ENG 431 - The Brontes

Semester Hours: 4

The past five years have been exciting ones for the Brontë sisters. In 2011, new film versions of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights premiered in theaters, and a new play, We Are Three Sisters, debuted in England. Since that time, mash-ups of Jane Eyre have flooded the market-including titles such as Jane Slayre (2010), The Madwoman Upstairs (2016), and Jane Steele (2016), to name just a few. Why this sudden surge of interest? What makes the Brontës so relevant to contemporary life? We’ll address these and other questions in this seminar as we delve into biographies, pore over letters, and read much of the fiction that this prolific family produced in mid-19th-c. England. We’ll approach the texts from a variety of critical perspectives and will also study multiple film adaptations.