In this class we will read two of Jane Austen’s most popular novels, Sense and Sensibility and Emma. Austen’s enduring popularity depends primarily on the skill with which she created appealing, multidimensional characters and chronicled their struggles with the customs and traditions of English life. But her greatness as a novelist is also based on the icy precision of the style with which she dissected those characters and the social world they inhabited. Lionel Trilling said of Emma that every time we read it, “it becomes a different book” as we readjust our sense of the balance between the charm of the characters and the edginess of the satiric vision that hides behind the elegance of Austen’s style. We will pay close attention to both the “nice” Jane Austen, who gave us a wide array of appealing and memorable characters, and the wickedly witty Jane Austen, who skewered everything that her world held sacred.
Class size limit: 30. Suggested Reading: (1) Sense and Sensibility (2) Emma.