820 research outputs found
The light of the eye : doctrine, piety and reform in the works of Thomas Sherlock, Hannah More and Jane Austen
No full textBibliography: leaves 376-401.This thesis investigates the ways in which three eighteenth-century writers, Bishop Thomas Sherlock, Hannah More and Jane Austen embody orthodox Anglican doctrine according to their individual perceptions of the enlightening properties of Protestant Christianity. After situating them in their respective gender, literary and ecclesiastical contexts, I examine some of their key doctrines and analyse excerpts from their works. My selection of passages from Sherlock's works is fairly comprehensive, but in the case of More and Austen, where there is already a formidable body of literary criticism, it is more selective. Thus, I focus on doctrine in More's tracts, Strictures on the System of Female Education, An Essay on St Paul and most especially Coelebs in Search of a Wife and in the case of Austen, on her prayers and select passages from Sense and Sensibility and Mansfield Park. I conclude that, although diverse in their particular kind of Anglicanism (High, Evangelical and Median) and in their choice of genre, transparency or obscurity (anonymity and pseudonymity) and the various narratological strategies some of them invoke to circumvent certain taboos, Sherlock, More and Austen champion the same central orthodox doctrines, defend them against current alternatives to orthodoxy such as Latitudinarianism, Deism and various forms of Freethinking, and promote similar moral and ecclesiastical reforms. However, indirectly (through female characters who resist male representation or control) the women writers subject their ostensibly authorially-endorsed male narrators/characters to scrutiny and sometimes (when the males objectify the women) subversion
Letters of Jane Austen
No full textThe son of Jane Austen's 'favourite niece' Fanny Knight, Lord Brabourne, had inherited a large number of letters from Jane Austen including some to her sister Cassandra and others to members of the Knight family. The Letters of Jane Austen (1884) publishes these letters for the first time, and sets them in a family context drawn from the reminiscences of those who knew Austen personally. This second of two volumes presents a series of letters written between 1808 and her death in 1817, that is, mostly in the years she was settled at Chawton in Hampshire; in addition Brabourne includes a little group of poems, and other family documents. The letters cover the years of her career as a published author, and include many fascinating comments about her own and others' writings, as well as observations about the world around her.</jats:p
Jane Austen and the popular novel: the determined author
No full textJane Austen and the Popular Novel: The Determined Author offers a provocative reinterpretation of one of the most cherished authors in the English literary canon. Austen criticism has traditionally fixed her oeuvre within the ideological locus of the 1790s, ignoring the more topical elements displayed by her novels. Such accounts have consequently neglected the complex interactions that took place between Austen's works and newer forms of popular fiction, such as the Evangelical tale, the national romance, and historical novel. By situating Austen in the 1810s - the immediate literary period within which she published - this book argues for the inherently intertextual nature of her novels, positing that her 'innovation' lies not in her uniqueness, but in her polyvalent negotiations with other literary models. Jane Austen and the Popular Novel demonstrates the extent to which Austen was not only a determined author, but also an author determined by the literary marketplace itself
"The Necromancer of the Black Forest": a truly "horrid novel"
No full text"The Necromancer, or A Tale of the Black Forest" is one of seven 'horrid novels' mentioned in Jane Austen's Gothic satire "Northanger Abbey". The Necromancer is one of the more well-known of these, as it has been reprinted at least five times since Austen was writing. This paper gives a history and summary of the novel and how the German original may have influenced other writers of the time. It also considers the framing narrative of the story as well as the Gothic tropes that the author uses looking at it in relation to Todorov's discussion of the Fantasti
Routledge Companion to Jane Austen
No full textFirst published anonymously, as ‘a lady’, Jane Austen is now among the world’s most famous and highly revered authors. The Routledge Companion to Jane Austen provides wide-ranging coverage of Jane Austen’s works, reception, and legacy, with chapters that draw on the latest literary research and theory and represent foundational and authoritative scholarship as well as new approaches to an author whose works provide seemingly endless inspiration for reinterpretation, adaptation, and appropriation. The Companion provides up-to-date work by an international team of established and emerging Austen scholars and includes exciting chapters not just on Austen in her time but on her ongoing afterlife, whether in the academy and the wider world of her fans or in cinema, new media, and the commercial world. Parts within the volume explore Jane Austen in her time and within the literary canon; the literary critical and theoretical study of her novels, unpublished writing, and her correspondence; and the afterlife of her work as exemplified in film, digital humanities, and new media. In addition, the Companion devotes special attention to teaching Jane Austen
Jane Austen: The Musician as Author
