Attitude and irony in the narrative voices of Jane Austen's juvenilia

• This narratological study deals with the stance of irony in Jane Austen’s juvenilia. It looks for ‘gaps’ between the attitudes of implied authors, narrators and characters, and investigates how these gaps contribute to the irony of the texts. Once it has been established that the implied author has an ‘ironic intent’, the primary question is whether the narrator shares this intent. Some narrators seem to display an ironic attitude towards their characters and make consciously ironic comments, but in other cases the narrator seems totally oblivious of any irony in their narrative; indeed, the very cluelessness of the narrator is sometimes a source of comedy. Austen’s early narrative texts, which constitute the main portion of the juvenilia, can be divided into three categories according to narrative situation: narratives with one heterodiegetic narrator, narratives with one homodiegetic narrator – in this category, ‘Love and Freindship’ is the chief instance – and narratives with multiple homodiegetic narrators. This division leads to the discovery that the attitudinal gaps are to be found between different personae in different categories.

Ämnesord

HUMANIORA  -- Språk och litteratur -- Litteraturstudier (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Languages and Literature -- Specific Literatures (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Jane Austen

juvenilia

narratology

irony

Publikations- och innehållstyp

kap (ämneskategori)

ref (ämneskategori)