Print this page Jane Austen: Inspired and Inspiring

It may be a truth universally acknowledged that any Jane Austen screen adaptation will be a ratings winner, but do they all deserve to be? Together, we will evaluate them as adaptations and as creative works in their own right. And who can blame the screenwriters for being inspired by a writer of such insight, wit and humanity? Austen herself was influenced by the writers before her who shared those same qualities, from Samuel Richardson and Henry Fielding to Fanny Burney, Ann Radcliffe and Maria Edgeworth, and we will investigate their work to find the seeds of her inspiration. This workshop is a prism, taking in the light of great 18th-century writers through the lens of Austen's unique understanding, and refracting it into the many colours of her screen adaptations.

DELIVERY MODE

Face to face

COURSE OUTLINE

Writers who influenced Jane Austen 

• Samuel Richardson (1689–1761) 1740
• Henry Fielding (1707–1754) 1741
• Charlotte Lennox (1729-1804) 1752
• Samuel Johnson (1709–1784), 1755 
• Hannah More (1745-1833) 1762
• Fanny Burney (1752-1840) 1778
• Elizabeth Inchbald (1753–1821) 1784
• Ann Radcliffe (1764–1823) 1791
• Maria Edgeworth (1768-1849) 1800

Film and TV versions of Austen novels

• Sense and Sensibility (1811)
• Pride and Prejudice (1813)
• Mansfield Park (1814)
• Emma (1815)
• Northanger Abbey (1817)
• Persuasion (1817)
• Lady Susan
• Sanditon

LEARNING OUTCOMES

By the end of this course, students should be able to:

• Outline the lives and describe the works of none writers who inspired Jane Austen
• Assess in what ways their works relate to Austen’s
• Identify major film and TV adaptations of Austen’s works
• Evaluate the success of those productions as adaptations and as stand-alone works
• Appreciate the qualities and characteristics of Jane Austen’s writing and identify those qualities in antecedent writers and later adaptations.