Jane Austen’s Exploration of Romanticism: Teaching “older” Literature Through Northanger Abbey in the Swedish Upper-Secondary English Classroom

Sammanfattning

This paper argues that Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey is a valuable pedagogical resource that can address the Swedish National Agency for Education’s mandate on the coverage of “older” literature in Swedish EFL courses at upper secondary school in a flexible and thorough way. Presupposing that the novel comprises various literary genres and forms, the paper provides a close reading through a proposed perspective on Romanticism, in which a continuum consisting of domestic felicity, courtship and the Gothic is foregrounded. The major finding of the paper is that Northanger Abbey can be read as a movement across the continuum: an exploration of Romanticism that encompasses both Austen’s treatment of romantic relationships in a rural setting and the Gothic adventures of the heroine. In addition, the paper presents an account of the theme of courtship where different attitudes, strategies and motivations among different characters are highlighted. Regarding the Gothic, the paper draws a critical distinction between how the Gothic becomes manifest in the novel, which is referred to as the use of the Gothic, and what the Gothic may signify, which is referred to as the function of the Gothic. This distinction, it is argued, is reflected by the narrative structure of the novel. Due to the paper having a didactical aim, these observations are discussed in relation to certain pedagogical approaches, and certain preliminary suggestions for educational implementation are subsequently proposed. In particular, pedagogical approaches that focus on narrative elements, genre, culture, reader responses, and creative writing are presented as viable when approaching different insights offered by the close reading. This paper can be read as a case study that highlights how Northanger Abbey can be addressed as an “older” novel in terms of content.