A01=Tiffany Schubert
Austen and providence
Austen and Shakespeare
Author_Tiffany Schubert
Category=DSBB
Category=DSK
Category=JBSF1
Courtly Love
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Gender Studies
Happy Endings
History
Jane Austen's irony
Jane Austen's medievalism
Jane Austen’s irony
Jane Austen’s medievalism
Literary Studies
Literature
Philosophy
Religion
Theology
Product details
- ISBN 9781611463507
- Weight: 544g
- Dimensions: 158 x 237mm
- Publication Date: 28 Nov 2023
- Publisher: Associated University Presses
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
While Jane Austen is often regarded as an author who embodies Georgian refinement and restraint, this book argues that her work was deeply engaged with the medieval tradition of courtly love and its investment in happy endings. Revealing the influence of romance on Persuasion, Emma, and other novels, this study provides new insights into Austen’s narrative style, representations of gender, and complex interest in happiness as both an affective and moral state. As Austen reimagines courtly love in her own idiom, she upends traditional gender roles, portraying women not as fine ladies but as rational creatures. Drawing on the structures of Christian narrative, she also illuminates the centrality of providence as a virtue that bestows grace on her characters, offering them deliverance and happiness. To be sure, Austen famously ironizes romance, criticizing emotional excess and downplaying conventionally romantic scenes. This study nonetheless finds creative power in her irony, showing how Austen’s critique of romance is rooted in the paradoxes of Christian theology, which allow for both human suffering and divine order. In reframing key ethical and generic conventions of the medieval past, Austen’s ironic, providentially arranged romances educate readers into wisdom and joy.
Tiffany Schubert is assistant professor of trivium and humanities at Wyoming Catholic College.
