British Literature from 1800, "The Mythmakers"

For your final project, I want you to make a short Powerpoint presentation video (basically, you talking over the slides, as we did in Shakespeare) of no more than 20 minutes in length (you can do less, but that's the maximum). The point of this video will be a introduction to Jane Austen trying to correct the "myth" our culture has about Jane Austen. When people talk about her today, they tend to assume the following: * She wrote romance novels  * She was very traditional and conservative * She only wrote about love and marriage * She wrote in a very ornate, outdated style  * The books need to be translated (either in language or content) for people to understand them today Your video should confront some of all of these myths head-on, and suggest where you think they come from, and why (according to the books themselves) they are inaccurate or simply misrepresentations. QUOTE from the books to show examples that create a truer, fuller portrait of Jane Austen than we oft...

  Here is a final video to introduce the Paper #2 assignment, and your reading of Sanditon . Hope it helps! 

  INTRO: In many ways, we can regard Persuasion and Sanditon as unfinished drafts of novels, since Persuasion was only published after her death (before she could definitively revise it—other than writing a second ending) and of course Sanditon breaks off after Chapter 12. Many writers tend to be more revealing and emotional in first drafts, and later on, revise and cover up their tracks in revisions. With that in mind, let’s assume that these novels as they stand reveal the ‘real’ Austen, unguarded, and with a minimum of fictional makeup. This is especially true of Sanditon , where the narrator talks directly to the audience and seems to assume center stage, much as we find in the earlier book, Northanger Abbey (which, coincidentally, was also published after her death—so maybe it, too, wasn’t properly finished). PROMPT: Based on these two ‘unrevised’ books, what can we say about Austen’s character and beliefs? How does she reveal her ideas through her narration and her protagon...

As usual, answer THREE of the following for next weekend:    Q1: Why does Austen devote so much time and space to Mr. Parker’s schemes about Sanditon? Or perhaps a better way of asking this is, why is Austen so interested in these extended sales pitches about a seaside resort? Why does she want the reader to hear everyone of them? Q2: How does Charlotte compare to Austen’s other heroines that we’ve read, such as Catherine and Anne? What makes her a distinctly Austenian protagonist? Is she as ‘plain’ as those two women, or is she striking from the outset? Q3: Sir Edward is a great reader (usually a good sign for Austen), but has very strong opinions on what he reads, as he explains to Charlotte : “I am no indiscriminate novel-reader. There mere trash of the common circulating library, I hold in the highest contempt” (Ch.8). Why doesn’t Charlotte, another great reader, share his tastes? What might she find wanting in his opinion of good writing and good novels? Q4: Sandit...

  Answer THREE of the following over  Persuasion  for next week (Wednesday or Thursday):    Q1: In Persuasion, we see Jane Austen at the end of her career (though she probably didn’t know this), and very much in a new century—the eighteen teens.  This was just before the publication of  Frankenstein  but well after the Romantic movement (the poems of Wordsworth and Coleridge, as well as Gothic literature).  How do we see Persuasion influenced by the Romantic movement in British literature?  What new touches in the work signal a ‘Romantic’ sensibility unusual in Austen’s writing?  Consider not only what the narrator focuses on/describes, but what the characters say, read, and expound to others.  Q2: In a very amusing and fantastic passage on page 27, the narrator describes the Musgrove’s house which is being invaded by a harp and a piano-forte (an old style piano).  The old-fashione...