On Declaring Love
eBook - ePub

On Declaring Love

Eighteenth-Century Literature and Jane Austen

  1. 204 pages
  2. English
  3. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

On Declaring Love

Eighteenth-Century Literature and Jane Austen

About this book

"What did she say? – Just what she ought, of course. A lady always does."

This book explores the act of declaring love in works of literature written between the middle of the eighteenth century and the death of Jane Austen - and uncovers the uncertain boundaries of the self in the force-field of courtship. Declaring love is understood as the hazardous attempt to find public, social terms which can communicate personal feelings and bring intimacy into being. This was a period highly sensitive to the propriety and artificiality of public forms, and hence peculiarly alive to problems around the idea of saying what you feel, problems experienced especially though not exclusively by women. Through this historical lens the author considers the ways in which we may become entangled with one another through language, the limits to our operation as independent individuals, and whether in love you can only feel what you can tell.

The first part of the book examines eighteenth-century attitudes towards the independent or disengaged self, performance culture, and the feasibility of sincerity, through readings of a wide range of different works. This provides the basis for a discussion of Austen's novels in the final two chapters, focused on the dynamics of courtship and the moment of proposal, and making much of the role of Austen's narrative voice in supporting the subjectivity of the one in love.

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Yes, you can access On Declaring Love by Fred Parker in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Literature & Literary Criticism. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Information

Publisher
Routledge
Year
2018
Print ISBN
9780367077389
eBook ISBN
9780429663642

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Half Title
  3. Series Page
  4. Title Page
  5. Copyright Page
  6. Dedication Page
  7. Table of Contents
  8. Note on References
  9. Preface
  10. 1 ‘Never seek to tell thy love’
  11. 2 The Disengaged Self in the Theatre of the World
  12. 3 Clarissa: ‘I wanted somebody to speak for me’
  13. 4 The Performance of Love in Jane Austen
  14. 5 The Lethal Reserve of Fanny Price
  15. Works Cited
  16. Index