ENGLISH 731
Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte
Please note: this is archived course information from 2017 for ENGLISH 731.
Description
While both Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë stand among the best-known and canonical English novelists, their work differs as greatly as the Georgian and Victorian eras in which each wrote. Brontë famously critiqued Austen’s style, comparing her stories to walled, small, claustrophobic gardens and declaring a preference for more open and natural spaces, more open and passionate emotions.
In spite of Brontë’s insistence upon difference, however, these two writers also have a lot in common. This course examines a selection of their works and considers how they responded to the literary and social environment of their time (from their juvenilia onwards). The course will pay attention to the reception history of their lives and works, from the Nineteenth Century to the present, such as the development of their reputations in academic and popular accounts, and screen adaptations of their fiction in the Hollywood-led resurgence of interest in both authors. Another important context is critical interest since the 1970s in the constraints affecting nineteenth-century women’s writing.
Availability 2017
Semester 2
Lecturer(s)
Coordinator(s) Professor Joanne Wilkes
Reading/Texts
Jane Austen:
Catharine and Other Writings, ed. Margaret Anne Doody
Mansfield Park, ed. Jane Stabler
Persuasion, ed. Deidre Shauna Lynch
Pride and Prejudice, ed. Fiona Stafford (all World's Classics)
The Brontes:
Tales of Glass Town, Angria and Gondal: Selected Early Writings, ed. Christine Alexander
Charlotte Bronte:
The Professor, ed. Margaret Smith
Shirley, ed. Margaret Smith
Villette, ed. Margaret Smith (all World's Classics)
It is permissible to use other editions of the set texts if you own them.
Points
ENGLISH 731: 30 points
Restrictions
ENGLISH 752
