This book makes connections between selfhood, reading practice and moral judgment which propose fresh insights into Austen’s narrative style and offer new ways of reading her work. Itgrounds her writing in the Enlightenment philosophy of selfhood, exploring how Austen takes five major components of selfhood theory―memory, imagination, probability, sympathy and reflection―and investigates their relation to self-formation and moral judgement. At the same time, Austen’s narrative style breaks new ground in the representation of consciousness and engages directly with contemporary concerns about reading practice. Drawing analogies between reading text and reading character, the book argues that Austen’s rendering of reading and rereading as both reflective and constitutive acts demonstrates their capacity to enable self-recognition and self-formation. It shows how Austen raises questions about the potential for different readings and, in so doing, challenges her readers to reflect on and reread their own interactions with her texts.
Author(s): Linda Charlton
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 263
City: Cham
Acknowledgements
Contents
Abbreviations
1 Introduction: Selfhood and the Novel
The Philosophy of Selfhood
Selfhood and the Novel
Consciousness and the Novel
Consciousness in the Novel
Notes
References
2 Memory: Continuity, Coherence and Self-Construction
Self-Destruction: ‘Heightening […] affliction by melancholy remembrance’
Manipulation: ‘Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure’
Integration: ‘The happiest recollections of their own future lives’
Notes
References
3 Imagination and the Creative Self: The Reader and the Writer
The Reader’s Imagination: ‘It was the air and attitude of a Montoni!’
The Writer’s Imagination: ‘Myself creating what I saw’
Notes
References
4 Proofs, Probabilities and Ambiguities
Probability and Judgement: ‘Are no probabilities to be accepted, merely because they are not certainties?’
Subverting Reader Expectation: ‘The world must judge from Probability’
Notes
References
5 Sympathy: Self and Society
Failures in Sympathy: ‘How were people […] to be understood?’
‘Lady Susan’
Northanger Abbey
Mansfield Park
Emma
Sympathy and Judgement: ‘Willoughby, “poor Willoughby”’
Sense and Sensibility
Pride and Prejudice
Persuasion
Notes
References
6 The Reflecting Self: Self-Examination and Moral Judgement
‘I commend my own conduct in this affair extremely’: ‘Lady Susan’
‘Your merit cries out upon myself’: Sense and Sensibility
‘Till this moment, I never knew myself’: Pride and Prejudice
‘Such feelings ought to be investigated, that they may know themselves’: Northanger Abbey
‘Her own thoughts and reflections were habitually her best companions’: Mansfield Park
‘At that time I was a fool’: Emma
‘Thinking over the past, and trying impartially to judge’: Persuasion
Notes
References
7 Reflection, Reading Practice and Self-Formation
Notes
References
8 Conclusion: The Effect of a Second Perusal
Notes
References
Index
