6 - Austen among the Theorists, 1976–1990

Summary

IT SHOULD COME AS NO SURPRISE to find a sharp spike in Austen criticism beginning in the 1970s even without the significant contributions of feminist critics. In fact, the explosion of feminist criticism may have masked advances in Austen studies brought about by critics approaching her work from a variety of other new approaches. Between 1970 and 1990 more than three hundred doctoral candidates wrote dissertations either focused exclusively on Austen or containing large sections devoted to analysis of her work. While most commentary produced after the mid-1970s reflects the influence of feminists, many practitioners of other new critical theories found Austen's fiction fertile ground for their analyses. This chapter offers an overview of the kinds of work being done by critics employing new tools such as theories of narratology, new psychology, sociological studies, Marxism, and new historicism.

Structural Criticism, Deconstruction, and Narratology

Many second-generation structuralists, narratologists, and even poststructuralists writing about Austen after 1970 used their analyses to explore larger issues involving the writing and study of fiction. A sampling of studies illustrates this trend nicely. In Expositional Modes and Temporal Ordering in Fiction (1978) Meir Sternberg focuses on Austen's ability to control her readers' response to characters and delay their judgments about moral issues through a technique he calls “anticipatory caution” (129). Sternberg explains how Austen's conscious decisions regarding the timing of exposition and the temporal ordering of events allow her to keep readers interested in her principal figures while giving them the pleasurable sensation of coming to conclusions about these characters gradually.