Attitude and irony in the narrative voices of Jane Austen's juvenilia
Author
Editor
- Dylan Glynn
- Mette Sjölin
Summary, in English
This narratological study deals with the stance of irony in Jane Austen’s juvenilia. It looks for ‘gaps’ between the attitudes of implied authors, narrators and characters, and investigates how these gaps contribute to the irony of the texts. Once it has been established that the implied author has an ‘ironic intent’, the primary question is whether the narrator shares this intent. Some narrators seem to display an ironic attitude towards their characters and make consciously ironic comments, but in other cases the narrator seems totally oblivious of any irony in their narrative; indeed, the very cluelessness of the narrator is sometimes a source of comedy. Austen’s early narrative texts, which constitute the main portion of the juvenilia, can be divided into three categories according to narrative situation: narratives with one heterodiegetic narrator, narratives with one homodiegetic narrator – in this category, ‘Love and Freindship’ is the chief instance – and narratives with multiple homodiegetic narrators. This division leads to the discovery that the attitudinal gaps are to be found between different personae in different categories.
Department/s
Publishing year
2014
Language
English
Pages
63-90
Publication/Series
Subjectivity and Epistemicity : Corpus, Discourse and Literary Approaches to Stance
Volume
117
Document type
Book chapter
Publisher
Centre for Languages and Literature, Lund University
Topic
- Specific Literatures
Keywords
- Jane Austen
- juvenilia
- narratology
- irony
Status
Published
ISBN/ISSN/Other
- ISSN: 0076-1451
- ISBN: 978-91-87833-19-9