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Jane Austen's Style

Jane Austen's Style

Jane Austen's Style

Narrative Economy and the Novel's Growth
Anne Toner , University of Cambridge
April 2020
In stock
Hardback
9781108424158

    Jane Austen is renowned for the economy of her art: for the close focus of her romantic plots and the precision of her writing style. Exploring that economy stylistically and structurally, this book traces Austen's keen interest in narrative form. Anne Toner pinpoints techniques that are fundamental to the distinctiveness of Austen's fiction, many of which have been little explored to date. Toner argues that Austen's conciseness in terms of plotting, narrative description and in the depiction of dialogue also contributed to her innovations in representing thought, expanding the novel's capacity to depict consciousness. Narrative and rhetorical features are presented clearly and accessibly and will open up new ways of thinking about prose style with implications for the study of fiction beyond Austen's own.

    • Presents new readings of Austen's narrative style and an in-depth analysis of her innovative writing techniques
    • Considers Austen's early writing, including her juvenilia, helping readers to engage with the development of her fiction over time
    • Examines some relatively unexplored features of Austen's narrative style that can be extended to other authors

    Reviews & endorsements

    ‘… in each of her chapters on the formal features of Austen's style, Toner demonstrates how the effort of writing small worked to inspire some of Austen's biggest ideas and thus to shape nineteenth-century fiction.’ Megan Quinn, www.review19.org

    ‘This telescoping is well represented in discussion of Mansfield Park and of free direct discourse … the notes, bibliography, and index are extensive and provide welcome entry into the critical discussion around Austen studies and the 18th-century novel … Highly recommended.’ R. Shapiro, Choice

    ‘Explicating the very long history of critical reception of Austen’s exemplary, modern economy of style - its concision of plot for character, for example - Toner under-takes a detailed and thorough grammatical investigation of how exactly Austen achieves her fêted economy, and to what ends.’ Kate Singer, The Wordsworth Circle

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    Product details

    April 2020
    Hardback
    9781108424158
    220 pages
    234 × 157 × 14 mm
    0.47kg
    13 b/w illus.
    Available

    Table of Contents

    • 1. Structure: selection, connection, and the picturesque
    • 2. Language: apophatic Austen (not saying things and saying so)
    • 3. Dialogue: Austen's missing speakers and the case for free direct discourse.
      Author
    • Anne Toner

      Anne Toner is a Fellow and Director of Studies in English at Trinity College, University of Cambridge. She is the author of Ellipsis in English Literature: Signs of Omission (Cambridge, 2015).

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