(U3A event)
Professor Jocelyn Harris
Jane Austen was no cloistered country mouse, but a woman fully engaged with vital issues of her time, especially the bad behaviour of the royal princes. She would have known many of the cartoons from the golden age of Regency satire, and she was not easily shocked. I shall argue that in spite of current Austen-mania, her novels are not chick lit but courageous and comical satire on the nation’s rulers.
Jocelyn is an Emeritus Professor of English at Otago University, and an enthusiastic expert on C18th literature and women’s literature. Her next book, Satire, celebrity and politics in Jane Austen, will be published soon.
Admission $5 Visitors welcome