Many people are familiar with BBC’s ‘Pride and Prejudice’ and may recognise the name of British author Jane Austen. But who was she, what other novels did she write, what can you get out of reading them and what are some of the topics she dealt with? This course will answer these questions and more and provide an introduction to selected topics that preoccupied the author. Prior to each session, the participants will receive selected chapters of the novel in question, a summary from the novel as well as other relevant materials.
Programme:
Class 1
a) Presentation of the participants and the teacher, introduction to the course, aims, expectations, etc.
b) Presentation of Austen, her life, the skeletons in the closet, her minor/unfinished works, etc.
Class 2
Sense and Sensibility (1811). Selected perspective: Austen’s critique of the romantic ideas of the time and ‘heart versus head’, among other things.
Class 3
Pride and Prejudice (1813). Perspectives: ‘The historic Austen’. We talk about the different ways to enjoy her books. We can read them as entertainment but also as a source of understanding her contemporaries. Among other things, we talk about taxes on windows/chimneys and the Napoleonic Wars.
Class 4
Mansfield Park (1814). Perspectives: Slavery and Austen's use of sexual references.
Class 5
Emma (1815). Perspectives of the day: the clergy in Emma and Austen's other novels, and the ‘nouveau riche’.
Class 6
Persuasion (1817). Perspectives: The Navy vs the Army & the Militia, and the young and naive (Northanger Abbey) (1817) versus the mature and thoughtful (Persuasion).
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