Jane Austen in Her
Time and Ours
January
11-13, 2001
Jane Austen enjoys a popularity virtually unmatched among English literary
authors. Perhaps only Shakespeare can boast a wider readership; indeed,
much like the Bard himself, Austen is widely read by academics as well
as by a vast popular audience. At a time when her novels are generating
countless fictional and filmic adaptations, Austen has additionally
become the subject of exciting revisionist criticism that is providing
important new insights into the author and her work. Thus, the time
is clearly right to assess the relevance of Austen in her time and our
own.
Austen is frequently celebrated as a keen observer of social mores
in late Georgian England, at once sympathetic and satirical in her depiction.
Now more than ever, Austen is also identified as a penetrating and even
prescient witness to transformations in conceptions of sex and gender
in this period. No longer considered "merely" the comedian of domestic
manners, her work has been restored to contexts that place her at the
center of debates on gender and sexuality, from the culture of female
homoeroticism to the reconfiguration of gender roles in the wake of
the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars. Alongside these contexts,
the reception of Austen by generations of feminist readers presents
a fascinating case-study in its own right, offering a unique perspective
on some of the political uses to which AustenŐs work has been put.
In addition to rethinking Austen through categories of sex and gender,
further developments in the political reading of the novels have produced
some surprisingly new insights. For instance, while it is well known
that few writers before or since Austen have depicted a burgeoning commercial
society with such acuity and acid wit, more recent criticism has expanded
and refined our understanding of AustenŐs engagement with the discourse
of economics as well as with the consumer society of early 19th-century
Britain. Another important topic to have emerged in recent critical
writing is the question of AustenŐs relation to the constitution of
the British empire in the years following the Napoleonic Wars. Largely
catalyzed by Edward SaidŐs landmark essay, "Jane Austen and Empire,"
critics have begun to shed new light on the complex relations between
AustenŐs forms of imaginative world-buildingŃher artful construction
of a tight, at times even suffocating, moral universeŃand the conceptual
and geo-political work of nation-building in late Georgian England.
In all, such developments have dramatically enhanced our understanding
of AustenŐs life, work, and era.
What accounts for AustenŐs continued relevance in critical debate,
or for her seeming ubiquity in contemporary popular culture? How have
new contexts and critical approaches shed new light on the complex political
dramas that unfold within the parlors and gardens of AustenŐs novels,
or on those unfolding today in lecture halls, living rooms, and cineplexes,
among other sites where AustenŐs followers can be found? Our seminar
will bring together literary, cultural, and film historians in order
to explore new developments in our understanding of AustenŐs work. Topics
to be addressed will include the politics of AustenŐs reception among
20th-century feminist readers; the complex, often vexed relations between
literary critics and the popular readers known as "Janeites"; the authorŐs
relation to English colonial rule; and the subject of Austen in film.
Speakers will include John Brewer (English and History), Mary Favret
(English, Indiana UniversityŃBloomington), Sandra Macpherson (English),
Saree Makdisi (English and Comparative Literature), Stuart Tave (Professor
Emeritus, English), and Katie Trumpener (English, Comparative Literature,
and Germanic Studies).
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University of Chicago