In this thoughtful appraisal of the novels and writings of Jane Austen, Mr. Mudrick shows Austen to be a writer of acute and irreverent sensibilities who, despite the constricted circumstances of her life, managed to create in her novels an enduring microcosm of the larger world. With deep insight into the creative mind and its artistic motives, Mr. Mudrick examines all of her writings as aspects of a developing personal irony, an irony that later became the vital principle of her art. It was her ironic detachment, he maintains, that enabled her to expose and dissect, in novels that are masterpieces of comic wit and brilliant satire, the follies and delusions of eighteenth-century English society.
Jane Austen: Irony as Defense and Discovery
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Description
Has there ever been a critic of Jane Austen equal to her verve, her animation and independence of thought? Marvin Mudrick’s Jane Austen: Irony as Defense and Discovery, his first book, was published in 1952, and remains a fundamental work of commentary on Austen. It is filled with idiosyncratic insights about what makes Austen’s novels so daring and alive. Mudrick writes, for example, that this book “began as an essay to document my conviction that Emma is a novel admired, even consecrated, for qualities which it in fact subverts or ignores.” He goes on to show Austen to be a writer of irreverent sensibilities who, despite the constricted circumstances of her life, managed to create in her novels an enduring microcosm of the larger world. Mudrick examines her writings as aspects of a developing personal irony, an irony that later became the vital principles of her art. It was her ironic detachment, he maintains, that enabled her to expose and dissect, in novels that are masterpieces of comic wit and brilliant satire, the follies and delusions of eighteenth-century English society—and of human society even today.
“What you finally come away from Mudrick wanting to do is read or re-read the books he talks about, and anybody who thinks this experience a common one hasn’t read much literary criticism recently.” —William H. Pritchard
Marvin Mudrick (1921–1986) was a prominent literary critic and founded the College of Creative Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. This book was republished to coincide with the College’s 50th anniversary.
Additional information
| Weight | N/A |
|---|---|
| Dimensions | N/A |
| Volumes | 1 |
| ISBN | 9781614728740 |
| Format | |
| Pages | 275 |
Reviews
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James Wolcott, Vanity Fair –
“A one-man commando squad and independent operator, Marvin Mudrick was the most maverick literary critic of his time and ours—ferocious, funny, and fearlessly honest.”
William H. Pritchard –
“What you finally come away from Mudrick wanting to do is read or re-read the books he talks about, and anybody who thinks this experience a common one hasn’t read much literary criticism recently.”