Jane Austen and religion
Subtitle: salvation and society in Georgian England
By: Michael Giffin.
Series: Cross-currents in religion and culture; Cross-currents in religion and culture (Palgrave (Firm))
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Published: 2002
Place of publication: Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, UK; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 222
Subjects: Austen, Jane, 1775-1817 -- Religion.; Christian fiction, English -- History and criticism.; Christianity and literature -- England -- History.; Literature and society -- England -- History.; Religion in literature.
Description: "Jane Austen in often thought of as a secular author, because religion seems absent from her novels, because she satirises her clerical characters, and because the history of literary criticism - and the literary sensibility of the twenty-first century reader - is overwhelmingly secular. Michael Giffin offers a reading of Austen's published novels against the background of a 'long eighteenth century' that stretched from the Restoration to the end of the Georgian period.

He demonstrates that Austen is a neoclassical author of the Enlightenment who writes through the twin prisms of British Empiricism and Georgian Anglicanism. His focus is on how Austen's novels mirror a belief in natural law and natural order; and how they reflect John Locke's theory of knowledge through reason, revelation and reflection on experience.

His reading suggests there is a thread of neoclassical philosophy and theology running through and between each of Austen's novels, which is best understood in its cultural context."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 205-211) and index.
Table of contents: title: Machine generated contents note: 1 The Economy of Salvation 1; title: The Novels and Literary Criticism 1; title: The Novels and Neoclassical Hermeneutics 6; title: The Novels and British Empiricism 12; title: The Novels and Unregulated Capitalism 16; title: The Novels and Georgian Anglicanism 23; title: The Novels and The Economy of Salvation 30; title: 2 Northanger Abbey 37; title: The Contemporary Context of Northanger Abbey 37; title: Northanger Abbey and The Economy of Salvation 40; title: Catherine Morland as a Georgian Antiheroine 48; title: Henry Tilney as a Georgian Antihero 56; title: 3 Sense and Sensibility 63; title: The Contemporary Context of Sense and Sensibility 63; title: Reason Informed by Feeling: The Marriage of 69; title: Elinor and Edward; title: Feeling Informed by Reason: The Marriage of Marianne 80; title: and The Colonel; title: 4 Pride and Prejudice 92; title: Pride and Prejudice and Neoclassical Hermeneutics 92; title: The Clash of Horizons in Hertfordshire 93; title: The Dialogue of Horizons in Kent 102; title: The Fusion of Horizons in Derbyshire 111; title: 5 Mansfield Park 126; title: The Contemporary Context of Mansfield Park 126; title: God the Father: Sir Thomas Bertram and a Critique of 129; title: Enlightenment Deism; title: God the Son: Fanny Price as an Archetype of 138; title: Redemptive Suffering; title: God the Holy Spirit: Edmund Bertram and a Worldly 143; title: Church in Need of Renewal; title: 6 Emma 149; title: Marriage, Manners, and The Implied Social Contract 149; title: A Trinity of Complementary Marriages: God and 157; title: Humanity, Estate and Parish, Man and Woman; title: Marriage and Bad Oikonomia in The Parish 160; title: Marriage and Good Oikonomia in The Estate 167; title: 7 Persuasion 177; title: Marriage and The Soteria of The Georgian Estate 177; title: Marriage and The Decline of Kellynch 180; title: Marriage and The Rise of Uppercross 187; title: The Marriage of Anne Elliot to Frederick Wentworth 195.