scholarly journals Jane Austen’s Global Influence

Author(s):  
Katie Halsey

Jane Austen (1775–1817) is a writer with a global reputation. She is one of a very few writers to enjoy both a wide popular readership and critical acclaim, and one of even fewer writers of her period whose name has instant recognition. Her literary reputation rests on six novels—Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814), Emma (1816), Northanger Abbey (1818), and Persuasion (1818)—a handful of unfinished works, and three manuscript notebooks of juvenilia, but this small oeuvre has been translated into almost every known language, has been adapted for film and television across the world, and has spawned an enormous number of sequels, prequels, spin-offs, remediations, and other fan fictions in both print and digital media. Critics have, for more than two centuries, attempted both to describe the technical brilliance of Austen’s work and to account for her surprising popularity with very diverse audiences. Her works describe the daily realities of life in Georgian and Regency England but clearly still speak to modern, worldwide audiences. She is known simultaneously as a romance writer par excellence and as a deeply ironic and skeptical social commentator. Her style is characterized by economy, brevity, and wit, and through a series of technical innovations in the craft of writing, Austen transformed the genre of the novel and thus its status from the 19th century onward. Her international success, however, can be attributed only partly to the brilliance of her literary output and must, in part, be ascribed to the work of successive film adaptations of her novels, in particular the 1940 and 1995 versions of Pride and Prejudice, starring Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier and Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth, respectively. Across the world, many people now know Austen’s works primarily through the medium of film adaptations of her novels and biopics that fictionalize her life. “Jane Austen” has become a lucrative brand, existing almost irrespective of the original works.

Author(s):  
David Ehrenfeld

For two weeks now, I have wallowed in sinful luxury, rereading the six completed Jane Austen novels (especially my favorite parts), basking in the warmth and wit of her collected letters, eagerly absorbing the details of her life from her best biographies, and attentively following the arguments of her leading literary critics. I also saw the recent movie versions of Sense and Sensibility and Persuasion, falling in love with Emma Thompson and Amanda Root in quick succession, and finished off my orgy with viewings of the BBC videos of Sense and Sensibility, Emma, Mansfield Park, Northanger Abbey, and Pride and Prejudice. Throughout—at least when I could remember to pay attention—I had two questions in mind. What does Jane Austen have to say about people, communities, and nature? And what is the cause of her resurgent popularity? Perhaps, I allowed myself to think, the questions are related. Answering the questions proved not so simple, but I did have fun trying. Sam and I read Aunt Jane’s letter, dated 8 Jan. 1817, to her nine-year-old niece Cassy, beginning: . . . Ym raed Yssac I hsiw uoy a yppah wen raey. Ruoy xis snisuoc emac ereh yadretsey, dna dah hcae a eceip fo ekac . . . . . . I read the amusingly mordant comments she could write about her neighbors, such as the one in her letter of 3July 1813 to her brother Francis, mentioning the “respectable, worthy, clever, agreable Mr Tho. Leigh, who has just closed a good life at the age of 79, & must have died the possesser of one of the finest Estates in England & of more worthless Nephews and Neices [sic] than any other private Man in the United Kingdoms.” I read the last chapters of Pride and Prejudice, Emma, and Persuasion each three times. I read once again about Catherine Morland’s cruel expulsion from Northanger Abbey, and about the ill-omened trip of Fanny Price, the Bertram sisters, and the Crawfords to the Rushworth estate, Sotherton, with its seductive, if too regularly planted, wilderness. And again I was privileged to accompany Emma Woodhouse, Miss Bates, Frank Churchill, and Mr. Knightly on the tension-charged picnic to Box Hill, surely one of the highest peaks in English literature.


