Art and Artifact in Austen

Anna Battigelli

• Publisher: University of Delaware Press
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781644531754, 9781644531747
• eBook ISBN: 9781644531761
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: English Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Jane Austen distinguished herself with genius in literature, but she was immersed in all of the arts. Austen loved dancing, played the piano proficiently, meticulously transcribed piano scores, attended concerts and art exhibits, read broadly, wrote poems, sat for portraits by her sister Cassandra, and performed in theatricals. For her, art functioned as a social bond, solidifying her engagement with community and offering order. And yet Austen's hold on readers' imaginations owes a debt to the omnipresent threat of disorder that often stems—ironically—from her characters' socially disruptive artistic sensibilities and skill. Drawing from a wealth of recent historicist and materialist Austen scholarship, this timely work explores Austen's ironic use of art and artifact to probe selfhood, alienation, isolation, and community in ways that defy simple labels and acknowledge the complexity of Austen's thought.Published by University of Delaware Press. Distributed worldwide byRutgers University Press.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction: The Intimate Ironies of Jane Austen’s Arts and Artifacts
• Portraiture as Misrepresentation in the Novels and Early Writings of Jane Austen
• Jane Austen’s “Artless” Heroines: Catherine Morland and Fanny Price
• Legal Arts and Artifacts in Jane Austen’s Persuasion
• Jane Austen and the Theater? Perhaps Not So Much
• Everything Is Beautiful: Jane Austen at the Ballet
• Jane Austen, Marginalia, and Book Culture
• Gender and Things in Austen and Pope
• “A Very Pretty Amber Cross”: Material Sources of Elegance in Mansfield Park
• Religious Views: English Abbeys in Austen’s Northanger Abbey and Emma
• Intimate Portraiture and the Accomplished Woman Artist in Emma
• “Is She Musical?” Players and Nonplayers in Austen’s Fiction”
• What Jane Saw—in Henrietta Street
• Bibliography
• Contributors
• Index