Jane Austen at play : self-consciousness, beginnings, endings
- UNCG Author/Contributor (non-UNCG co-authors, if there are any, appear on document)
- Kuldip Kaur Kuwahara (Creator)
- Institution
- The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG )
- Web Site: http://library.uncg.edu/
- Advisor
- James E. Evans
Abstract: It is because Jane Austen takes her art seriously that she can play. A self-conscious novelist, she delights in playing with reality and illusion, and the conventions of fiction-making. Her ironic perspective on individual consciousness and social interaction explains a lively interest in the comedy of manners. Irony underlines the paradox between her self-consciousness as an artist and her impersonality and control of aesthetic distance. Austen treats art as an expression of what her contemporary, Schiller, termed the "Spieltrieb" or "play drive." Schiller's argument for the need of the "play drive" to unite the "form drive" (associated with man's rational nature) with the "sense drive" (associated with man's sensuous nature) to express the ideal aesthetic experience, provides a useful framework for my study of Austen's playfulness.
Jane Austen at play : self-consciousness, beginnings, endings
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Created on 1/1/1990
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Additional Information
- Publication
- Dissertation
- Language: English
- Date: 1990
- Subjects
- Austen, Jane, $d 1775-1817 $x Criticism and interpretation
- Austen, Jane, $d 1775-1817 $x Characters
- Austen, Jane, $d 1775-1817. $t Persuasion