LIT 4046 Romantic Literature: Jane Austen (PLNU) Dashboard

Description

SenseAndSensibilityTitlePage.jpgPrideAndPrejudiceTitlePage.jpgAll text title pageAll text title page for Northanger Abbey and PersuasionFile:Jane Austen coloured version.jpg - Wikimedia Commons

Our study of Romantic Literature will focus on the writing of Jane Austen (1775-1817), whose life and work is situated Regency Period and so carries the cultural influences of both the Enlightenment and the Romantic Periods. As we closely read four of her novels, Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814), and Persuasion (1818), , we will work to recognize and analyze the presence of major cultural issues that characterize the rise of Romanticism however overt or unacknowledged they may appear. Key issues will include the rise of democracy as expressed in Austen's consideration of women's lives and choices especially in relation to  marriage and security; the laws governing inheritance and men's roles in maintenance of estates and wealth; the spectres of the lost American Colonies, the French Revolution, and military life; the struggle to abolish the slave trade and slavery in the British Empire as well the gentry's complicity in the economics of slavery, the genres of social satire, comedy of manners, and the female bildungsroman.

In tandem with our focus on the primary literary texts, we will also explore historical sources, maps, literary criticism of Austen's work, and sociological, religious, and cultural sources.

Galleries, Timelines, and Maps

Map
Posted by Bettina Pedersen on Monday, November 16, 2020 - 14:36

This map contains the actual locations referenced in the plot of Persuasion as well as realated locations connected to the issues raised in the novel: i.e. class rank and manners, marriage and financial security, entail, primogeniture, vacation spots for the wealthy gentry and upper class, seaside locations in the south of England, and of course the British Royal Navy and their travels across the British Empire.

Please add your contribution as you identify important locations in the novel.

Remember that you must make a direct reference (correctly cited using MLA 8th ed) to the page and context in your Broadview editions of this novel.

Map
Posted by Bettina Pedersen on Monday, October 19, 2020 - 01:34

This map contains the locations--many real and some fictional--referenced in the plot of Sense and Sensibility as well as realated locations connected to the issues raise in the novel: i.e. entail, primogeniture, women's education (sense, sensibility, susceptibility), the season, and so on.

Please add your contribution as you identify important locations in the novel.

 

 

Map
Posted by Bettina Pedersen on Monday, October 19, 2020 - 01:30

This map contains the actual locations referenced in the plot of Pride and Prejudice as well as realated locations connected to the issues raised in the novel: i.e. women's education - accomplishments, conduct literature (Fordyce's Sermons), entail, as so on.

Please add your contribution as you identify important locations in the novel.

Map
Posted by Bettina Pedersen on Tuesday, July 28, 2020 - 16:01

This map contains the actual locations referenced in the plot of Mansfield Park as well as realated locations connected to the issues raised in the novel: i.e. slavery, slave trade, home of William Wilberforce, an MP who long worked for the abolitin of the slave trade and of slavery.

Please add your contribution as you identify important locations in the novel.

Chronology
Posted by Bettina Pedersen on Wednesday, July 8, 2020 - 19:15

This timeline includes biographical details from Jane Austen's life. We will continue to build content relating to her novels, her life, and world events over the course of our reading and research together.

Individual Entries

Place
Posted by Camryn Ostrander on Tuesday, November 24, 2020 - 03:03

Brighton is where the Rushworths go for their honeymoon with Julia Bertram. In the footnotes of Mansfield Park by Jane Austen, the editor June Sturrock describes Brighton as "a fashionable seaside resort town popular with Prince Regent, located about 60 miles south of London" (219 footnote). Because it is a vacation spot, Austen describes it as "gay in the winter as in summer" (219). 

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Place
Posted by Camryn Ostrander on Tuesday, November 24, 2020 - 02:51

Weymouth is a small vacation town that sits on the coast. It is important to Austen because she used to write to Cassandra, who was staying in Weymouth and "[made] fun of the town's mundane problems rather than its celebrity culture or gossip" (Easton 152). It is refered to as the vacation spot where Tom Bertram met John Yates in Weymouth, when Mr. Yates was disappointed in his first attempt to act in a private theatrical of Lovers' Vows.