No full textJane Austen was a practising musician, and my intention in this paper is to investigate the significance of that fact for her writing practice. Beginning with the comparison between Elizabeth and Mary Bennet in Pride and Prejudice, I will consider contemporary attitudes to virtuosity and aesthetics in an attempt to understand the implications in Austen’s fiction of the distinction between ‘playing well’ and ‘being listened to with pleasure’. My recently completed project of cataloguing in detail each piece of playable music in the Austen Family Music Books facilitates the study of Austen’s personal musical taste in the context of her extended family and, more broadly, of English musical culture in the late Georgian era. I attempt to bring together Austen the musician with Austen the writer, both in her knowledge of the musical repertoire of the time and the language of music more generally
Revisiting Jane Austen as a Romantic Author in Literary Biopics
Full text linkThis essay seeks to establish whether portrayals of Jane Austen on screen reaffirm a sense of the author's neoconservative heritage, or whether an alternative and more challenging model of female authorship is visible. Does this particular, and arguably defining, moment in Austen’s legacy offer new and diverse perspectives on the author and her Romantic and post-Romantic contexts? Both films raise troubling questions about adapting (and appropriating) Austen in the twenty-first century, with wider implications for the study of female authors and artists on screen. However, as I hope to demonstrate, the Austens of these biopics are neither reactionary heritage reproductions nor “authentic” Austens. Miss Austen Regrets (2008) and Becoming Jane (2007) are in a generative cinematic conversation with Austen’s past “lives” and the author’s present popularity as well as with the narrative style, mood, and tone of her fiction. In other words, “Austen”, as the name has come to signify her literary works and the cultural stories she has become the adoptive author of, reads the biopics even as they read her. Austen’s “authorship” in the twenty-first century rests on and is transfigured by a rapidly evolving and mutually informed nexus of co-readings between text and screen
The Reception of Jane Austen in Italy
No full textThe chapter examines the reasons why the works of Jane Austen, for all their popularity, cannot be considered to be among the most admired foreign classics in Italy. This limited interest is due to numerous reasons, and the overall effect is the persistence of an image of the author as ‘a great anomaly of literature’, owing to the great gulf between her high place in the literary Olympus on one hand, and the modest biographical and intellectual experience attributed to her in Italian prefaces and introductions, on the other.
The essay considers how the conventional unattractive image of Austen was formed and consolidated, and how the recent revaluation of the novelist can be attributed substantially to the development of one critical approach which was present in Italy at the beginning of the twentieth century, but remained long in the shadows before revealing itself as the most suitable means available of convincingly explaining Austen’s significance. The first section is devoted to what could be defined as the ‘romance of the reception’ of Jane Austen between two conflicting interpretations, associated with the names of two key critics: Mario Praz and Emilio Cecchi. The second section discusses more recent Italian commentary on Austen and the role played by the teaching of Carlo Izzo and the CISR (Centro Interdisciplinare di Studi Romantici) at the University of Bologna in promoting the Austen studies in Italy. The final section considers the problems connected with the translation of Austen’s text, including a survey of the main and most widely circulating translations
Representation of women in the novel "Pride and prejudice" by Jane Austen
No full textthe writer concludes that the position and function of women in the nineteenth century is all the same at Pride and Prejudice. the women still viewed as inferior class and the suitable character of women is confirmed by the domestic and role of women. it certainly makes women unable to work maximally in exploiting her role and make a marriage that becomes the main purpose of life. it is to note that the social background and the work of Jane Austen as the author of this novel can make the effect of the analysis.ix, 53 page
Austen and Shakespeare, Detectives
No full textThis chapter discusses the cultural uses of Shakespeare and Austen in detective fiction, including stories in which Shakespeare and Austen themselves become detectives (Stephanie Barron’s Austen Mysteries), stories which purport to find a lost Shakespeare or Austen text (Edmund Crispin’s Love Lies Bleeding, A. J. Hartley’s What Time Devours) and stories which allude to or imitate an existing Shakespeare or Austen text (Reginald Hill’s Pictures of Perfection and A Cure for All Diseases, P. D. James’s Death Comes to Pemberley). There are similarities and differences between them: in Austen-themed stories, America represents freedom; in Shakespeare mysteries it is a threat. Austen is associated with love and Shakespeare is not, and Austen-based crime tends to be more easily assimilated into the category of what is now called ‘cosy crime’, whereas Shakespeare-based crime fiction may have some very dark purposes indeed. All these differences, this chapter concludes, suggest that Austen, more than Shakespeare, is nowadays often understood as a brand, while Shakespeare tends to be regarded as the author of individual, but different, works of genius spanning a variety of genres
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