IniciGrupsConversesMésTendències
Cerca al lloc
Aquest lloc utilitza galetes per a oferir els nostres serveis, millorar el desenvolupament, per a anàlisis i (si no has iniciat la sessió) per a publicitat. Utilitzant LibraryThing acceptes que has llegit i entès els nostres Termes de servei i política de privacitat. L'ús que facis del lloc i dels seus serveis està subjecte a aquestes polítiques i termes.

Resultats de Google Books

Clica una miniatura per anar a Google Books.

S'està carregant…

A Jane Austen Education: How Six Novels Taught Me About Love, Friendship, and the Things That Really Matter (2011)

de William Deresiewicz

MembresRessenyesPopularitatValoració mitjanaConverses / Mencions
6664734,362 (3.79)1 / 45
Austen scholar Deresiewicz turns to the author's novels to reveal the remarkable life lessons hidden within. With humor and candor, Deresiewicz employs his own experiences to demonstrate the enduring power of Austen's teachings.
S'està carregant…

Apunta't a LibraryThing per saber si aquest llibre et pot agradar.

Grup TemaMissatgesÚltim missatge 
 Tattered but still lovely: A Jane Austen Education2 no llegits / 2hearthlit, març 2015

» Mira també 45 mencions

Es mostren 1-5 de 47 (següent | mostra-les totes)
This had quite a bit more literary criticism than I was expecting, but Deresiewicz's perspective on Austen's insights and wisdom was just as interesting as how he brought her ideals into his life. I'm not sure if I would've enjoyed this quite as much if I'd read it by myself, but because I read it slowly, discussing each chapter with a few of my friends---who were only slightly familiar with Austen's books---I had the opportunity to really consider the ideas and life lessons Deresiewicz introduces. ( )
  slimikin | Mar 27, 2022 |
I wanted to like this book because I really enjoy Jane Austen's books and would love to read other people's take on her novels. But this book didn't work for me. He wanted to convey the life lessons he learned from Jane Austen's novels, so he spent a lot of time writing about his life trajectory, his relationship with his father, people he dated, his work.....And his life just doesn't capture my attention all that much; I was not invested in rooting for him to overcome his troubles. He lived a pretty privileged life, which was largely due to his father's successful career, but he finds a lot of faults in his father and doesn't appreciate him. As someone who grew up in East Asian culture, I have very little patience for this. As someone with conservative values, I also have very little patience for the ups and downs of his love life.

In terms of his analysis of the novels, he usually picks a theme, identifies main turning points in the novel that espouses this theme, and examines Austen's own life and how her letters or behaviors demonstrated this theme. I would have liked the book a lot better if the explication of the theme was a lot shorter -- I feel I'm reading the same thing over and over. And I would have preferred the description of Austen's life and letters was a lot shorter, because her books are more interesting than her life. We can only know very little of Austen's private life, since her sister burned most of her letters. Poring over the same little details we have over and over, and trying to piece minute information together to make a case for how Austen's life reflected humility, or growth, or learning, or wisdom in romantic choices.....the arguments that were made just seemed like a stretch to me.

Then there's the content of the analysis itself, which I often don't agree with. I don't see Marianne as Jane Austen's favorite character in Sense and Sensibility. I think Austen presented her as ridiculous and annoying. She spent a lot of time showing how Elinor talked to other people, to demonstrate the importance of respect, civility and virtues. I don't see the Tilneys as much better teachers to Catherine as compared to the Thorpes. The Thorpes conceal their faults with lies, and the Tilneys conceal their faults with silence and humor. Catherine had to learn to navigate both types of mismatch between words and conduct. The discussion about Catherine learning how to love a hyacinth, I thought is a wonderful parallel to how Henry learned to love Catherine (as touched on at the end of the book,) and I was sad this was never brought up. ( )
  CathyChou | Mar 11, 2022 |
This book starts out with one of the oddest openers for a book about Jane Austen — “I was twenty-six, and about as dumb, in all human things, as any twenty-six-year-old has a right to be, when I met the woman who would change my life. That she’d been dead for a couple of hundred years made not the slightest difference whatsoever” (1). The words themselves are not terribly surprising, but the fact that a man wrote them is. And indeed, in the following pages, Deresiewicz himself confesses to an initial bias against Austen, eschewing her as a writer of “silly romantic fairy tales,” and grudgingly reading “Emma” for a class while pursuing a graduate degree in English. He finds the story and its characters dull and boring, then discovers to his surprise that the narrator, the title character, agrees with his assessment of her situation. Examining some of his own preconceived ideas of Austen’s works, he compares it to numerous historical and modern critiques of her writing. Deresiewicz continues chronologically through his graduate student years, aligning the stories of his life with episodes and lessons from Austen’s works, each of the major six novels.

It is rather unusual to see a man writing about his love of Austen’s works, but that is no reason to shun this particular work. Both a memoir and an exploration of fiction, I found this to be pleasant and easy to read; certainly lighter than the previously reviewed memoir involving Laura Ingalls Wilder’s works. Deresiewicz does try a little too hard to connect real life to fiction in some chapters, drawing out some conclusions which are merely conjectures. Still, worth a read, if nothing more than for the aforementioned oddity of a man delving so deeply and personally into Austenian fiction. ( )
  resoundingjoy | Jan 1, 2021 |
William Deresiewicz is shocked to learn that the descriptions by Jane Austen are of him and the people around him. From each of the books he learned something. I wonder if the order in the book is the order he learned them.

