济南大学外国语学院英国文学史及选读课件 Jane Austen.ppt

Jane Austen(1775-1817) “3 or 4 families in a Country village is the very thing to work on ” “the little bit (two inches wide) of ivory on which I work with so fine a brush as produces little effect after much labour” In both moral outlook and prose style she is closer to the 18th-cent. realists than to her contemporaries (Gothicists, Sentimentalists and Romanticists). reason over passion subtle satire and irony towards the silly, snobbish, stupid, worldly and vulgar style: order, reason, accuracy and gracefulness Sense and Sensibility (1811) Pride and Prejudice(1813) Mansfield Park (1814) Emma(1815) Northanger Abbey (1818) Persuasion (1818) Sir Walter Scott on Jane Austen: That young lady has a talent for describing the involvements and feelings and characters of ordinary life which is to me the most wonderful I ever met with. The big bow-wow strain I can do myself like any now going; but the exquisite touch, which renders ordinary commonplace things and characters interesting, from the truth of the description and the sentiment, is denied to me. —From The Journal of Sir Walter Scott, March, 1826. Plot Characters Style Form and Structure Setting Point of view Theme Motifs A plot is a causal sequence of events, the why for the things that happen in the story. The plot draws the reader into the characters lives and helps the reader understand the choices that the characters make. Plot “a young couple destined to be married have to overcome the barriers of pride on the part of the hero and prejudice on the part of the heroine” Chapter 3: Darcy on Elizabeth: “She is tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt me.” Analysis of  Major Characters The Bennet Family Mr. Bennet and Mrs. Bennet Chapter One Chapter 20: Mrs. Bennet? Mr. Bennet’s wife, a foolish, noisy woman whose only goal in life is to see her daughters married. Because of her low breedi