Jane Austen e i 'novels of manners'

Caratteristiche e stile di Jane Austen e il romanzo di costume (2 pagine formato doc)

Appunto di lucam93

JANE AUSTEN E IL NOVEL OF MANNERS

Jane Austen.

NOVEL OF MANNERS OR DOMESTIC NOVEL. It’s a kind of fiction faithful to reality, quite conventional to plots and characters, without any romantic heroes or adventures. Typical of the late 800th century novel.
Main point: focus on everyday routine life and events.
Jane Austen is consider as a Romantic poet because of her biographical death: she lived and wrote in a Romantic period, when the Romanticism was at its full climax, but she was “Augustan” in her mentality, education, moral values and inspiration.
AUSTEN CHARACTERISTICS AND LIMITS
Because of  the restricted sources, Jane Austen had limits: her novels, like “Sense and sensibility”, have followed the same plot. Another one is that she lacked an overall vision of historical and social events of her time: in her world the politically atmosphere (French and Industrial Revolutions) doesn’t’ appear.
There’s no evidence of the problems connected with the Industrial Revolution.
She wasn’t connected with the literary movements and experiments of her time (Gothic novel); she avoided any kind of personal involvement in literary movements. The world of her novel is restricted only on the provincial England, on the rural part of the country.

Il tema dell'amore nei romanzi di Jane Austen

JANE AUSTEN MAIN FEATURES

But all of her limits can be seen as qualities:
-    thanks to the restricted range of the subject, allowed the author to deep the psychological character.
-    Focusing on routine life, she could recreate the triviality of everyday life. She analysed a wide range of characters in doing so.
-    Characterization: she is unequalled in creating living characters: landed gentry (Lady Catherine), country clergy, lower nobility (Bennets).
-    Austen’s characters are both opposites: calm and struggle.
-    INTENSITITY OF OBSERVATION: she has a capacity for faithful observation, but she has a sort of detachment for these characters. She described characters with scientific eyes. She is not idealizing them: she is quite objective.
-    OBJECTIVITY: She doesn’t interfere with comments or reflection or judges. When she does, she uses almost an impersonal subtle way. She’s quite unobtrusive.
-    PROFOUND PSYCOLOGICAL STUDY: she was interested in courtship. She pointed out the limits of women’s position in 19th century. A single woman, unmarried, was destined to dull life after parents. They were compelled to look after parents and relatives’ children.
-    NONSENTIMENTALITY: Austen didn’t believe in a marriage only on wealth or on sudden love. A good marriage has to be based on a calm judgement and mutual understanding.
-    REALISM: she never romances her novels of domestic life without adventures and heroes, but full of day-to-day events (such as balls…).
-    SENSE OF HUMOR & IRONY: which can be considered subtle and unpredictable. The dialogues are often made up of unexpected paradoxes.
-    SATIRE: typical of Austen narrative mode, it can be considered never ruthless.

JANE AUSTEN STILE

STYLE: the story is made up of dialogue and conversation, which are vehicles for revelations of characters’ attitude and manners.
°Use of letter writing: typical of Richardson of Augustan period.  EPISTOLARY NOVEL
°Precise use of words and well-structured and polished sentences.
Third person omniscient narrator. (from Fielding)
DIFFERENCE: unlike the Augustan writers, she based her novels on a restricted part of the world, the country, which she best knew.