Tea at Trianon: The Word Choices That Explain Why Jane Austen Endures

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Wednesday, July 12, 2017

The Word Choices That Explain Why Jane Austen Endures

From The New York Times:

What traits make Austen special, and can they be measured with data? Can literary genius be graphed? Her novels, reasonably successful in their day, were innovative, even revolutionary, in ways her contemporaries did not fully recognize. Some of the techniques she introduced — or used more effectively than anyone before — have been so incorporated into how we think about fiction that they seem to have always been there.

One thing early readers did notice was naturalism. Austen’s novels, unlike those she grew up reading, owed nothing to improbabilities. No settings of spooky Italian castles (she mocks such Gothic devices in “Northanger Abbey”); no characters kidnapped by rakes or bequeathed a fortune with strange provisions attached. Walter Scott, a popular author of historical novels mostly forgotten today, praised her “art of copying from nature as she really exists in the common walks of life and presenting to the reader, instead of the splendid scenes of an imaginary world, a correct and striking representation of that which is daily taking place around him.” (Read more.)

julygirl said...: Her novels were about normal human actions, activities and intentions, which are the same today except for the lack of graciousness which is almost non-existent today.; July 12, 2017 at 9:01:00 AM EDT
Jack said...: Nice post! Thanks! Jack - 123help; October 19, 2018 at 6:58:00 PM EDT