ENGLISH 731

Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte

Description

Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte have long been recognised as key figures in women’s writing. They established prototypes for the "romance plot" in fiction while also contending with contemporary literary conventions and with preconceptions about both women and women writers. They can be contrasted as well – an approach inaugurated as early as 1857, when the first biography of Charlotte Brontë revealed her strictures against what she saw as the limitations of Austen’s fiction. This course examines a range of fiction by both Austen and Brontë, beginning with their juvenilia. There will also be attention to the "afterlife" of these works, in nearly two centuries of critical and popular discourse, as well as in redactions in print and on screen.

In 2012, visiting scholar Associate Professor Janine Barchas from the University of Texas will be contributing to the course. She has several publications on Jane Austen, and is constructing a website on the writer which will be used in the course.

Availability 2012

Semester 1

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 (new 2010)
Charlotte Bronte:  The Professor, ed. Margaret Smith
Shirley, ed. Margaret Smith
Villette, ed. Margaret Smith  (all World's Classics)

Points

ENGLISH 731: 30.0 points

Restrictions

ENGLISH 752