Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-7bb8b95d7b-495rp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-09-09T21:35:46.828Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

6 - Reading the word of nature

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 August 2010

Get access

Summary

In recent years there have been critics who have questioned C. S. Lewis's famous judgment that “the great abstract nouns of the classical English moralists are unblushingly and uncompromisingly used” in Jane Austen's novels, in which he said that everything was “hard, clear, definable; by some modern standards, even naively so.” Already in 1953 Andrew H. Wright was analyzing at some length the complexities in Austen's narrative point of view, but especially in the last twenty years the major criticism of Austen has shown what seems to be a growing consensus that her language is by no means simple or unblushingly easy to grasp. Frank W. Bradbrook, for instance, notes that the question of speech in these novels “is not so simple as it might appear,” because “it does not provide an absolute standard of either intelligence or integrity.” J. F. Burrows argues that “Jane Austen uses words with the freedom of a novelist rather than the necessary rigidity of a lexicographer,” supporting this argument by analyzing her usage of such terms as “sense,” “reason,” and “fancy.” E. Rubenstein writes, “If the eighteenth-century moralists gave Austen their vocabulary, they do not appear to have given her the certainty that Lewis implies they themselves enjoyed.” K. C. Phillips points out how such words as “sense” and “sensibility” are “overburdened with meaning” in her work.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Civilized Imagination
A Study of Ann Radcliffe, Jane Austen and Sir Walter Scott
, pp. 106 - 124
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1985

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×