Research Catalog

Title

Austen's oughts : judgment after Locke and Shaftesbury / Karen Valihora.

Author

Valihora, Karen, 1968-

Publication

Newark : University of Delaware Press, c2010.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

363 p. : ill.; 25 cm.

Summary

The word is all over Jane Austen's novels: what ought to be done, what one ought to say, how one ought to feel (versus how one does feel). When Austen's characters employ an ought, the delicate oscillation between first-and third-person perspectives that marks her prose leads the reader to distinguish between what they say, and what they ought, according to a morally idealized, third-person calculus to mean. But what is the context of this ought? This book situates the disinterested, reflective appeal to moral principle invoked ironically or otherwise in Austen's oughts within the history of thought about judgment in the British eighteenth century. Beginning with Shaftesbury's critique of Locke's account of judgment, successive readings explore the emphasis on disinterest in works by David Hume, Adam Smith, Samuel Richardson, and Sir Joshua Reynolds alongside discussions of Jane Austen's major novels.

Subject

• Austen, Jane, 1775-1817 > Criticism and interpretation
• Austen, Jane, 1775-1817 > Ethics
• Judgment in literature
• Judgment (Ethics) > Great Britain > History > 18th century
• English literature > 18th century > History and criticism

Genre/Form

• Criticism, interpretation, etc.
• History

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. 338-350) and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

Introduction -- Empiricism through the prism of aesthetics -- The silence of Ajax: Hume's moral sublime -- Adam Smith's judgment of judgment -- Richardson's Clarissa and eyes of the world -- The orchestration of spectacle in Sense and Sensibility -- Sir Joshua Reynolds and the discourses of art -- Pemberley's hall of mirrors: Austen and Reynolds -- The impartial spectator of Mansfield Park.

ISBN

• 9780874130829 (alk. paper)
• 0874130824 (alk. paper)

LCCN

^^2009024950

OCLC

• 405107472
• SCSB-12404140

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library