01 CAC M 4,5 07923 YOUSEF HC-S120
Jane Austen: Romance, Realism, and the Novel of Ideas
Jane Austen wrote in an age of revolutions and war, and in the midst of profound cultural and economic change. She revolutionized the novel with her choice of subject matter, her reinvention of romance, and her formal innovations. This course will offer an opportunity to study her novels in depth—on their own, and in relation to important political and philosophical ideas of the Enlightenment (eg. Locke on perception, Kant on ethics, Burke on convention, and Wollstonecraft on the rights of women). The seemingly simple narratives of love and courtship Austen composed in the midst of a turbulent era remain enduringly popular and widely read. This seminar will afford the chance to understand Jane Austen's unique place in her own culture and in ours. (Novels to be read might include: Northanger Abbey, Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, and Persuasion.)
