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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.