Jane Austen's Style
Narrative Economy and the Novel's Growth

A new exploration of the innovative features of Jane Austen's style.

Anne Toner (Author)

9781108424158, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 5 March 2020

220 pages, 13 b/w illus.
23.4 x 15.7 x 1.4 cm, 0.47 kg

'Explicating the very long history of critical reception of Austen's exemplary, modern economy of style - its concision of plot for character, for example - Toner under-takes a detailed and thorough grammatical investigation of how exactly Austen achieves her fêted economy, and to what ends.' Kate Singer, The Wordsworth Circle

Jane Austen is renowned for the economy of her art: for the close focus of her romantic plots and the precision of her writing style. Exploring that economy stylistically and structurally, this book traces Austen's keen interest in narrative form. Anne Toner pinpoints techniques that are fundamental to the distinctiveness of Austen's fiction, many of which have been little explored to date. Toner argues that Austen's conciseness in terms of plotting, narrative description and in the depiction of dialogue also contributed to her innovations in representing thought, expanding the novel's capacity to depict consciousness. Narrative and rhetorical features are presented clearly and accessibly and will open up new ways of thinking about prose style with implications for the study of fiction beyond Austen's own.

1. Structure: selection, connection, and the picturesque
2. Language: apophatic Austen (not saying things and saying so)
3. Dialogue: Austen's missing speakers and the case for free direct discourse.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers [DSK], Literary studies: c 1500 to c 1800 [DSBD], Literature: history & criticism [DS]