Jane Austen and Modernization: Sociological Readings - Hardcover

Thompson, J.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1137496010 ISBN 13: 9781137496010

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015

Synopsis

Jane Austen and Modernization presents something of a conundrum. How can Austen be yoked to a vast series of historical changes that postdate her writing life by at least half a century? The canonization of Austen and the development of a popular readership was 50 years in the making though and during these years, readers and critics of all stripes responded to Austen's work as representative of a social and historical formation that they themselves felt they were losing. This same half century corresponds to the development and institutionalization of sociology, the social science promulgated to answer the questions of modernity, to provide the tools and vocabulary to understand the period's erosion of social and moral cohesion. James Thompson argues here that the early sociologists - Durkheim, Weber, Simmel and Goffman - share a concern about social cohesion with Austen. Through sociological analysis of six novels, this book highlights the dynamic and dramatic process of individuation and offers an original, interdisciplinary intervention.

About this title

Review:

"In addition to a new, interdisciplinary perspective on Jane Austen's novels, Thompson's text is a tutorial in the work of six major sociological thinkers from the late-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries. The book departs from the pattern of so many Austen studies by treating its texts, not in chronological order, but in pairs, as they best benefit from the context given by particular social theorists. These pairings bring out fresh readings, making the book a true delight. And Thompson certainly convinces us that it 'took sociology a century to catch up with Austen's insight.'" - Deborah Knuth Klenck, Professor of English, Colgate University, USA

About the Author:

James Thompson is Professor of English and Comparative Literature and Associate Dean for Undergraduate Curricula at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA. He has published on restoration drama, the eighteenth-century novel, literary theory and pedagogy, and Jane Austen.

About this edition

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1137496010
• ISBN 13: 9781137496010
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 221