Easton, Celia A. "Seduction and Seducers in English Spa Towns: Jane Austen's Opportunity of Place." Persuasions: The Jane Austen Journal, vol. 40, 2018, p. 104+. Gale Literature Resource Center, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A595143489/LitRC?u=sand82993&sid=LitRC&xi.... Accessed 24 Nov. 2020.

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Place
Posted by Bettina Pedersen on Friday, November 20, 2020 - 03:29

Barton Cottage is the fictional home of the Dashwood women in Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility (1813). It is located in Devonshire in the novel and thus a very long way from Norland Park, Norland Estate, in Sussex, where they had lived with their father, Mr. Henry Dashwood, nephew of "the old Gentleman" who instead of leaving the estate to Mr. Henry Dashwood, left it to Mr. Henry Dashwood's son (by his first wife), Mr. John Dashwood and then to John's four-year old son." This decision puts the Dashwood women of Mr. Henry Dashwood's second marriage in a very precarious position, and when Henry dies, they are effectively disinherited and lose their home, Norland Park. Mrs. Dashwood's cousin offers them Barton Cottage on his Barton Estate, near Exeter, which is why they move to Devonshire (Austen, Sense and Sensibility, 61-3).

Austen, Jane. Sense and Sensibility. edited by Kathleen James-Cavan, Broadview, 2001.

Attribution: Derek Harper /...

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Place
Posted by Shane Hoyle on Friday, November 20, 2020 - 02:21

St. Domingo is the capital city of the Dominican Republic, a country sharing one island with Haiti near the Gulf of Mexico. Frederick Wentworth was stationed in St. Domingo with the Royal Navy before he met Anne Elliot and fell in love with her: "He was...a captain Frederick Wentworth...who being made commander in consequence of the action off St. Domingo, and not immediately employed, had come into Somersetshire, in the summer of 1806...[Frederick Wentworth and Anne Elliot] were gradually acquainted, and, when acquainted, rapidly and deeply in love" (Austen 65). It is reasonable to believe that the UK's involvement in St. Domingo was related to the Atlantic Slave Trade. ...

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Place
Posted by Shane Hoyle on Friday, November 20, 2020 - 02:08

Lisbon is the coastal capital city of the country Portugal. In Jane Austen's Persuasion, British Navy Admiral Croft moves to Kellynch Hall after moving from a series of temporary moves, the latest of which is from Lisbon.

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Place
Posted by Shane Hoyle on Friday, November 20, 2020 - 01:52

Antigua is an island in the Carribean Islands across the Atlantic Ocean from the English settings of Mansfield Park. Antigua during Austen's time was often known for being a hot location in the Atlantic Slave Trade. Sir Thomas Bertram owns both the estate of Mansfield Park and an estate in Antigua, which is likely utilitzing slavery or in the slave trading business.

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Place
Posted by Jasmin Segarra on Friday, November 20, 2020 - 01:13

Grosvenor Street: "She then read the first sentence aloud, which comprised the information of their having just resolved to follow their brother to town directly, and of meaning to dine the next day in Grosvenor Street, where Mr Hurst had a house" (Pride and Prejudice, Ch 21). Charles and Caroline Bingley stay with their sister and her husband.

Grosvenor Street, where Mr. Hurst and Louisa lived,...

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Place
Posted by Jasmin Segarra on Friday, November 20, 2020 - 00:59

Cheapside in 1823. Engraved by T.M. Baynes from a drawing by W. Duryer.JPG

Cheapside in 1823. Engraved by T.M. Baynes from a drawing by W. Duryer.

"'I think I have heard you say, that their uncle is an attorney in Meryton. Yes; and they have another who lives somewhere near Cheapside'" (73). ...

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Place
Posted by Shane Hoyle on Friday, November 20, 2020 - 00:51

Everingham is a fictional estate in Norfolk, England. Everingham is where Mansfield Park's Henry Crawford was born, and he is also the heir to receive Everingham. This is a setting for several scenes in Mansfield Park

Austen, Jane. Mansfield Park, edited by June Sturrock, Broadview Press, 2003.

The image attached is a map of England. Norfolk is represented by the highlighted red region...

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Place
Posted by Shane Hoyle on Friday, November 20, 2020 - 00:20

Spithead is an area in the region of Hampton in southern England. This would be a place where naval ships would dock, such as the HMS Thrush, as mentioned in Mansfield ParkFurthermore, this location is likely in Austen's repertoire because of her affiliation with the navy due to her brothers' naval services.

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