Book contents
- Jane Austen and Other Minds
- Cambridge Studies in Romanticism
- Jane Austen and Other Minds
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 Austen and Austin
- Chapter 2 Intelligible Community
- Chapter 3 Sense and Sensibility and Suffering
- Chapter 4 Pride and Prejudice and the Comedy of Perfectionism
- Chapter 5 Perlocutionary Entailments
- Chapter 6 Emma and Other Minds
- Chapter 7 Persuasion, Conviction, and Care Jane Austen’s Keeping
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- Cambridge Studies in Romanticism
Chapter 1 - Austen and Austin
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 November 2022
- Jane Austen and Other Minds
- Cambridge Studies in Romanticism
- Jane Austen and Other Minds
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 Austen and Austin
- Chapter 2 Intelligible Community
- Chapter 3 Sense and Sensibility and Suffering
- Chapter 4 Pride and Prejudice and the Comedy of Perfectionism
- Chapter 5 Perlocutionary Entailments
- Chapter 6 Emma and Other Minds
- Chapter 7 Persuasion, Conviction, and Care Jane Austen’s Keeping
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- Cambridge Studies in Romanticism
Summary
Chapter 1, “Austen and Austin,” presents the details of the book’s central proposition that Jane Austen’s novels are not conduct books sharing preset values but philosophical studies of conduct more in the J.L. Austinian sense. The chapter claims that Austen – in common with the grouping of ordinary language philosophers I engage in this book: Austin, Wittgenstein, and Cavell (most of all) – does not view perception itself as a philosophical problem of major interest. My approach departs from the widespread view that Austen’s fiction reflects the mitigated skepticism of eighteenth-century empiricists and anticipates modernist literary impressionism. In the words of her Victorian critic G.H. Lewes, Austen’s epistemological project includes her cultivation of a prose style not visually hyper-realized, but “content to make us know” through the testing and textures of dialogue and character.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Jane Austen and Other MindsOrdinary Language Philosophy in Literary Fiction, pp. 22 - 49Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022