Jane Austen's names
Subtitle: riddles, persons, places
By: Margaret Doody
Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
Published: 2015
Place of publication: Chicago
Language: eng
Number of pages: 438
ISBN-13: 9780226157832; 9780226196022
Subjects: Language; Names in literature; Names, Personal, in literature; Names, Geographical, in literature
Description: In Jane Austen's works, a name is never just a name. In fact, the names Austen gives her characters and places are as rich in subtle meaning as her prose itself. Wiltshire, for example, the home county of Catherine Morland in Northanger Abbey, is a clue that this heroine is not as stupid as she seems: according to legend, cunning Wiltshire residents caught hiding contraband in a pond capitalized on a reputation for ignorance by claiming they were digging up a big cheese --the moon's reflection on the water's surface. It worked. In Jane Austen's Names, Margaret Doody offers a fascinating and comprehensive study of all the names of people and places--real and imaginary--in Austen's fiction. Austen's creative choice of names reveals not only her virtuosic talent for riddles and puns. Her names also pick up deep stories from English history, especially the various civil wars, and the blood-tinged differences that played out in the reign of Henry VIII, a period to which she often returns. Considering the major novels alongside unfinished works and juvenilia, Doody shows how Austen's names signal class tensions as well as regional, ethnic, and religious differences. We gain a new understanding of Austen's technique of creative anachronism, which plays with and against her skillfully deployed realism--in her books, the conflicts of the past swirl into the tensions of the present, transporting readers beyond the Regency. Full of insight and surprises for even the most devoted Janeite, Jane Austen's Names will revolutionize how we read Austen's fiction.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: England. Words, names, persons, and places ; Names as history: invasion, migration, war, and conflict ; Civil war, ruins, and the conscience of the rich; title: Names. Naming people: first names, nicknames, titles, and rank ; Titles, status, and surname: Austen's great surname matrix ; Personal names (first names and surnames) in the "Steventon" novels ; Personal names in the "Chawton" novels; title: Places. Humans making and naming a landscape ; Placing the places ; Counties, towns, villages, estates: real and imaginary places in the "Steventon" novels ; Real and imaginary places in the "Chawton" novels; title: Conclusion.