Romancing Jane Austen
Subtitle: narrative, realism, and the possibility of a happy ending
By: Ashley Tauchert.
Series: Language, discourse, society
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Published: 2005
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 192
Subjects: Austen, Jane, 1775-1817 -- Criticism and interpretation.; Women and literature -- England -- History -- 19th century.; Narration (Rhetoric) -- History -- 19th century.; Love stories, English -- History and criticism.; Closure (Rhetoric) -- History -- 19th century.; Happiness in literature.; Realism in literature.
Description: "We acknowledge and celebrate Jane Austen as the mother of the English realist novel, but have you ever wondered why she insists on giving her mature heroines the 'perfect happiness' that can only be realised in the Romance? Romancing Jane Austen asks the reader to consider Austen's happy endings as a 'prophetic' rather than a merely 'illusory' answer to the contradiction that feminine subjectivity represents for history. Austen is still the most popular, enduring, and respected female writer in the English tradition. Her narrative formulas persist in various forms of adaptation and recirculation under the quite different representational conditions of contemporary literary and visual cultures. This admittedly romantic analysis claims that the six narratives we know and love have still more delightful surprises to yield to the open-minded reader. A happy ending for the feminine subject? Surely not - that would be against all the empirical odds."--Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p.   ) and index.