j. austen.pdf

8/10/2019 J. AUSTEN.pdf

1/12

JANE AUSTEN (1775-1817)

! Sense and Sensibility

(1797/1811)

! Pride and Prejudice(1797/1813)

! Mansfield Park (1814)

! Emma(1815)

! Northanger Abbey(1798/1817)

!

Persuasion(1815/1817)JUVENALIA: Love and Friendship;Evelyn; Catherine; Lady Susan.


2/12

Main Influences! Burlesque Sentimental Comedies:

The History of England from the Reign of Henry IV to the Deathof Charles I. By a partial, prejudiced and ignorant Historian(1791)

! Egalitarian Doctrines of the French Revolution:

Mary Wollstonecraft: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman,(1792)

! Religion: The Anglican Church

High Church or the Establishment: Anglican theology,

practical piety.Low Church or Evangelical: No ceremonies or liturgy;

explosions of feelings, direct communion with God.


3/12

Main Literary Influences

! SAMUEL JOHNSON

(1709-1784)- To r y , A n g l i c a n o f t h e

Establ ishment type (HighChurch)

- Defender of reason, balance andtradition.

- Rasselas (1759): moral essaya g a i n s t t h e h u n g e r o fimagination which preys uponlife.

- Why, Sir, you find no man, at allintellectual, who is willing to leaveLondon. No, Sir, when a man istired of London, he is tired of life;for there is in London all that lifecan afford.

! WILLIAM COWPER(1731-1800)

- Whig, Evangelical branch (Low)

- Emphasis on feelings and theindividual.

- The Task (1785): mock-heroicaccount of common objects.

- God made the country, and manmade the town: what wonderthat health and virtue, gifts thatcan make sweet the bitterdraught, that life holds out to all,

should most abound. And leastbe threatened in the fields andgroves?


4/12

Johnsons influences:

! Scala Naturae or the great chain ofbeing: everything is ordered in Nature.

!Decorum and Propriety.

!Truth as a necessity of moral sincerity.

!Role of education and knowledge in

order to possess a reliable judgement.

!Augustan values: faith in clarity, order,judgement and good sense. Harmony.


5/12

Cowper and Sensibility

!Austens love for the natural environment

and religious feelings.

!Natural theology: Nature is a work of art

from the mind of God, inspiring the

individual with the right feelings.(Rousseaus The noble savage)

!Benevolist ideas: harmony and balance

based on good taste and feeling.!Role of experience versus formal education.


6/12

Drawing-room Novels orComedy of Manners

! Depiction of middle-class comfortable life;minutiae.

! Longer and prolific narratives; multiplotnovels.

!

Addressed to the wives and daughters ofupper middle class families: Feminineboredom.

! Adjust to the established moral code:womens behaviour as chaste and pure.

! Double standard of morality


7/12

Characterization

!

Anything is to be preferred or enduredrather than marrying without affection

!Single women have a dreadful propensity

for being poor, which is one very strongargument in favour of Matrimony

! Women are to be talked to as below menand above children


8/12

Characterization

!Guardians: old generation (rural England)

!Heroines: endurance and generosity

!Heroes (the Inheritors): young

generation, open to misjudgement

!Prime antagonists (Interlopers: new

urban England)

!

The caricatures: stupidity and laziness!Minor characters: scala naturae


9/12

The Construction of the Novels

!

1st phase: heroines circumstances andfamily (wealth or lack of it)

! 2nd phase: primary antagonists = crisis(individual versus society)

!

Settings: public assemblies and balls

! Austens combination of APARTNESS (theindividual concentrates on its own self) and

TOGETHERNESS (the individual tries to savesociety by offering it all s/he has learnt)


10/12

The politics of Taste! Arts, crafts and the aesthetic category of

Taste! The Dashwood sisters have too much sense

to be desirable companions (Ch. 36)

! Sense of autonomy and identity

! Taste belong to the moral and social virtues

! William Gilpin (1724-1804): ThePicturesque is the kind of beauty which would

look well in a picture

! Beauty as utility versus beauty as individualaestheticsm (E. Burke)


11/12

The Picturesque


12/12

The Picturesque

The Crimes and Cruelties of this Princewere too numerous to be mentioned&

nothing can be said in his vindication,but that of his abolishing Religious

Houses and leaving them to the ruinousdepredations of time has been of infinite

use to the landscape of England in

general, which probably was hisprincipal motive for doing it, sinceotherwise why should a Man who was of

no Religion be at so much trouble toabolish one which had for ages been

established in the Kingdom

(Cassandra Austens drawing ofHenry VIII for Jane Austens

History of England)

j. austen.pdf

Documents