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Inclou aquests noms: Edward Copeland, Edward Copeland ed.

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Seny i sentiment (1811) — Editor, algunes edicions37,891 exemplars
Jane Austen in context (2005) — Col·laborador — 86 exemplars

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Det är märkligt, men trots att den uppdaterade andra upplagan av The Cambridge companion to Jane Austen kom 2011 så tycks den ett par år äldre: ett nyskrivet stycke som det om Austens mottagningshistoria, som förvisso mest fokuserar på att kontrastera attityderna hos akademiker, litterära snobbar och vad de senare skulle se som de stora otvättade massorna av ovärdiga läsare, har till exempel inget att säga om de omarbetningar till splatterskräck som kommit på senare tid (och avsett vad man tycker om dem rent artistiskt är de som fenomen intressanta), och jag är rätt säker på att ett par sena filmatiseringar saknas i diskussioner om sådana.

Annars är det, trots att en dryg tredjedel av boken fokuserar på specifika hennes produktion, de delar som är mer tematiskt ordnade som är av intresse: såväl klass som pengar som arbete får varsitt kapitel – och i synnerhet distinktionen mellan de två första är viktig; Mr Darcy må vara den rikaste av de personer som huvudpersonerna till slut får, men klass beror snarare på var inkomster kommer ifrån, och vilken titel man har. Att tre kapitel ändå tilldelas så närliggande ämnen är naturligtvis ett tecken på hur viktiga de framstår i böckerna. Även stycket om kön är intressant, även om man som vanligt när en beundrad författare befinns ha hyst åsikter i linje med de som idag ses som riktiga och viktiga känner sig något tveksam bara därför (fast när Austen explicit diskuterar sådant så är det ju rätt uppenbart var hennes sympatier ligger).

Hennes böcker behandlas i par av olika bidragsgivare. Styrkan och svagheten i detta framstår klart med essän över Stolthet och fördom och Mansfield Park: den tar teater som tema och undersöker hur den förra boken är skriven med tekniker hämtade från denna, och sedan hur Austen gjorde teatern till ett ämne i den senare. Detta är intressant, och belysande, och väldigt begränsat. Naturligtvis kan man inte täcka alla aspekter av en bok på ett halvdussin sidor, men ändå känner man att Stolthet och fördom har genomlysts betydligt utförligare av de två, och att det hela möjligen skulle passat bättre som essä över hela författarskapet.

Som introduktion och kringläsning till Jane Austen är The Cambridge companion... något akademisk, och därför kanske något försiktig: essän om filmatiseringar förklarar tydligt vissa problem med detta och att man inte kan vänta sig full trohet mot böckerna, men stannar vid att diskutera vad förändringar i form tvingar fram – bland annat ett fokus på de manliga hjältarna som gör att de romantiska elementen stärks och Austens ironier kan försvinna – och missar att diskutera sådana ändringar som kanske är mindre nödvändiga (som till exempel de filmatiseringar av Mansfield Park där Fanny Price karaktär ändrats helt). I stort är de dock mycket förklarande, ibland provocerande (kan Jane Austens abrupta slut vara ett sätt att protestera mot all överromantik genom medvetet sabotage?) och alltid värda att tänka på.
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andejons | Oct 8, 2012 |
The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen is a selection of essays on Jane Austen's works in 'the context of her contemporary world, and of present-day critical discourse' according to the back cover. (And is that an Oxford comma on a Cambridge University Press book?)

I haven't read much literary criticism before and I haven't studied literature since my GCSE's at 16 so I don't really feel qualified to do a proper review, instead I'm going to comment on the accessibility of the book and some of the individual essays that I found particularly helpful. As with any book of essays from different contributors, I expect someone else reading the same book would find different essays interesting/helpful so I'm not going to comment on the essays which I didn't find interesting or that went completely over my head.

It's also worth noting that there are two editions of this book. The first edition (which I read) was published in 1997. The second edition was published in 2011 and I think roughly a third of the essays have been removed and replaced with different essays between the two editions. You can use the look inside feature on amazon (on the UK site anyway) to see the titles of the essays. I think the majority of the essays I enjoyed are in both editions (so I may buy the second edition at some point).

