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- W123022695 abstract "TO EMPLOY ONE'S LEISURE in reading a novel is to play; to employ it in writing one to play even more richly. To say that Jane Austen was well aware of this is to suggest of course that she did take both activities seriously. made frequent astute comments in her letters on the books she was currently reading, and she famously said of the proprietress of a subscription library who boasted that her collection was not to consist only of Novels, but of every kind of Literature that She might have spared this pretension to our family, who are great Novel-readers & ashamed of being (Letters 18 December 1798); and the indications of her meticulous craftsmanship in the advice she offered to her niece Anna Lefroy when she was writing her novel reveal the scrupulousness of her methodology as a writer (Letters July 1814; 10-18 August 1814; 9-18 September 1814; 28 September 1814; 30 November 1814). Nevertheless, whatever claims may be made for the moral and educative benefits of fiction--and obvious ly they are many--for a woman of Jane Austen's period and situation novel-writing and reading were essentially pastimes, and to embark on the creation of a novel was in the broadest sense to take part in a kind of literary game. That she felt this is obvious from the earliest writings in the Juvenilia, with their parodies and burlesques, their portentous headings to tiny chapters, and their elaborate dedications to members of the family. This is hardly surprising, for any child writing stories imitates his favorite reading, playing the role of author in just the same way that he dresses up to play other kinds of roles: it is one game among many. My purpose is to examine the extent to which for Jane Austen this game-playing, this assumption of a conscious literary role, persisted throughout her life, so that one of the ways of understanding her novels is as the endgame, the winning hand, of a lucid engagement both with the reader and with an acknowledged literary tradition; and more specifically I want to consider the effect that such a reading has on our perception of the novels' method, direction, and structure. For the Austens literary games were a regular part of family life: poems, enigmas, charades, and round-games in verse were constantly invented by Mrs. Austen and her children to amuse themselves and their friends; and even James Austen's more serious poetry, none of which, so far as we know, he ever attempted to publish, was written for the edification of his children or as an exercise for himself in the working out of moral or religious problems (it often, too, exhibits the assumption of poetic roles--there is certainly much imitation in it). Jane Austen's art then must be seen at least partly in this context, as an aspect of private family entertainment. Naturally, from the moment her father wrote to Thomas Cadell offering First Impressions for publication it aspired to be something more, but the fact that she would read her novels aloud at Chawton, sometimes, as in the case of Pride and Prejudice and Miss Benn, without revealing to friends the identity of the author (Letters 29 January 1813; 4 February 1 813), shows that her writing, even in published form, never ceased to be a source of domestic amusement. The reactions of her friends and relations to her work were important to her, to the extent that she took the trouble to write them down; and she was capable of carrying out a post mortem herself, like Dr. Grant and Mrs. Norris's dispute over their whist: thus she wrote of Pride and Prejudice: The work is rather too light & bright & sparkling;--it wants shade;--it wants to be stretched out here & there with a long Chapter--of sense if it could be had, if of solemn specious nonsense--about something unconnected with the story; an Essay on Writing, a critique on Walter Scott, or the history of Buonaparte--or anything that would form a contrast & bring the reader with increased delight to the playfulness & Epigrammatism of the general stile. …" @default.
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- W123022695 date "2001-01-01" @default.
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- W123022695 title "Games and Play in Jane Austen's Literary Structures. (Conference Papers)" @default.
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