ENGL 328
Austen and Eliot
Last Offered Spring 2024
Division I
This course is not offered in the current catalog

Austen and Eliot profoundly influenced the course of the novel by making internal consciousness crucial to narrative form. In this course we will explore Austen’s innovative aesthetic strategies and the ways in which Eliot assimilated and transformed them. By placing each writer’s work in its political and philosophical context-in Austen’s case, reactions to the aftermath of the French Revolution, in Eliot’s, to the failed mid-century European revolutions and the pressures of British imperialism-we will consider how each writer conceives social and historical exigencies to shape comedies and dramas of consciousness. Readings will include Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Emma, Mansfield Park, and Persuasion; Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss, The Lifted Veil; and Daniel Deronda; selected letters and prose; and critical essays.