Category Archives: Austen (Jane)

Jane Austen, Mistress of Manipulation

A new political science text shows that Jane Austen has a shrewd understanding of game theory.

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Bush’s Legacy: “Setting Aside 9-11…”

Conservative defenses of Bush’s record on counter-terrorism–”setting aside 9-11…” –call for Jane Austen’s exquisite irony.

Also posted in Wilmot (John) | 3 Comments

Jane Austen: Feminine AND Feministy

In my student’s eyes, there’s no contradiction between Austen the satirist and Austen the romance writer.

Also posted in Radcliffe (Ann), Scott (Sir Walter) | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Jane Austen and the Ethics of Care

Austen’s Emma demonstrates an ethics of care–but only for people in her own class.

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Jane Austen Answering Machine Messages

Answering machine messages as Austen characters would have composed them

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A Millennial Reads Jane Austen

In this millennial’s reading of Jane Austen, she is somewhere between feminine and feministy.

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Jane Austen Has Something for Everyone

No two students respond to Jane Austen the same.

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George Knightley as a GOP Moderate

Mr. Knightley chastises Emma because she undermines their class superiority. The GOP establishment is worried about something similar.

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For Core Standards, More Lit, Not Less

The Common Core State Standards deemphasize literature. In fact, we need more literature taught.

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Austen vs. Common Core State Standards

To excite students, teach good writing–not writing that torments.

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Which Jane Austen Character Are You?

Find out what Jane Austen character you are with my class’s Jane Austen Personality Profile test.

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Students Persuaded by “Persuasion”

College students continue to find Jane Austen’s “Persuasion” compelling.

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An Austen Romance for Dems and GOP?

It proved easy to apply the election to Toni Morrison and Jane Austen in my classes.

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Serving Students a Jane Austen High Tea

Serving my students a Jane Austen high tea made the novels come alive.

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Mitt as a Jane Austen Villain

Like Henry Crawford in “Mansfield Park,” Mitt Romney is inconstant and will say anything.

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Playing Cards Jane Austen Style

Playing the card game in “Mansfield Park” gives students insight into the meaning of games.

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Austen, Gothic Horrors, and Husbands

The 2007 Masterpiece Theater version of “Northanger Abbey” plugs into themes uncovered by 20th century feminists.

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The Brave New World of Twitterature

Depending on your point of view, literature reduced to tweets is either comic or horrifying.

Also posted in Flaubert (Gustave), Forster (E.M.), Kafka (Franz), Milton (John), Proust (Marcel), Salinger (J. D.), Steinbeck (John) | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Reading – More Like Bondage, Play or Sex?

In my Theories of the Reader course, we have been taking note of different analogies that theorists apply to reading literature. French phenomenologist George Poulet (“Criticism and the Experience of interiority”) describes reading as a forceful intrusion by the book: As soon as I replace my direct perception of reality by the words of a [...]

Also posted in Sterne (Lawrence) | 2 Comments

Can Poetry Be Bad for You?

The possibility that poetry can have a deleterious effect on one (the poetry of Scott and Byron anyway) is a possibility that Austen brings up in “Persuasion.”

Also posted in Byron (Lord Gordon), Scott (Sir Walter) | Tagged , , , , , , | 11 Comments

Jilted by Your Fiancé? Turn to Austen

A student distraught when her fiance dropped her used Jane Austen’s ironic wit in “Sense and Sensibility” to regain perspective and reenter the world.

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Dear Frustrated in Love: Read a Classic

Literature is better than any self help book for relationship guidance.

Also posted in Garcia Marquez (Gabriel), Virgil | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Is Mitt Romney a Doctor Faustus?

If Mitt Romney sells his soul for the nomination, can he get it back? Christopher Marlowe would say that it doesn’t look good.

Also posted in Marlowe (Christopher) | Tagged , , , , , , | 5 Comments

If Jane Austen Used Facebook . . .

To update Jane Austen, my class took eight of her characters from “Sense and Sensibility” and put them in Facebook conversation with each other.

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Among Reread Authors, Jane Austen Is #1

Readers often reread Jane Austen to reassure themselves that order can be found in a chaotic world.

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Jane Austen & My Son’s Secret Wedding

A secret marriage entered into by my son Toby could have been taken straight out of Jane Austen’s “Emma.”

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Jane Austen’s Musings on Memory

The minds translates the helter-skelter of events into tidy narratives, often to the detriment of what really happened. Fanny Price in “Mansfield Park” muses on this phenomenon.

Also posted in Proust (Marcel) | Tagged , , | 6 Comments

An Austen Dinner for the Ages

On Sunday my Jane Austen First Year Seminar students came to my housefor a meal that we took out of the “Jane Austen Cookbook.” The meal took two days to prepare and four people to serve.

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Austen Teaches Moral Compromise 101

The example of Edmund Bertram in Jane Austen’s “Mansfield Park” helps us understand the less-than-ideal choices our leaders sometimes make as they negotiate a compromised world.

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Jane Austen and “Occupy Wall Street”

In “Mansfield Park” Jane Austen calls out the irresponsible wealthy in ways that the Occupy Wall Street protests would approve.

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Using Austen to Understand Racism

African American blogger Ta-Nehisi Coates uses Jane Austen’s villainous Fanny Dashwood to penetrate the mindset of American racists.

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