ENGL 401: Jane Austen: Then and Now (Maurer)

Table of Contents: The Female Novelist and the Critical Tradition; The Novel of Crisis; The Juvenila and Northhanger Abbey: The Authority of Men and Books; Sense and Sensibility: Opinions Too Common and Too Dangerous; Pridge and Prejudice and the Pursuit of Happiness; Mansfield Park: Conclusions of Guilt and Revolutions of Mind; Emma: "Women, Lovely Woman Reigns Alone"; Persuasion": The "Unfeudal Tone of the Present Day."

From the first publication of Pride and Prejudice to recent film versions of her life and work, Jane Austen has continued to provoke controversy and inspire fantasies of peculiar intimacy. Whether celebrated for her realism, proto-feminism, or patrician gentility, imagined as a subversive or a political conservative, Austen generates passions shaped by the ideologies and trends of her readers' time—and by her own memorable stories, characters, and elusive narrative cool. In this book, Rachel M. Brownstein considers constructions of Jane Austen as a heroine, moralist, satirist, romantic, woman, and author and the changing notions of these categories. She finds echoes of Austen's insights and techniques in contemporary Jane-o-mania, the commercially driven, erotically charged popular vogue that aims paradoxically to preserve and liberate, to correct and collaborate with old Jane. Brownstein's brilliant discussion of the distinctiveness and distinction of Austen's genius clarifies the reasons why we read the novelist-or why we should read her-and reorients the prevailing view of her work. Reclaiming the rich comedy of Austen while constructing a new narrative of authorship, Brownstein unpacks the author's fascinating entanglement with readers and other admirers.

Virginia Woolf examines Austen’s maturation as an artist and speculates on how her writing would have changed had she lived another twenty years, while Anna Quindlen examines the enduring issues of social pressure and gender politics that make Pride and Prejudice as vital today as ever. From Harold Bloom to Martin Amis, Somerset Maugham to Jay McInerney, Eudora Welty to Amy Bloom, each writer reflects on Austen’s place in both the literary canon and our cultural imagination.

This book firmly asserts Austen as a regency writer concerned about material social history issues. It illustrates how Austen's later work, including her letters, represent major historical developments of her period far more openly and directly than is generally recognised. It also depicts the ways in which the Austen novels represent dandyism and masculine identities, the Regency crisis and condition-of-England themes such as healthcare and national identity.