The Novels of Jane Austen in Context

(7.5 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

This module will examine the six major novels of Jane Austen in the context of novels by three of her contemporaries, Mary Wollstonecraft, Maria Edgeworth and Ann Radcliffe. It aims to encourage an understanding of Austen's work in the light of Romantic period aesthetics and politics and to explore Austen's affinities with and departures from the novelistic conventions of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The module will also consider critical and theoretical approaches to Austen's writing and selected contemporary translations of Austen's work through recent screen adaptations of her novels.