This week’s episode delves deep into the textual integrity, enduring value, and ideas of Pride and Prejudice, reflecting on its appropriations in contemporary contexts for today's audiences. We examine how these appropriations breathe new life into the narrative while preserving its essence.

This week's episode focuses on Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austan, first published in 1813. The novel has been appropriated countless times into a variety of mediums, contexts, and to reflect new values. The two appropriations looked at in this episode are 'The Lizzie Bennet Diaries' and 'Gay Pride and Prejudice.' These two texts were inspired by the novel Austan and reappropriated into two new and contemporary forms and contexts. 'The Lizzie Bennet Diaries' is a 100-episode web series on YouTube documenting 'Lizzies' life in the 21st century and takes an even more feminist twist on Pride and Prejudice, to reflect the feminist values of today's society and women. Meanwhile, 'Gay Pride and Prejudice' focuses on Bennet in his shifting world, with a mother figure passing away and gay marriage just becoming legalized in his home state. This text helps with bringing awareness to the queer community and more contemporary issues. We look at how the act of appropriating a classic text into a contemporary form and context impacts the textual integrity of the text while gaining a greater understanding of these three texts.

Our driving question for this week's episode is “Do these appropriations stand to the test that Jane Austen's original novel does?” We answer this and more in the thrilling 10-minute episode. Our episode will be appearing on the Originality Paradox and has been sponsored by them to help support our mission. Please find more podcasts like this one there. Please like and subscribe to support our mission of making educational literary media more accessible.