Austenmania and critical snobbery

[pegkerr]

The Pride of Austen Critics: a Prejudice?

Deborah Kaplan muses upon the immense growth of popularity of Jane Austen's fiction, and the effect that all the recent adaptations of her work has had upon the assumption that her work is truly only accessible and enjoyed by those fortunate few with elevated taste:

"...while many of us were trying, whether we were aware of it or not, to rescue Austen from her popularity, other critics were beginning to view the representations and activities that constitute Austenmania with more appreciation and, in the process, to probe our discipline's investment in hierarchies of literary value, readings, and readers. For the study of Austenmania prompts questions about what cultural works we value, why and how we value them, and who "we" are.

Read the whole essay here.

Comments

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

There are two things that the article leaves out: one, that 'critical' views of Austen were firmly kept in the hands of male academics until at least the seventies, and some of their conclusions were frustratingly blind, but who could gainsay them? Even Nabokov, who appreciated Austen, seems to begin with the little spinster in her little safe world as a context.

Second, any studies of popular culture and Austen has to deal with Heyer and how the entire perception of the Regency, Regency culture, literature, romance, even, was wrenched out of focus by her intense and ongoing popularity. So few are aware of the roots of the Silver Fork novels that Heyer comes out of and how she doesn't actually engage with Austen's themes at all.