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On Satire: Jane Austen's 'Emma'
Season 7 · Episode 8

On Satire: Jane Austen's 'Emma'

<p>What kind of satirist was Jane Austen? Her earliest writings follow firmly in the footsteps of <em>Tristram Shandy</em> in their deployment of heightened sentiment as a tool for satirising romantic novelistic conventions. But her mature fiction goes far beyond this, taking the fashion for passionate sensibility and confronting it with moneyed realism to depict a complex social satire in which characters are constantly pulled in different directions by romantic and economic forces. In this episode Clare and Colin focus on <em>Emma</em> as the high point of Austen’s satire of character as revealed through conversational style, and consider how the world Austen was born into, of revolutionary thought and new money, shaped the moral and material universe of all her novels.</p><br><p>Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from the episode. To listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up:</p><p>Directly in Apple Podcasts: <a href="https://apple.co/3pJoFPq" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://apple.co/3pJoFPq</a></p><p>In other podcast apps: <a href="https://lrb.me/satiresignuppod" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">lrb.me/closereadings</a></p><br><p>Read more in the LRB:</p><br><p>Barbara Everett</p><p><a href="https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v18/n03/barbara-everett/hard-romance" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v18/n03/barbara-everett/hard-romance</a></p><br><p>John Bayley</p><p><a href="https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v09/n03/john-bayley/yawning-and-screaming" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v09/n03/john-bayley/yawning-and-screaming</a></p><br><p>Marilyn Butler</p><p><a href="https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v09/n12/marilyn-butler/jane-austen-s-word-process" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v09/n12/marilyn-butler/jane-austen-s-word-process</a></p><br><p>Colin Burrow and Clare Bucknell are both fellows of All Souls College, Oxford.</p><br><p>Get in touch: [email protected]</p><hr><p style='color:grey; font-size:0.75em;'> Hosted on Acast. See <a style='color:grey;' target='_blank' rel='noopener noreferrer' href='https://acast.com/privacy'>acast.com/privacy</a> for more information.</p>

Close Readings

August 4, 202415m 36s

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Show Notes

What kind of satirist was Jane Austen? Her earliest writings follow firmly in the footsteps of Tristram Shandy in their deployment of heightened sentiment as a tool for satirising romantic novelistic conventions. But her mature fiction goes far beyond this, taking the fashion for passionate sensibility and confronting it with moneyed realism to depict a complex social satire in which characters are constantly pulled in different directions by romantic and economic forces. In this episode Clare and Colin focus on Emma as the high point of Austen’s satire of character as revealed through conversational style, and consider how the world Austen was born into, of revolutionary thought and new money, shaped the moral and material universe of all her novels.


Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from the episode. To listen in full, and to all our other Close Readings series, sign up:

Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3pJoFPq

In other podcast apps: lrb.me/closereadings


Read more in the LRB:


Barbara Everett

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v18/n03/barbara-everett/hard-romance


John Bayley

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v09/n03/john-bayley/yawning-and-screaming


Marilyn Butler

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v09/n12/marilyn-butler/jane-austen-s-word-process


Colin Burrow and Clare Bucknell are both fellows of All Souls College, Oxford.


Get in touch: [email protected]

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.