HENKF2106U English - Free topic F: The oddity of Jane Austen & Love, Service and Friendship in Shakespeare

The Oddity of Jane Austen - Charles Lock

Austen’s novels have become so canonical, so familiar, and so “normalized” by adaptations that her peculiarity tends to be overlooked.

This course will examine four of her novels (Pride and Prejudice, Emma, Mansfield Park and Persuasion) while paying some attention to Northanger Abbey, Lady Susan and Sanditon.

The focus will be on the strangeness of her writing and the oddity of her perceptions, as seen in the perspective of her contemporaries and as may become visible again in our own perspective.

Details about reading for this part of the course will be announced later.

Love, Service and Friendship in Shakespeare – Søs Haugaard

Taking our point of departure in 4--5 Shakespeare plays and a number of his sonnets, we will be discussing Love, Service and Friendship in Shakespeare.

Two perspectives come together in this course:

One concerns male friendship and homosocial and homoerotic norms in Shakespeare and in late sixteenth/early seventeenth England generally. The other concerns the complexities of mutual loyalty between master and servant as an integral part of courtly culture and courtly ideals in the same period. We shall be discussing Shakespeare’s representation of service and loyalty and the poetic and dramatic potential of this special relationship as well as in male friendship.