ENGL 036. Jane Austen

Mingling stylistic precision with an uncanny eye for social foibles, Austen’s novels off a useful entry point into the study of literature and the ways literature reflects and refracts social conditions. We’ll read Austen’s major novels along with the 18th-century fiction, politics, and philosophy to which she was responding; we’ll also consider recent critical views on Austen and the ways films of the1990s through the present engaged Austen’s style and social critique. At the same time, students will engage the genre of the academic essay by writing and revising several kinds of literary essays: close readings; analysis of a novel’s use of source material or a film’s use of addressing one or more of the novels in a broader historical or stylistic context.
18th/19th c.

Humanities.
1 credit.
Eligible for GSST
Fall 2024. Bolton.
Catalog chapter: English Literature
Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/english-literature

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