Aims
This course aims to:
• extend your knowledge and understanding of Pride and Prejudice, Emma and Persuasion in the wider contexts of Austen studies
• to develop your skills of close reading and literary analysis
• encourage you to employ critical vocabulary and approaches in order to develop informed responses to Austen’s work
Content
In the course of our discussions, we will analyse the nature of Jane Austen's writing and the rituals and expectations of the society she depicted. As well as discussing the themes and style of the novels, we will examine the darker corners of her light, bright, bustling worlds. Critics have long been suspicious of readings of Austen’s work which see her only as a writer of romantic ‘marriage plot’ stories and recent criticism has claimed her as a ‘radical’ commentator on the social and political context of her day. We will ask how ‘rebellion’ is treated in her work and how characters are variously rewarded and punished. In class, we will analyse selected passages from the texts, taking time to identify notable aspects of Austen’s style, such as her use of ‘indirect discourse’ and irony, and to comment on the form and structure of her plots. In her Mansfield Park, Austen says ‘Let other pens dwell on guilt on guilt and misery. I quit such odious subjects as soon as I can…’. Are Pride and Prejudice, Emma and Persuasion simply novels of light and laughter or do they address more serious themes? Does Austen critique the society she depicts in the novels or does she support the status quo? And exactly how rich are you if you have £10,000 a year?
Presentation of the course
The course will be taught through a combination of informal lectures and seminar style discussion. It is expected that students will have read the set texts in advance of the course. Other extracts will be provided for discussion in class.
Course sessions
1. Introduction: Austen, romance and rebellion
This first session will set out the literary and historical contexts for understanding
Austen’s work.
2. Austen’s style: irony and indirect discourse
In this class, we will take a close look at Austen’s writing style. Who speaks to us in an Austen novel? How does she employ irony and how does ‘indirect discourse’ operate to tell us about her characters and the way they see the world?
3. Pride and Prejudice: Fun, love and money
We will begin our study of Pride and Prejudice by close-reading Chapter One and then discussing the structure and plotting of the novel. Is it best described as a love story?
4. Pride and Prejudice: Guilt, shame and misery
Further discussion of the fates of the Bennet sisters; we will also discuss the role of humiliation and shame in Austen’s work.
5. Details
Beginning with a close look at the role of clothes in Pride and Prejudice, we will analyse the importance of details of fashion, houses and social rituals across Austen’s novels.
6. Emma: Austen’s heroines
Austen famously said that in Emma she had created a heroine whom ‘no-one but myself will much like’. We’ll ask how Austen creates and narrates her heroines’ points of view.
7. Emma: Social networks
Continuing our discussions of Emma, this session will focus on Austen’s depiction of small social groupings, centred around, as she said, ‘three or four families in a country village’.
8. Persuasion: Melancholy
Persuasion was Austen’s final completed novel, published posthumously in 1817. Our study of the novel will consider its mature depiction of romance and marriage and will also acknowledge the melancholic quality central to the sensibility and atmosphere of Persuasion.
9. Persuasion: Outside worlds
We’ll continue our discussion of Persuasion and pay particular attention to the novel’s references to the Navy and the Napoleonic wars. How does Austen employ the context of the politics and ‘great events’ of the outside world? How should we place her novels in the context of British Empire?
10. Adaptations and Austen today
We’ll conclude our course by thinking about the afterlife of Austen’s novels, her influence on the development of the novel in the nineteenth century and her continuing cultural presence.
Learning outcomes
You are expected to gain from this series of classroom sessions a greater understanding of the subject and of the core issues and arguments central to the course.
The learning outcomes for this course are:
• to demonstrate your knowledge of Austen’s novels
• to connect the style, themes and details of Austen’s novels with the political and social contexts of the early nineteenth century
• to be able to analyse Austen’s writing using appropriate theoretical and critical vocabulary
Required reading
Please read the three featured novels in full before the course and bring a copy to class - e-reader form is fine. We recommend using the Oxford World’s Classics editions of the novels.
*Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (1813), introduced by Christine Lupton (Oxford World’s Classics, 2019)
*Jane Austen, Emma (1815), introduced by John Mullan (Oxford World’s Classics 5th ed. 2022)
*Jane Austen, Persuasion (1817), introduced by Deirdre Shauna Lynch (Oxford World’s Classics, 2008)
