Between Babel and Beast
(America and Empires in Biblical Perspective)

The Glory of Kings: A Festschrift for James B. Jordan

Fyodor Dostoevsky
(Christian Encounters Series)

Athanasius
(Foundations of Theological Exegesis and Christian Spirituality)

The Four: A Survey of the Gospels

Defending Constantine: The Twilight of an Empire and the Dawn of Christendom

From Behind the Veil: The Epistles of John

Deep Exegesis:The Mystery of Reading Scripture

Jane Austen
(A Biography)

Solomon Among the Postmoderns

The Baptized Body

1 & 2 Kings
Brazos Theological Commentary

The Promise Of His Appearing: An Exposition Of Second Peter

A Great Mystery: Fourteen Wedding Sermons

Deep Comedy: Trinity, Tragedy, And Hope In Western Literature

Miniatures & Morals: The Christian Novels of Jane Austen

The Priesthood of the Plebs: A Theology of Baptism

A Son To Me: An Exposition of 1 & 2 Samuel

Against Christianity

From Silence to Song: The Davidic Liturgical Revolution

Ascent to Love: A Guide to Dante's Divine Comedy

Blessed Are the Hungry: Meditations on the Lord's Supper

A House For My Name: A Survey of the Old Testament

Heroes of the City of Man: A Christian Guide to Select Ancient Literature

Brightest Heaven of Invention: A Christian Guide To Six Shakespeare Plays

Wise Words: Family Stories That Bring the Proverbs to Life

The Kingdom and the Power: Rediscovering the Centrality of the Church

« Previous Post | Next Post »
« Previous post in category | Next post in category »

Literature: Rousseau and Austen

Rousseau is not the only source of sentimentality in novels, the literature of sensibility. There are English resources, such as the free prayer tradition, which made spontaneity the test of sincerity.

But Rousseau is one of the sources of this stylistic strategy, and a source that Austen would likely have known. In a 1994 article on Austen and Rousseau, Paula Cohen writes,

“Rousseau’s influence on Austen must first be said to have been stylistic. The sentimental style popularized by Rousseau was the prevailing model for writers throughout the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Although Samuel Richardson may have introduced sentimentalism in the form of his characters’ refined sensitivity to virtue, Rousseau was the first to link the concept to stylistic and thematic conventions involving highly descriptive and effusive language, a preoccupation with natural landscape, and a nostalgic attitude toward past experience. Margharita Laski reports that Austen’s brother Henry edited a newspaper at Oxford in 1789-90 to which he contributed essays ‘in the sentimental school of Rousseau’ (30). The gothic and romance novelists of the period (Fanny Burney, Charlotte Lennox, Maria Edgeworth, and Ann Radcliffe in particular), all of whom Austen read and admired, were also followers of this school. But if Austen did an apprenticeship in the sentimental style, it is with a difference. Love and Freindship, Lesley Castle, Lady Susan, and most of the of juvenilia are parodies of sentimentalism and, as such, reflect Austen’s early dependence on the sentimental style while anticipating her ultimate rejection of it. By the time she wrote Northanger Abbey she had developed a distinctive style which was markedly unsentimental without being directly parodic of that style (though traces of her early satirical approach to sentimentalism still linger in the novel’s theme and in the rendering of Isabella Thorpe’s dialogue).”