The author's inheritance: Henry Fielding, Jane Austen, and the establishment of the novel

1998 ◽  
Vol 36 (04) ◽  
pp. 36-2050-36-2050
Keyword(s):  
2021 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. v-viii
Author(s):  
Graham Holderness

When I first studied the novel, the form was believed to have originated in the eighteenth century with the fiction of Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding and Samuel Richardson, and was synonymous with literary realism. The novel emerged from the Age of Reason, was closely associated with journalism, satire and conduct literature, and marked a profound break with the supernatural, fantastic and romance narratives of the past. Its perfect embodiment was to be found in the work of Jane Austen, even today an immensely popular writer, and widely regarded as a defining practitioner of the novel form. This kind of novel was/is in every respect different from Shakespeare: new, ‘novel’, not old; prose, not poetry; narrative, not dramatic; realist, not magical; fictional, not metafictional; and could deal with Shakespeare only as an objective feature of the society and culture being represented.


Jane Austen is acknowledged for the application of realism and satire in her novels. This paper focuses on the analysis of realism and satire in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice; however, her entire oeuvre spotlights the features (of satire and realism) alongside robust feminism: typical of her literary taste and temperament, not necessarily of the Romantic Age which she lived in. Rigorous analysis and realistic observation reveals that the employment of realism and satire in Pride and Prejudice, are quite obvious, in all sorts of aspects including narrative, settings, themes and characters. Analysis of the novel under study leads to the observation that satire and realism go hand in hand in the said novel—intermittently—and thoughtfully. Conclusively, it is observed that Jane Austen’s literary life had a tremendous influence on how to subsume realism (primarily through matrimonies) of age and satire on a romantic society (whereby ideals collapse headlong), in Pride and Prejudice.


2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-43
Author(s):  
Enggin Valufi ◽  
Retno Budi Astuti

Hedonism is a view of life in philosophy that seeks to avoid pain and make pleasure as the main goal in life. People who embrace hedonism tend to over-pursue pleasure. The hedonism lifestyle is mostly carried out by 18th century people especially the nobles who live in high culture. They are as close to hedonism as they are in the Persuasion novel by Jane Austen. Sir Walter Elliot the main character is a nobleman who did a lot of hedonism. Hedonism which is seen as too glorifying personal pleasure to ignore others. The purpose of this study was to find out the types of hedonism done by Sir Walter Elliot in Persuasion. This research uses descriptive qualitative method because all data are in the form of sentences. The researcher uses a philosophical approach and analyzes data using Weijers' theory as the main theory. The results of this study found that Sir Walter Elliot performed two types of hedonism, namely aesthetic hedonism and selfish hedonism.


2001 ◽  
Vol 89 (3) ◽  
pp. 705-706 ◽  
Author(s):  
Herbert Barry

Jane Austen projected some of her personality characteristics onto her fictional namesakes Jane Bennet in the novel Pride and Prejudice and Jane Fairfax in the novel Emma. Wishful fantasy seems satisfied by two attributes of both Janes. They are very beautiful, and they marry rich men they love. A feeling of inferiority was expressed by two attributes of both Janes, depicted as deficient in social communication and subordinate to the heroine of the novel.


2021 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 137-161
Author(s):  
Allan Hepburn

Over her career, Elizabeth Bowen published ten novels, yet she left no comprehensive theory of the novel. This essay draws especially upon ‘Notes on Writing a Novel’ (1945), ‘The Technique of the Novel’ (1953), and ‘Truth and Fiction’ (1956), as well as opinions that Bowen expressed in her weekly book columns for The Tatler, to formulate her key perceptions of, and rules for, writing a novel. Bowen defined her ideas by drawing upon the empirical evidence of novels by Elizabeth Taylor, Olivia Manning, H.E. Bates, Jane Austen, Gustave Flaubert, and numerous others. She gave particular thought to ‘situation’, by which she means the central problematic or the crux of the story. The situation precedes and fuels plot. The Second World War, Bowen claimed in her essays and reviews, had a decisive influence on heroism and contemporary fiction by heightening its scale and its repertory of situations.


2020 ◽  
pp. 14-37
Author(s):  
Peter Aringo-Bizimaana

Abstract This essay first gives some background to the making of Joseph Andrews: the seeds that fruited to make Fielding be labeled, by some critics, the ‘father of the English novel’. The essay goes on to discuss the heroes of this novel and their thematic significance. We then dwell on weaknesses found in the novel: those related to the heroes and other characters owing to weak characterization, and then the weaknesses that arise from the angle of narration. The essay concludes with a brief assessment of why Fielding is still considered a literary giant today. Keywords: Henry Fielding, comic epic, pilgrimage/journey, Josef Andrews, picaresque


Authorship ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Eli Løfaldli

As recent adaptation theory has shown, classic-novel adaptation typically sets issues connected to authorship and literal and figurative ownership into play. This key feature of such adaptations is also central to the screen versions of Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones (1749). In much of Fielding’s fiction, the narrator, typically understood as an embodiment of Fielding himself, is a particularly prominent presence. The author-narrator in Tom Jones is no exception: not only is his presence strongly felt throughout the novel, but through a variety of means, ‘The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling’ is also distinctly marked as being under his control and ownership. The two adaptations of Fielding’s novel, a 1963 film and a 1997 television series, both retain the figure of the author-narrator, but differ greatly in their handling of this device and its consequent thematic ramifications. Although the 1963 film de-emphasises Henry Fielding’s status as proprietor of the story, the author-narrator as represented in the film’s voiceover commentary is a figure of authority and authorial control. In contrast, the 1997 adaptation emphasises Fielding’s ownership of the narrative and even includes the author-narrator as a character in the series, but this ownership is undermined by the irreverent treatment to which he is consistently subjected. The representations of Henry Fielding in the form of the author-narrator in both adaptations are not only indicative of shifting conceptions of authorship, but also of the important interplay between authorship, ownership and adaptation more generally.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marie-Laure MASSEI-CHAMAYOU

If Jane Austen admits in her correspondence that she was eventually pleased with Thomas Gisborne’s Enquiry into the Duties of the Female Sex (1797), the Anglican theologian nonetheless endorsed the prejudices shared by most eighteenth-century moralists towards novels. Now, in Northanger Abbey, a novel filled with literary allusions, Jane Austen’s narrator bravely takes the opposite view by launching into a bold defence of the genre. Besides resorting to a biting irony to scrutinize her society’s axioms, rules and power relations, her novels notably question Manichean representations of masculine and feminine roles. Jane Austen’s choice to distance herself from the strictly gendered models inherited from conduct books, sentimental, or gothic novels, further combines with her questioning of generic conventions. This article thus aims at exploring how Jane Austen engaged with these representations while articulating her subtle didacticism. Her aim was not merely to raise the respectability of the novel genre, but also to provide a possible answer to the crisis of values that was threatening the very foundations of the political and social order.


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