Department of English

Special session with Penn Summer Abroad: 06/15/2019 to 07/20/2019

At once acutely aware of popular culture and a product of it, Jane Austen read and wrote in popular forms, from epistolary fiction to Gothic horror to realism to raucous satire to popular theater. We'll survey her in most if not all of these guises, reading five of Austen's works during our time in London, including Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, and Emma. On the way, we'll pay special attention to Austen's achievement as an innovator within the larger history of the novel. To that end, we'll focus on her experiments with form, voice, genre and geography—particularly the relationship between country and city and the role that specific parts of London play in her novels. Among our activities outside the classroom will be (weather permitting) to Chawton House in Hampshire, where Austen wrote most of her fiction.