Spring 2005

E 379S • Senior Seminar

Course Description

Jane Austen may be the best-selling novelist of all time. She is one of the few authors whose work—almost 200 years after it was written—is regularly read for pleasure by a general audience. She is an author whose reputation is secure—indeed, rising—within the academy. And she recently became something of a media star—220 years after her birth—because of the success of several filmed adaptations of her work. This seminar will offer readings in all six of Jane Austen’s canonical novels—Northanger Abbey, Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, and Persuasion—as well as selections from the Juvenelia (i.e. her unpublished youthful writing), Lady Susan, the fragments The Watsons and Sanditon and her surviving letters. Significant attention will be paid to Austen's life and social environment and to past and current critical debates regarding her work. In addition, we will view some of the spate of recent films and discuss their relation to the novels.

Grading Policy

Four 2-page papers 10% each
One 5-page paper 25%
One 5-page final paper 25%
Participation 10%

Texts

Northanger Abbey
Sense and Sensibility
Pride and Prejudice
Mansfield Park
Emma
Persuasion
Lady Susan
The Watsons
Sanditon
Course packet

back