Author(s):  
Ashok Kumar Priydarshi ◽  

Jane Austen’s genius was not recognized either by her contemperaries or even by her successors. But about 1890 the tide of appreciation and popularity markedly turned in favour and correspondingly, against her contemporary, Sir Walter Scott. She always strives in her art to remain full conscious of her responsibility to life as an artist. She is known as the last blossom of the 18th century. She has six novels to her credit-‘Sense and Sensibility’, ‘Pride and Prejudice’, ‘Mansfield Park, ‘Emma’, ‘Northanger Abbey’ and ‘Persuasion’. Though she created her stories in her above-mentioned novels more than 200 years ago, her novels were forerunners of feminism. According to a critic, “Jane Austen was a published female novelist, who wrote under her own name, which can be seen as an important feminist quality”.


2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 10
Author(s):  
Cynthia Whissell

In order to answer two specific questions (“Do the plots of Jane Austen’s novels match the plot of Cinderella?” and “Do Austen’s novels include a comic or happy ending, defined as one where the author employs more pleasant language at the end of the novel than she did at the beginning?”), Jane Austen’s six major novels and Cinderella were scored for the pleasantness of their language with the Dictionary of Affect (Whissell, 2009). The answer to both questions, based on results of regression analyses and means comparisons, is negative. Austen’s novels are not variants of the Cinderella story, nor do they have the type of endings that characterize comic romances. Cinderella is very pleasant and has a distinct happy ending. In contrast, Emma, Pride and Prejudice, and Northanger Abbey are less pleasant and have equivocal endings, while Mansfield Park and Sense and Sensibility have tragic (relatively unpleasant) endings. Persuasion employs the least pleasant language overall but has a happy ending.


2021 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
pp. 415-429
Author(s):  
Elżbieta Szyngiel

The article discusses the film adaptation of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which is a reference to Jane Austen’s novel, and the problem of zombie characters as a factor modifying the reality of its original version. The analysis was carried out with reference to the plot design of the film, the way of creating heroes and the costumes within the framework of a costume movie in which the story was embedded. The aim of the article is to identify the causes and consequences of introducing undead characters to the world created by Jane Austen. The reasons for this treatment were the popularity of the zombie motif in popular culture, the tendencies to experiment with the reinterpretation of works considered classic and repeatedly processed earlier into the language of cinema, as well as an attempt to adapt them to the requirements of a contemporary recipient seeking strong impressions. In addition, the world of zombies is a manifestation of the popular aspirations to achieve an economic profit. Consequences of completing the world with the undead epidemic theme include changes in the current social order, brutalization and sexualization of relations between characters, as well as a return to the traditional film narration about women, presented primarily as aesthetic objects and a source of interest for male characters.


Author(s):  
Vivien Jones

This chapter studies the nature and quality of Jane Austen's originality. Beyond parody, but wittily in touch with contemporary fiction's excesses, beyond partisanship, but harnessing the language of polemical debates to illuminate ordinary experience, Austen set a rigorous standard for domestic realism. Key to Austen's originality is the way in which her novels transcend any attempt to reduce them to versions of the contemporary fictional subgenres in which she was nonetheless immersed. Though the fictional and political context in which she drafted her 1790s novels ( Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Northanger Abbey) is very different from that in which she wrote and published Mansfield Park (1814), Emma (1816), and Persuasion (1818), this strategy is evident across all her fiction.


2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. p50
Author(s):  
Gou Ying ◽  
Xie Xiao ◽  
Cheng Hang

Pride and Prejudice, a masterpiece by the famous British female writer Jane Austen in the 19th century, is also Jane Austen’s earliest novel, which took a year to complete. In Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen successfully created a new era of women-Elizabeth, starting with the arrogance and prejudice of the hero Darcy and the heroine Elizabeth. After several twists and turns, the hero and heroine finally became a beautiful couple. The Jane Austen was different from the British popular literary language creation model at the time. She was bold and innovative, using female delicate thinking, exaggerated irony, simple, lively and vivid yet charming literary language, and created a book about A masterpiece of life and marriage thinking. Therefore, this article will discuss Pride and Prejudice from the perspective of literary language, and at the same time help readers better understand the connotation and internal meaning.


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