#LI-03-12 Jane Austen: Myth, Reality and Global Celebrity
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- Course level: All Levels
About Course
University of SouthamptonDescription
Discover the life and impact of Jane Austen
Jane Austen went from being a moderately successful anonymous novelist in her own time to a global celebrity in ours. On this course you will explore how that happened, exploring Austen’s own literary influences, and her reputation over time.
You will learn about her origins in Hampshire, uncovering her formative years, and the society she lived in, asking how Austen’s location, background and reading influenced her novels. You will also consider the ways her own contemporaries read and responded to her, and her place in the modern canon of world literature today, 200 years after she died.
What topics will you cover?
- The Austen myth: who is she and what does she mean to people around the world?
- An 18th century education: Jane and women’s education and reading
- Austen’s literary and family influences
- Austen’s ‘dirty walks’: gardens and landscapes in Austen’s writing
- The marketing of Jane Austen at home and abroad – how her legacy has endured and built her celebrity
- Austen’s afterlives: adapting Jane Austen for the modern age in film, TV
- Austen as a commodity: portraits, hair and merchandising
Who will you learn with?
Associate Professor in English at University of Southampton, & Executive Director of the Library at Chawton House. I research & teach Jane Austen & her contemporaries in Britain & France. @gdow12
Chawton House Postdoctoral Fellow (2016-present). I also lecture in eighteenth-century literature at the University of Southampton. @AmatoryAnon
Who developed the course?
Southampton is a place for ambitious people keen to stretch their intellectual abilities and help change the world.
What Will I Learn?
- Develop knowledge and understanding of the historical and literary contexts in which Jane Austen was writing
- Investigate virtually the important locations associated with Jane Austen and their impact on her writing
- Assess and discuss the impact of Austen’s society on the depiction of arts and reading in her novels
- Explore some of the myths surrounding women writers of the long eighteenth century
- Identify the challenges of adapting, translating and interpreting Jane Austen’s works and how this affects global understanding of her work
- Evaluate the marketing of Jane Austen in her own time and now
Topics for this course
Welcome
Welcome to the course00:02:55
What does Jane Austen mean to you?00:02:31
What did Jane Austen mean to others?
Location, Location: the places that mattered to Austen
An 18th Century education
What would Austen have read?
A lovely course, well put together with lots of detail and interaction. If you’re already a fan of Austen you will love it, if you’re not yet a fan you will become one.
If you want to know more about Jane Austen and her works overall, this is a right course. The level is for those who knows Jane Austen, but not necessarily her novels in depth. I liked the discussion about the adaptations, as well.
The content of the course was just what I was hoping for. I enjoyed everything each week and have come away with a much broader knowledge of Jane Austen and of the times in which she lived. I would strongly recommend the course to others. Thank you to all involved in the course structure and presentation.
I thoroughly enjoyed this deep insight into the life and times of Jane Austen. The learning pace was good, bonus materials very well selected and my overall impression was extremely positive. This course exceeded my expectations, not only due to the content, but also to a very large part thanks to the personal feedback from the team.
Material Includes
- Official Certificate
Tags
Target Audience
- This course is for anyone with an interest in Jane Austen, including the members of Jane Austen Societies in North America, Japan, Brazil and many European countries. You will need a basic knowledge of her novels.
- Learners may be interested in the Master of Arts in Jane Austen offered by the University of Southampton.