In this course we will read all of Jane Austen's extant fiction and consider not only its continuing delights, but also how readers have regarded it from her own time to the present.  These readers include simple admirers, critics, and scholars.  They also include many writers in various genres and media who have responded to and learned from aspects of Austen's work.  Despite her only moderate popularity in her own time, she has proved to be arguably the most influential novelist writing in English.  As in the study of any single author, moreover, responses to her work form, in effect, an index to literary criticism, theory, and taste.  We will endeavor to appreciate some of the insights that index affords.
    Assignments: in addition to reading the novels and the critical apparatus provided with each, especially with Emma as edited by Alistair Duckworth, students will be asked to present several other pieces of work.  First, each will take responsibility for a decade of Austen criticism, providing a bibliography of all books and major essays published in that decade, with a brief introductory commentary.  This will be due February 27.  Second, each will write a conference paper to be given at the March 13 Colloquium modestly entitled "New Light on Jane Austen"; this paper may use any approach to any one or more of Austen's works, or any theme, technique, etc., within them.   Third, each will give an oral report on a completion, adaptation, answer, or sequel to one of Austen's novels; the rest of us will read or view at least some of each person's selection, so the topics for this report should be decided by March 20th at the latest.  Much information about existing works in these categories is available at http://www.pemberley.com/janeinfo/janeinfo.html#janetoc.  The oral reports themselves will be given on March 27 and April 3.  Finally, each person will choose a novel  by a "serious" novelist and one by a genre novelist (children's, romance, detective novel, science fiction, etc.) that she or he considers influenced by Jane Austen.  These will be discussed on  April 10 and April 17 respectively.  At the final class meeting, "Jane Austen's Nachleben," everyone will present another conference paper focusing on one or more of these works and writers inspired and influenced by Jane Austen.  The two conference papers count 25% each; the decade bibliography,  the oral report on completions or adaptations, and the two informal presentations on successor novelists will count 10 % each; class participation will count 10%.
    Authors influenced by Jane Austen include but are certainly not limited to Emily Eden, Anthony Trollope, Susan Gaskell, Henry James, Sheila Kaye-Smith, G. B. Stern, Susan Coolidge, Evelyn Waugh, P.G. Wodehouse, Edith Wharton, L.M. Alcott, Emma Lathen, Georgette Heyer, Charlotte McLeod, Elizabeth Peters, and Lois Bujold, to name a few.  Your own discoveries and suggestions will be much appreciated.

Austen Schedule
January                                                                           March
9  Introduction, Juvenilia                                                      6 SPRING BREAK
16 Northanger Abbey and Catherine                                 13 Colloquium: New Light on Jane Austen
23  Sense and Sensibility                                                   20 Persuasion
30 Lady Susan                                                                  27 The Watsons; Sanditon.  Completions
February                                                                        April
6 Pride and Prejudice                                                          3 Adaptations, Answers, Imitations
13 Mansfield Park                                                            10 "Lawful Offspring"
20 Emma                                                                         17 Other Offspring
27 Approaches (essays in Duckworth's Emma)                24 Colloqium: Jane Austen's Nachleben