Text Universe: A Pedagogical Strategy to Teach Literary Classics

Svensson and Lundström focus on teaching literary classics across analogue and digital media spaces by using a text universe, that is a source text and its various re-presentations, as a way to challenge educational discourses and create opportunities for students to expand socio-political boundaries. In the chapter, the Pride and Prejudice-universe is analysed in order to explore what the different re-presentations add to the particular universe as well as how they contribute to the understanding of the source text, Austen’s novel. Focusing on intersectionality in remakes (adaptations) and makeovers (fan fictions and variation novels), the analysis demonstrates how the text universe provides scope for subaltered voices within the intersectional framework and presents a counter-discourse to the historical space of the classic Pride and Prejudice, thus becoming a virtual learning site for socially negotiated knowledge.

"[T]he analysis demonstrates how the text universe provides scope for subaltered voices within the intersectional framework and presents a counter-discourse to the historical space of the classic Pride and Prejudice, thus becoming a virtual learning site for socially negotiated knowledge." (Authors, in Abstract)