Overview

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

The study of selected 18th century works, situated in their cultural context. Students with credit for ENGL 408 may not take this course for further credit.

COURSE DETAILS:

The Unknown Austen

Did you know that we can read the short satiric novels Jane Austen wrote when she was twelve and thirteen? That they’re hilarious? That they show she was an avid reader and fan of novels, because to skewer their cliches shows broad knowledge and deep understanding?
This course begins with Austen’s juvenilia and the early short novels “Lady Susan” and “The Watsons,” skips over the famous novels (except in brief excerpts), and then focuses on Northanger Abbey, Persuasion, both published posthumously, and “Sanditon,” unfinished when she died. We will explore the narrative modes and rhetorical/stylistic structures Austen uses in what her early readers would have identified as satire and (mock) sentimentality, and that we as postmodern critics also see as parody, metafiction, and polylogical discourse.
Students will choose what assessed work they will do in the course, when it will be due, and how much of their final grade it will be worth (within certain rules and restrictions, for which see Canvas Modules).
Students may use editions other than Broadview’s, but will not have access to their extra contextual materials, some of which we will use in class.

COURSE-LEVEL EDUCATIONAL GOALS:

1/ to introduce students to literary issues involving satire and parody and to the development of the novel in late eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century Britain, 

2/ to develop existing skills in reading texts critically, 

3/ to develop existing skills in expressing and supporting critical opinions, 

4/ to give students the opportunity to adapt coursework to their own needs and learning styles

Grading

Materials

REQUIRED READING: