閱讀簡·奧斯丁 Jane Austen在小说之家的作品!!! | |||||||
简·奥斯丁奧斯丁創作的小說，幾乎都經過長時間的反復修訂改寫。她出版的第一部小說是《理智與情感》(1811) 。《傲慢與偏見》(1813) 是她的第二部作品。這兩部作品，加上她去世後出版的《諾桑覺寺》(1818) ，都寫於十八世紀的九十年代，通常算是她的早期作品。而《曼斯菲爾德莊園》(1814) 、《愛瑪》(1816) 與《勸導》(1818) 則寫於十九世紀，算是後期作品。
根據《簡明不列顛百科全書》的說法，簡.奧斯丁是“第一個現實地描繪日常平凡生活中平凡人物的小說傢。她的作品反映了當時英國中産階級生活的喜劇，顯示了家庭文學的可能性。她多次探索青年女主角從戀愛到結婚中自我發現的過程。這種着力分析人物性格以及女主角和社會之間緊張關係的做法，使她的小說擺脫十八世紀的傳統而接近於現代的生活。正是這種現代性，加上她的機智和風趣，她的現實主義和同情心，她的優雅的散文和巧妙的故事結構，使她的小說能長期吸引讀者。當時 (十九世紀初) 流行誇張戲劇性的浪漫小說，已使人們所厭倦，奧斯丁的樸素的現實主義啓清新之風，受到讀者的歡迎。到二十世紀，人們纔認識到她是英國攝政王時期 (1810-1820) 最敏銳的觀察者，她嚴肅地分析了當時社會的性質和文化的質量，記錄了舊社會嚮現代社會的轉變。現代評論傢也贊佩奧斯丁小說的高超的組織結構，以及她能於平凡而狹窄有限的情節中揭示生活的悲喜劇的精湛技巧。”
Austen lived her entire life as part of a close-knit family located on the lower fringes of the English gentry. She was educated primarily by her father and older brothers as well as through her own reading. The steadfast support of her family was critical to Austen's development as a professional writer. Austen's artistic apprenticeship lasted from her teenage years until she was about thirty-five years old. During this period, she experimented with various literary forms, including the epistolary novel which she tried and then abandoned, and wrote and extensively revised three major novels and began a fourth.[B] From 1811 until 1816, with the release of Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814) and Emma (1816), she achieved success as a published writer. She wrote two additional novels, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, both published posthumously in 1818, and began a third, which was eventually titled Sanditon, but died before completing it.
Austen's works critique the novels of sensibility of the second half of the eighteenth century and are part of the transition to nineteenth-century realism.[C] Austen's plots, though fundamentally comic, highlight the dependence of women on marriage to secure social standing and economic security. Like those of Samuel Johnson, one of the strongest influences on her writing, her works are concerned with moral issues.
During Austen's lifetime her works brought her little personal fame and only a few positive reviews. Through the mid-nineteenth century, her novels were admired mainly by members of the literary elite. However, the publication of her nephew's A Memoir of Jane Austen in 1869 introduced her to a far wider public as an appealing personality and kindled popular interest in her works. By the 1940s, Austen had become widely accepted in academia as a "great English writer". The second half of the twentieth century saw a proliferation of Austen scholarship, which explored many aspects of her novels: artistic, ideological, and historical. In popular culture, a Janeite fan culture has developed, centred on Austen's life, her works, and the various film and television adaptations of them.