Jan Fergus wrote an essay on 'The Professional Woman Writer' which compared the way Austen published her novels and the amounts she received for them with other popular female novelists of the time (mainly Frances Burney and Maria Edgeworth, two authors on my wishlist). She also wrote about how female authors were perceived at the time. I found it very interesting to see how little Austen earned for her novels compared to authors we would consider less well-known now (although they weren't less well-known at the time).

John Wiltshire wrote an essay on 'Mansfield Park, Emma and Persuasion' focussing on the narrative techniques Austen uses in each novel, in particular, the changing narrative voice in Emma and Mansfield Park which was both not a concept I'd heard of before and not something I'd noticed in my reading of either novel. I felt he supported his arguments well to reach his conclusion that MP was 'a milestone in the English novel' and it made me rethink how I viewed what is often one of Austen's less appreciated novels.

Juliet McMaster (also editor) wrote an essay on 'Class' which I found helpful even though I am fairly familiar with 19th century novels. I hadn't realised that there was a difference between being Lady Bertram and Lady Catherine de Bourgh; the inclusion of the first name shows that the title is one Lady Catherine was born to (i.e. she is the daughter of an earl) and she would retain that title irrespective of the rank/class of whoever she married. Lady Bertram however, only has her title because she married Lord Bertram; if she remarried a commoner after Lord Bertram's death she would become plain, old Mrs Someone. This essay also uses Emma to explain the social orders of the day in more detail by ranking all the characters or Emma in order with an explanation.

Edward Copeland (the other editor) in an essay on 'Money' explains women's rights with regard to money at the time (very few) and an idea of the spending power and social status at various incomes which helps put the £10,000 a year and so on into context for a modern reader.

Margaret Anne Doody wrote an essay on Jane Austen's short fiction as contained in the OUP's Catharine and Other Writings (also commonly referred to as Jane Austen's Juvenilia). I think her theory is that the short fiction should not be viewed as 'chaotic and childish' but rather as a style of writing and a path Austen may have chosen to explore if it hadn't been for the changes in culture and literary expectations during the early 19th century. This was an essay that I enjoyed but didn't feel as if I had completely grasped what Doody was trying to say so I may be wrong but I think she was saying that Austen may have wanted to write novels that were more satirical and subversive (based on the style of her juvenilia) but had to mask this with within the more acceptable and traditional framework of domestic fiction which contained a romance to conform with the more decorous early 19th century.

"In her early fiction, Jane Austen could write with zest and confidence. She had inherited a taste for irony, paradox, and 'sparkle' from the eighteenth century. Her early writing is rough, violent, sexy, joky. It sparkles with knowingness. It attacks whole structures, including cultural structures that had made a regularised and constricted place for the Novel, as well as the very workings (in stylized plot and character) of the English novel itself....

The elements that we find in Jane Austen's early short fiction are what kept her later works from dwindling into comfortable prosy little comedies of upper middle-class courtship, with didactic elements carefully inserted. Yet, to a certain extent and not in trifling ways, Austen had to pretend - in order to get published at all - that her mature novels were such innocuous and didactic things."


The Companion also includes a detailed chronology of Jane Austen's life by Deirdre Le Faye and a chapter with suggestions for further reading.
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souloftherose | Hi ha 1 ressenya més | Mar 13, 2012 |
If you own one of those "my other car is a barouche" bumper stickers this book is for you.
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DameMuriel | Hi ha 1 ressenya més | Apr 28, 2008 |

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Autors associats

Juliet McMaster Editor, Contributor
Claudia L. Johnson Contributor
Isobel Grundy Contributor
Deirdre Le Faye Contributor
Bruce Stovel Contributor
Jan Fergus Contributor
Janet Todd Contributor
John Wiltshire Contributor
John F. Burrows Contributor
Gary Kelly Contributor
David Delwyn Contributor
Thomas Keymer Contributor
Kathryn Sutherland Contributor
Gillian Russell Contributor
Jocelyn Harris Contributor
Penny Gay Contributor
E. J. Clery Contributor
Mary M. Chan Contributor

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Obres
5
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Membres
336
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Valoració
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3
ISBN
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