it can suggest larger questions of the relationship between literature and belief, both on and off the page. We will address these and other facets of the course theme by reading at least four of Austen’s novels along with writings by several contemporaries that can help us understand the nature and stakes of belief in her work. We will also approach the topic through a selection of film adaptations and possibly some of the (hilarious) fiction she wrote as a teenager. The assignments will be various and will build on class sessions devoted to discussing the craft of (believable) writing.