A fascinating look into the myths that continue to shape our understanding and appreciation of Jane Austen. Was Jane Austen the best-selling novelist of her time? Are all her novels romances? Did they depict the traditional world of the aristocracy? Is Austen's writing easy to understand? Well into the 21st century, Jane Austen continues to be one of the most compelling novelists in all English literature. Many of her ideas about class, family, history, intimacy, manners, love, desire, and society, have inspired "myths" that are often contradictory — she was a Tory who was also a liberal feminist, or, her novels are at once sharply satirical and unapologetically romantic. Myths, like Austen's works, are dynamic, changing over time and impacting how we read and interpret literature. 30 Great Myths about Jane Austen examines the accepted beliefs — both true and untrue —that have most influenced our readings of Austen. Rather than simply de-bunking, or validating, commonly-held views about Austen, authors Claudia L. Johnson and Clara Tuite explore how these myths can be used to engage with the life, work, and reception of Jane Austen. Applying the most up-to-date scholarship to better understand how myths shape our appreciation of Jane Austen, this fascinating volume: Introduces readers to the history of Austen reception, both in academic scholarship and in the general public Examines Jane Austen’s life and letters, her historical contexts, her texts, and their afterlives Discusses Austen’s influence on the development of literary criticism as a discipline Explores each of Austen’s main novels, as well as relatively obscure texts such as Sanditon and The Watsons Offering engaging narrative and original insights, 30 Great Myths about Jane Austen is a must-read for scholars, instructors, and students of English and Romantic literature, as well as general readers with interest in the life and works of Jane Austen.

Brimming with the fascinating eccentricities of a complex andconfusing movement whose influences continue to resonate deeply,30 Great Myths About the Romantics adds great clarity towhat we know – or think we know – about one ofthe most important periods in literary history. Explores the various misconceptions commonly associated withRomanticism, offering provocative insights that correct and clarifyseveral of the commonly-held myths about the key figures of thisera Corrects some of the biases and beliefs about the Romanticsthat have crept into the 21st-century zeitgeist – for examplethat they were a bunch of drug-addled atheists who believed in freelove; that Blake was a madman; and that Wordsworth slept with hissister Celebrates several of the mythic objects, characters, and ideasthat have passed down from the Romantics into contemporary culture– from Blake’s Jerusalem and Keats’sOde on a Grecian Urn to the literary genre of thevampire Engagingly written to provide readers with a fun yet scholarlyintroduction to Romanticism and key writers of the period, applyingthe most up-to-date scholarship to the series of myths thatcontinue to shape our appreciation of their work

The facts and fictions that continue to shape our understanding of Chaucer and his place in literary tradition Is Chaucer the father of English literature? The first English poet? Was he a feminist? A political opportunist? A spy? Is Chaucer’s language too difficult for modern readers? 30 Great Myths about Chaucer explores the widely held ideas and opinions about the medieval poet, discussing how ‘myths’ have influenced Chaucer’s reception history and interpretations of his poetry through the centuries. This unique text offers original insights on the character of Chaucer, the nature of his works, the myths that inform our conceptions of Chaucer, and the underlying causes of these myths. Each accessible and engaging chapter focuses on a specific myth, including those surrounding Chaucer’s romantic life, political leanings, religious views, personal struggles, financial challenges, ideas about chivalry, representations of social class, and many others. More than simply correcting inaccurate facts or clarifying common misconceptions about Chaucer, the text delves deeper to address how the myths have shaped the critical interpretation and enduring literary legacy of Chaucer. This innovative volume: Explores how generations of readers continue to shape understanding of Chaucer Highlights the intersection of medievalism and Chaucer studies Helps readers detach myths about Chaucer from critical readings of his works Examines whether myths about Chaucer are based on historical fact or literary interpretation Discusses the history of reading Chaucer in contexts of biography, criticism, and popular culture 30 Great Myths about Chaucer is an indispensable resource for academics, researchers, graduate students, upper-level undergraduates, and general readers with interest in Chaucer and early English and Middle Ages literature.

