Character and Conflict in Jane Austen’s Novels: A Psychological Approach - Hardcover

Paris, Bernard J.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0814316166 ISBN 13: 9780814316160

Publisher: Wayne State University Press, 1978

Synopsis

We sell Rare, out-of-print, uncommon, & used BOOKS, PRINTS, MAPS, DOCUMENTS, AND EPHEMERA. We do not sell ebooks, print on demand, or other reproduced materials. Each item you see here is individually described and imaged. We welcome further inquiries.

About this title

About the Author:

Bernard J. Paris is professor emeritus of English at the University of Florida. His fields of interest include Victorian and comparative fiction and the psychological study of literature. He is author of numerous books, including Rereading George Eliot, Heaven and Its Discontents: Milton’s Characters in Paradise Lost, Bargains with Fate: Psychological Crises and Conflicts in Shakespeare and His Plays, and A General Drama of Pain: Character and Fate in Hardy’s Major Novels.

Review:

“[Paris] has an interesting thesis: in Austen’s work there is a tension between realistic characterization and conventionalized form—that is, there is a basic contradiction between the character as a figure in the comicaction and the character as a psychologically whole person . . . [T]his is a provocative work.”

—Shernaz Mollinger, Library Journal

 “Professor Paris writes energetically and knowledgeably, and his clinical scheme can illuminate characters . . . Professor Paris’s book may be most noteworthy for intensely raising the question of whether psychology can afford to take only case histories from great novelists’ mimetic narratives, which are also human testaments.”

—Frederick M. Keener, Modern Language Review

“The psychological elements in Paris’s approach originate in Third Force theory . . . Paris quotes [E. M.] Forster’s conception of characters as “creations inside creations” having an autonomous existence, and inclining toward “treason against the main scheme of the book.” Of course this idea neither begins nor ends with Forster, but he articulates it well and provides Paris with a language for describing the occasions when Austen’s characters seem to escape her control and even—according to Paris—her understanding . . . Paris believes we may arrive at a more enriching reading of Austen and more consistency in Austen criticism if we recognize Austen as an artist whose mimetic goals characteristically conflict at crucial moments with her thematic goals, particularly in her conclusions, which celebrate social harmony through the ritual of marriage.”

—Sheila Ortiz Taylor, Eighteenth-Century Studies

“[Paris] succeeds . . . in giving the impression that Jane Austen was a subtle-souled psychologist, particularly with Fanny Price, and he illustrates the difficultly of reaching decisions on prudential and romantic issues of Persuasion.”

—F. B. Pinion, The Review of English Studies

About this edition

• Publisher: Wayne State University Press
• Publication date: 1978
• ISBN 10: 0814316166
• ISBN 13: 9780814316160
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 212