Sense+and+Sensibility

We will be reading Jane Austen's __Sense and Sensibility__ this year in place of another work. Please use the following resources in order to further your understanding of the reading. If you don't have your own copy or don't want to purchase one, it's available online from the University of Virginia Electronic Text Center here: [|Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen]. In addition, you should outline and takes notes on the three articles linked here.

__Background Information__ A core theme of Austen's novel is indicated by its title: Sense and Sensibility. Eighteenth century thought was preoccupied with these concepts, embodied in the philosophy of Rationalism and Enlightenment theories. Read a brief introduction to these ideas in [|Professor Julie Shaffer's article]. Professor Shaffer is in the Department of English at the University of Wisconsin.

__Narration__ One of the keys to understanding Austen's (or any author's) intent is keeping track of who is saying what to whom. That can be somewhat difficult in an Austen novel, as her narrator tends to appear and reappear in the dialog without much warning. For an excellent discussion of Austen's narrative technique, read [|Alan A. Stone's review of director Emma Thompson's film version of Sense and Sensibility]. Please note that this link is actually a Google cached screen shot of a page that no longer exists on the original website. (See, what your mother told you IS true. Once you put it on the web, it NEVER really goes away.)

__Motifs Gender and Patriarchy__ Although presented as a book review, this [|article by Ellen Moody of George Mason University] does a quick job of summarizing some of the novel's most prevalent themes.