Jane Austen and Critical Theory is a collection of new essays that addresses the absence of critical theory in Austen studies—an absence that has limited the reach of Austen criticism. The collection brings together innovative scholars who ask new and challenging questions about the efficacy of Austen’s work. This volume confronts mythical understandings of Austen as "Dear Aunt Jane," the early twentieth-century legacy of Austen as a cultural salve, and the persistent habit of reading her works for advice or instruction. The authors pursue a diversity of methods, encourage us to build new kinds of relationships to Austen and her writings, and demonstrate how these relationships might generate new ideas and possibilities—ideas and possibilities that promise to expand the ways in which we deploy Austen. The book specifically reminds us of the vital importance of Austen and her fiction for central concerns of the humanities, including the place of the individual within civil society, the potential for new identities and communities, the urgency to address racial and sexual oppression, and the need to imagine more just futures. Chapter 4 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

Jane Austen was a keen consumer of the arts throughout her lifetime. The Edinburgh Companion to Jane Austen and the Arts considers how Austen represents the arts in her writing, from her juvenilia to her mature novels. The thirty-three original chapters in this Companion cover the full range of Austen's engagement with the arts, including the silhouette and the caricature, crafts, theatre, fashion, music and dance, together with the artistic potential of both interior and exterior spaces. This volume also explores her artistic afterlives in creative re-imaginings across different media, including adaptations and transpositions in film, television, theatre, digital platforms and games.

'No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy, would have supposed her born to be an heroine.' Northanger Abbey is a comedy about reading and misreading-of books and the world-and about different kinds of peril, both imagined and real. In it, Austen's youngest heroine, Catherine Morland, must navigate financial disadvantage, social constraint, and sometimes quite ruthless manipulation. The absurdities of fashion and conspicuous consumption, voguish ostentation and social competition are seen first in shark-infested Bath, (the premier health resort and marriage market of the day) and then in a more tranquil pocket of rural Gloucestershire that turns out to be a hotbed of materialism and greed. Jane Austen combines making fun of the excesses of the Gothic novel with larger moral issues: the folly of letting literature get in the way of life, and the inexcusability (especially for women) of not thinking for oneself. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

A volume in honour of Angela Locatelli The book explores the significance of literary translation and interpretation, in the widest sense of terms, as multiple processes of meaning and cultural transfer, by investigating how and why literature can be considered as a repository and a disseminator of knowledge and values. Featuring essays by a number of scholars focusing on a wide range of literary and critical texts of different nations and cultures and encompassing the last three centuries, this book intends to offer a contribution to the study of translation and interpretation as literary processes of cultural and epistemic dissemination of knowledge from both a theoretical and a practical perspective.

This book seeks to uncover how today’s ideas about climate and catastrophe have been formed by the thinking of Romantic poets, novelists and scientists, and how these same ideas might once more be harnessed to assist us in the new climate challenges facing us in the present. The global climate disaster following Mt Tambora’s eruption in 1815 – the ‘Year without a Summer’ – is a starting point from which to reconsider both how the Romantics responded to the changing climates of their day, and to think about how these climatic events shaped the development of Romanticism itself. As the contributions to this volume demonstrate, climate is an inescapable aspect of Romantic writing and thinking. Ideologies and experiences of climate inform everything from scientific writing to lyric poetry and novels. The ‘Diodati circle’ that assembled in Geneva in 1816 – Lord Byron, Percy and Mary Shelley, John Polidori and John Cam Hobhouse and the gothic novelist MG ‘Monk’ Lewis – is synonymous with the literature of that dreary, uncanny season. Essays in this collection also consider the work of Jane Austen, John Keats and William Wordsworth, along with less well-known figures such as the scientist Luke Howard, and later responses to Romantic climates by John Ruskin and Virginia Woolf.

Jane Austen and Lord Byron are often presented as opposites, but here they are together at last. In Regency England he was the first celebrity author while she was a parson's daughter writing anonymously. This book explores how their lives, interests, work and sense of humour often brought them within touching distance, and sets them side by side in the world of the Regency and Romantic period. Using some little-known sources and new research, it illustrates how they were distantly related by marriage; how they knew about each other even though they probably never met; the acquaintances they had in common and how their literary work often came close in subject-matter, approach, technique and tone. Engagingly written and beautifully illustrated, this book will inform and delight scholars and Austen and Byron fans alike, showing that these two great authors were closer than you might think, even in their own day.

The first of its kind, this collection brings together writers from diverse academic and nonacademic worlds to explore how Austen's readers experience and process her novels' erotic power.