Authoring Austen: Writing, Reception and Adaptation

Learning Outcomes

Subject Specific Intellectual and Research Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• you will be able to reflect on your own position as a scholar in relation to debates in Austen's own time, and today.
• you will be able to understand and explain literary scholarship on Austen.
• you will be able to give an account of the practices which made - and continue to make - Austen a popular author.
• you will be able to use this research and understanding to debate a variety of scholarly perspectives.

Transferable and Generic Skills

Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:

• you will be able to manage your time efficiently.
• you will be able to identify and summarise the main debates in a given field.
• you will be able to think and write with clarity and conviction.

Knowledge and Understanding

Having successfully completed this module, you will be able to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of:

• you will be able to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of specific theoretical issues around the adaptation of Austen's work.
• you will be able to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of Austen's complete works, including her unpublished writing.
• you will be able to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of a variety of critical approaches to Austen's writing and life.

Jane Austen’s modern reception and immense popularity have been moulded and influenced by the ways that she has been read in the 200 years since her death. Whilst the release of her letters in 1884 and a more complete collection in 1932 opened up Jane Austen’s world in unprecedented ways for readers, modern interpretations of her novels continue to change the ways that Austen’s work is perceived in biography, film, and academia. Her novels and life have been adapted, remixed, and translated into an ever-growing body of films, television series, books, graphic novels, YouTube channels, and even video games—a thriving media industry. Her imagined Regency World influences new media outside of adaptations of her novels too. This module will allow you to read or revisit Austen’s novels, letters and unpublished work, and to develop a thorough understanding of the key conceptual debates as we chart the ways in which Austen’s novels have been read by twentieth and twenty-first century critics. You will explore ways scholars have approached some of the important questions of Austen’s novels: gender, marriage, class, money, and Englishness. You will also be introduced to emerging new directions in Austen studies, and encouraged to draw on a wide range of critical theories to develop your own readings of Austen’s fiction and adaptations of her œuvre.

Teaching methods include - lectures - seminars - individual consultations - feedback on written work and seminar presentations Learning activities include - reading assigned texts - independent research - seminar discussion and presentations - writing essays

Summative

This is how we’ll formally assess what you have learned in this module.

Referral

This is how we’ll assess you if you don’t meet the criteria to pass this module.

Repeat

An internal repeat is where you take all of your modules again, including any you passed. An external repeat is where you only re-take the modules you failed.