Two topics are offered for Spring 2011. Students may take one or both for credit. Section A1: Jane Austen in Context. Investigates the question of tradition and the individual talent in Austen's fiction by reading what she read. Exploration of such writers as Johnson and Burney highlights the distinctive contours of both her masterpieces and her juvenilia. Section B1: Dickens. How did Dickens' life, society, and epoch shape his art? Readings from his first novel, Pickwick Papers, through selected novels of the middle period, to his last completed novel, Our Mutual Friend. Films and dramatizations included.