EN323H1F Class Reading

Syllabus | Class Reading | Weekly Questions | Further Reading | Essays

Syllabus

TUES 18:00-21:00

1220 Bahen Centre for Information Technology

Dr. David Francis Taylor

Jackman Humanities Building, Room 1015

Tel.: 416-978-8673

Email: df.taylor@utoronto.ca

Office hour: Monday 10:00-12:00 or by appointment.

Teaching Assistant: Julia Grandison (julia.grandison@utoronto.ca)

Office Hour: TBC

Course website: http://individual.utoronto.ca/dftaylor

Course Description

Austen lived and wrote during a period of immense social and political flux – a time in which female writers not only flourished but were actively engaged in negotiating and critiquing prevailing notions of race, class, and gender. This course will consider Austen’s fiction within these intertwined socio-political and literary contexts, looking at three of her mature novels alongside the work of four contemporaneous female writers: Frances Burney, Maria Edgeworth, Elizabeth Inchbald, and Mary Wollstonecraft. We will explore the complex ways in which Austen’s fiction mediates and interrogates various kinds of politics – sexual, social, cultural, imperial – and think about how issues of style and irony are involved in such processes. Reading Austen’s work in this way will involve not only a consideration of her contemporaries but also of Austen as our contemporary.

Required Texts (available at U of T Bookstore)

Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice; Sense and Sensibility; Mansfield Park.

Frances Burney, Evelina

Maria Edgeworth, Belinda

Elizabeth Inchbald, Wives as They Were, and Maids as They Are; Lovers’ Vows

Mary Wollstonecraft, The Wrongs of Woman

I recommend using the Oxford editions of Austen, Edgeworth, and Wollstonecraft texts, and the Broadview edition of Burney’s Evelina. However, any Oxford, Penguin, Norton, or Broadview edition of each of the novels is acceptable.

The two Inchbald plays are available as online editions at Université de Montréal’s British Women Playwrights around 1800.

Our reading of these required texts will be supplemented by short extracts from a number of contemporary pamphlets and treatises, and, in one instance, critical literature. In most cases these will be viewable and downloadable through the course website.

READING STRATEGY

This course will cover six novels and two plays. It is thus crucial that you keep on top of and carefully manage your reading. Our final novel, Belinda, is considerably longer than the others on this course and you will be required to write about it in the final exam. I strongly advise you to begin reading this during weeks in which your reading load is lighter.

Texts are essential equipment, so please ensure that you use them: pay attention to their scholarly apparatus, such as introductions and notes; write your own marginal notes and glosses; and, of course, bring them with you to class.

Recommended further reading (on reserve at Robarts)

Butler, Marilyn. Jane Austen and the War of Ideas. Revised edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987.

Copeland, Edward, and Juliet McMaster, eds. The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.

Johnson, Claudia L. Jane Austen: Women, Politics, and the Novel. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988.

_________, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Mary Wollstonecraft. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.

Poovey, Mary. The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer: Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley, and Jane Austen. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984.

Sabor, Peter, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Frances Burney. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.

Todd, Janet, ed. Jane Austen in Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

A more comprehensive bibliography is available on the course website.

METHOD OF EVALUATION

Essay of 1,500 words 25% Due 8^th Feb.

Essay of 2,500 words 35% Due 15^th March.

Final three-hour examination 40% 14 April, 19.00-22.00

The first essay will focus on either Evelina or Pride and Prejudice; the second will discuss one of the Austen novels featured on the course alongside one or more of Evelina, The Wrongs of Woman, Lovers' Vows, and Wives as They Were. Under no circumstances is it is acceptable to write about the same text in both essays. Essay topics will be posted on the website and distributed in class at least three weeks before the due date.

Papers are marked for originality, understanding of material, communication level, close reading skills, and evidence of secondary reading. They must be typed, double spaced, spell checked and proof read. At the end of your essay please state its word count (inc. footnotes). Good advice about essay writing can be found here: http://www.writing.utoronto.ca/advice

Please use the MLA style of citation, a simple guide to which can be found at the following website: http://flash.lakeheadu.ca/~jrichard/mla.html

Essays are due at the beginning of the class. Essays handed in after 6.15pm on the due date will be considered one day late. I do not accept submission by email. Late essays will be deducted 3 marks per day up to a maximum of 15 marks. Papers that are more than a week late will not be accepted. Requests for extensions will be considered – in writing, via email – but must be submitted at least 24 hours prior to the due date. I will not, under any circumstances, consider retroactive extensions, even with a doctor’s note.