Chapter 1: emma: everyday matters
Stop and smell the roses - everyday life matters.

Chapter 2: pride and prejudice: growing up
When we are totally humiliated is when we learn how wrong we were - it is when we change.

Chapter 3: northanger abbey: learning to learn
(The professor asked questioned that) "seemed absurdly simple - silly, really, almost stupid, too basic and obvious to ask a class of resident, let alone a graduate seminar."
" But when we tried to answer them, we discovered that they were not simple in the least. They were profound because they were about all the things we had come to take for granted - " (Page 79)
"Feelings are also the primary way we know about novels -- which, after all, are training grounds for responding to the world," (Page 99)
"...in graduate school...you end up ...with a very elaborate theory that bears no relationship to what's actually going on in front of you. (Page 102-103)

Chapter 4: Mansfield park: being good
Speaking of the people the author knew, he said: Many rich kids "were chronically aimless, and some were downright miserable, psychologically crushed by the fact that nothing was ever going to be expected of them." (Page 147)
"People's stories are the most personal thing they have, and paying attention to those stories is just about the most important thing you can do for them." (Page 163)

Chapter 5: persuasion: true friends
"True friendship, like true love, was pretty rare in Austen's view." (Page 192)

Chapter 6: sense and sensibility: falling in love
Love at first sight makes great fiction, but is not enough to make an enduring relationship.

Chapter 7: the end of the story
The end of this story. ( )
  bread2u | Jul 1, 2020 |
I may try it again at a t later date but I kept nodding off so I decided to move on to something else.
  TheaIsaacs | Apr 21, 2020 |
Es mostren 1-5 de 47 (següent | mostra-les totes)
Sense ressenyes | afegeix-hi una ressenya
Has d'iniciar sessió per poder modificar les dades del coneixement compartit.
Si et cal més ajuda, mira la pàgina d'ajuda del coneixement compartit.
Títol normalitzat
Títol original
Títols alternatius
Data original de publicació
Gent/Personatges
Informació del coneixement compartit en anglès. Modifica-la per localitzar-la a la teva llengua.
Llocs importants
Esdeveniments importants
Pel·lícules relacionades
Epígraf
Dedicatòria
Informació del coneixement compartit en anglès. Modifica-la per localitzar-la a la teva llengua.
To Jill,

and to the memory of Karl Kroeber
Primeres paraules
Informació del coneixement compartit en anglès. Modifica-la per localitzar-la a la teva llengua.
I was twenty-six, and about as dumb, in all human things, as any twenty-six-year-old has a right to be, when I met the woman who would change my life.
Citacions
Informació del coneixement compartit en anglès. Modifica-la per localitzar-la a la teva llengua.
And that was when I finally understood what Austen had been up to all along. Emma's cruelty, which I was so quick to criticize, was nothing, I saw, but the mirror image of my own. The boredom and contempt that the book aroused were not signs of Austen's ineptitude; they were the exact responses she wanted me to have. She had incited them, in order to expose them. By creating a heroine who felt exactly as I did, and who behaved precisely as I would have in her situation, she was showing me my own ugly face. I couldn't deplore Emma's disdain for Miss Bates, or her boredom with the whole commonplace Highbury world, without simultaneously condemning my own.
Austen, I realized, had not been writing about everyday things because she couldn't think of anything else to talk about. She had been writing about them because she wanted to show how important they really are. All that trivia hadn't been marking time until she got to the point. It was the point. Austen wasn't silly and superficial; she was much, much smarter—and much wiser—than I could ever have imagined.
Those small, "trivial," everyday things, the things that happen hour by hour to the people in our lives: what your nephew said, what your friend heard, what your neighbor did. That, she was telling us, is what the fabric of our years really consists of. That is what life is really about.
To pay attention to "minute particulars" is to notice your life as it passes, before it passes.
Austen taught me a new kind of moral seriousness—taught me what moral seriousness really means. It means taking responsibility for the little world, not the big one. It means taking responsibility for yourself.
Darreres paraules
Informació del coneixement compartit en anglès. Modifica-la per localitzar-la a la teva llengua.
Nota de desambiguació
Editor de l'editorial
Informació del coneixement compartit en anglès. Modifica-la per localitzar-la a la teva llengua.
Creadors de notes promocionals a la coberta
Llengua original
CDD/SMD canònics
LCC canònic

Referències a aquesta obra en fonts externes.

Wikipedia en anglès

Cap

Austen scholar Deresiewicz turns to the author's novels to reveal the remarkable life lessons hidden within. With humor and candor, Deresiewicz employs his own experiences to demonstrate the enduring power of Austen's teachings.

No s'han trobat descripcions de biblioteca.

Descripció del llibre
Sumari haiku

Debats actuals

Cap

Cobertes populars

Dreceres

Valoració

Mitjana: (3.79)
0.5
1 1
1.5
2 4
2.5 2
3 27
3.5 12
4 52
4.5 11
5 15

Ets tu?

Fes-te Autor del LibraryThing.

 

Quant a | Contacte | LibraryThing.com | Privadesa/Condicions | Ajuda/PMF | Blog | Botiga | APIs | TinyCat | Biblioteques llegades | Crítics Matiners | Coneixement comú | 202,661,300 llibres! | Barra superior: Sempre visible