Assignments

Final Paper Assignment: [Printable Text]

For Monday, November 28: Finish Shirley; Read Volume 1 of Villette.

For Wednesday, November 22: Optional appointments with me to discuss final paper topics. Please email me to set up an appt.

For Friday, November 16: Finish Vol 2 of Shirley

Think about the ways that this novel deviates from the bildungsroman formula of Jane Eyre. Consider what happens to the inheritance, family recovery, and education plots in Shirley? What kind of difference does it make to the novel to have the family recovery plot involve the recovery of a mother figure (Agnes Pryor), rather than an Uncle??

For Wednesday, Nov. 15: Read through Vol 2; chapter 5 of Shirley.

Consider the relationship between the marriage plot and the political plot as it develops in Vol 2.

For Monday, Nov. 13, Finish Vol. 1 of Shirley

Discussion prompt: Think about how the usual plots we expect to see in a 19thc novel (marriage and education plots, for example) are affected by the fact that Shirley brings the political plot into focus.

For Friday, Nov. 10. Revisions due: Finish Jane Eyre; Begin Shirley: read Chapters 1-2.

For Wednesday, Nov. 8, Read Jane Eyre throuh chapter 35

For Monday, November 6, Read Jane Eyre through chapter 27

For Wednesday, November 1, Read through Jane Eyre, chapter 16: Work on your essay revisions

For Monday, October 30, finish Jane Eyre Vol 1

For Wednesday, October 24, Read Jane Eyre, Chapters 1-9 (unless professor Nixon told you something different in class.)

For Monday, 10/22 Finish Persuasion: Prepare group work assignment

For Friday, 10/19: No Class on Friday

For Wednesday, 10/17 Read Persuasion through Vol. 1 Chapter 10

Prepare Midterm essays

**Please bring 2 copies to class**

For Monday, 10/15 Finish Emma and read Persuasion chapers 1-3. Prepare for a reading quiz on Volume 3 of Emma.

Discussion questions for Persuasion:

How different is Anne Elliot from other Austen heroines? How do the marriage and education plots have to adapt to a heroine with Anne’s history? Does Anne have different sets of concerns in contemplating marriage than other heroines?

For Friday, 10/12

Read Emma through Vol. 3; Chapter 12

Discussion questions for Emma Volume 3

We have considered the owner-estate metonymic relationship between Darcy and Pemberley in Pride and Prejudice; now, let’s consider that same metonymy between Mr. Knightley and Donwell Abbey. Consider the rich descriptions of his property. What do we learn about him from it? How does it affect our opinions of the Emma-Knightley relationship? Does the owner-estate metonymy here function differently to the function that the Darcy-Pemberley metonymy had in P&P?

For Wednesday, 10/10

Read Emma through Vol. 2

Discussion questions for Emma,Volume 2

Jane Fairfax receives a piano in volume 2 that sets gossip about her in motion. What does the piano appear to mean to her? What does it mean to Emma? What does it appear to mean to the narrator? Both Jane and Emma move into marriage plots in this novel; what predictions could one make about their marriage plots on the basis of the events so far? How do marriage plots in Emma compare or contrast with those in S&S and P&P? (Are they Romantic? Pragmatic? Dysphoric? Euphoric?)

Paper Assignment #1 [printable text]

For Friday, 10/4

Read Emma through ch. 14.

Compare the first sentence of Emma to those of MP, P&P and S&S.

For Wednesday, 10/4

Reconsider the connections you initially made between the Appendix readings on Female conduct

and Austen's characterization of either Fanny or Mary. This time consider the possible views about conduct as Austen represents them in her narrative commentary in Mansfield Park. Read through the paper topics for the first formal paper [to be posted later today]

For Monday, 10/2

Read Volume three of Mansfield Park. Prepare for reading quiz.

For Friday, 9/29

Finish Volume 2. Keep tracing Fanny's progress through spaces within the novel (see discussion prompt below)

For Wednesday, 9/27

Read through ch. 25: p. 262 in the Broadview Edition

Discussion prompt:

Consider Fanny's relationship to the spaces she inhabits: consider both her views of the spaces she occupies or visits and her position (physical and/or social) within those spaces.

Reading Quiz on Friday

For Monday, 9/25

[Printable text]

Read Mansfield Park, Volume 1 and Appendix C: Ideals of femininity in the Broadview Edition of Mansfield Park

I would like you to work very closely with language for this informal assignment.

1. Find a passage or two from Mansfield Park in which the characterization of either Fanny Price or Mary Crawford is developed and type it/them up

2. Choose one or two passages from the Appendix C excerpts that you feel either echo or or work against the ways in which Fanny or Mary is characterized in your passage. Type it/them them up underneath the passage(s) you’ve selected from Mansfield Park.

3. Then write two or three paragraphs in which you compare the specific language choices used in each of the passages. Quote from the passages you cite in your comparative analysis and explain what kinds of connections you do or don't see.

**Try to develop and argumentative and comparative topic sentence for each of your paragraphs**

For Friday, 9/22

Finish P&P

For Wed. 9/20

Quiz P&P through Vol. 3 ch8

For Monday, 9/18

Read Pride and Prejudice, Vol 2

Quiz on Wed on P&P through Vol 3; ch. 8.

Presentation Guidelines Handout [readable text]

For Fri, 9/15

Read, Pride and Prejudice, Vol 1

Discussion questions for Pride and Prejudice:

 As you read Pride and Prejudice, try to think about it in relation to Sense and Sensibility. The titles are deceptively symmetrical; do you see a movement between the texts that allows us to think of P&P in another register? Usually P&P is seen as an “improvement” in a developmental narrative of Austen’s career. Do you see instead or in addition some kind of shift (in tone; in thematics)? What happens when the issues of S&S are taken up in comic form? What happens to sickness, to death, to money, to the threat of rape or sexual fall?

For Wed, 9/13

Read Sense and Sensibilty,Vol 3

Discussion prompts:

Think about the ways the novel represents the relationship between feelings, expression of feelings, and the body.

Consider the extent to which the novel endorses cautions against, or both.

Connect this thinking about feeling to our readings and discussion of sensibility.

Prepare for reading quiz

For Monday, 9/11

Read Sense and Sensibilty,Vol 2

Read Gilpin on picturesque: Appendix C 407-410

Read Knox on sensibility in Appendix B: 403-406

Read “The Effects of Mistaken Synonymy” from The Lady’s Monthly Museum in Appendix B: 386-389.

Write a very informal 1-2 page response paper applying one of the Appendix essays’ use of its central concept (Gilpin—the picturesque; Knox and Lady’s Monthly selection—sensibility) to a scene or a passage within the novel.

Your essay might consider the following: how do the implied definitions of terms within in each source differ? Or are they used in similar ways?

For Friday, 9/8

Read Sense and Sensibility Vol 1

Read over the suggested presentation topics and choose one

[printable version of suggested presentation topics]

Consider responses to the discussion prompt: