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Point (4) strikes me as a bit off because Jane Austen is generally among the easiest classical authors to read. Pride and Prejudice in particular is a simple ro

by nilkn 7y ago

Point (4) strikes me as a bit off because Jane Austen is generally among the easiest classical authors to read. Pride and Prejudice in particular is a simple romance story that can easily be read and appreciated by almost anyone with little to no preparation. Compare this to, say, William Faulkner or James Joyce and calling Austen an example of difficult literature seems almost absurd.

TheOtherHobbes 7y ago
She's very easy to read, but she's not so easy to understand. There are multiple levels of irony and character insight in all of the books. You can take them at face value as superficial and nostalgic proto-Harlequins, and a lot of readers do. She practically invented the surly and arrogant romantic hero who actually loves his mother and is kind to children, small animals, and feudal tenants. But the books are actually blisteringly insightful and perceptive social and psychological commentary, written by a fiercely modern spirit trapped rather unhappily in a superficially elegant but oppressively limiting social scene she both loved and hated. Most contemporary authors wrote as if they were outside the scene and looking in, so you don't get the same sense of ironic but intimate self-disclosure. Austen wrote as someone inside and looking out, describing her own perceptions and reactions - many of which are contradictory and complex. So as a writer, she's both sympathetic and uniquely fascinating.
- nilkn 7y ago
  I still think her work is at most middling in terms of difficulty and likely not even that. Multiple levels of character insight is nothing compared to Ulysses parodying in sequence the entire development of the English language in stream of consciousness mirroring the gestation of a baby in a woman's womb, or the first chapter of The Sound and the Fury which tries to represent the internal experience of a severely mentally handicapped nonverbal 33-year-old man for whom past and present cannot be distinguished and who cannot understand simple phenomena like the movement of a horse-drawn carriage through space, or the second section of that same book which follows Quentin's turbulent and troubled mind through his final moments leading to his suicide. These sections are not just difficult to read, but also look outward from inside a character. Jane Austen is a great author, and her works can often be appreciated and analyzed on multiple levels. But I just don't think she's a reasonable example of a difficult author when one considers the full spectrum of literature available today.
ducttapecrown 7y ago
Wasn't the comparison on the basis of the amount of usage rather than the difficulty of usage?

by nilkn 7y ago

TheOtherHobbes 7y ago

She's very easy to read, but she's not so easy to understand. There are multiple levels of irony and character insight in all of the books. You can take them at face value as superficial and nostalgic proto-Harlequins, and a lot of readers do. She practically invented the surly and arrogant romantic hero who actually loves his mother and is kind to children, small animals, and feudal tenants. But the books are actually blisteringly insightful and perceptive social and psychological commentary, written by a fiercely modern spirit trapped rather unhappily in a superficially elegant but oppressively limiting social scene she both loved and hated. Most contemporary authors wrote as if they were outside the scene and looking in, so you don't get the same sense of ironic but intimate self-disclosure. Austen wrote as someone inside and looking out, describing her own perceptions and reactions - many of which are contradictory and complex. So as a writer, she's both sympathetic and uniquely fascinating.

nilkn 7y ago
I still think her work is at most middling in terms of difficulty and likely not even that. Multiple levels of character insight is nothing compared to Ulysses parodying in sequence the entire development of the English language in stream of consciousness mirroring the gestation of a baby in a woman's womb, or the first chapter of The Sound and the Fury which tries to represent the internal experience of a severely mentally handicapped nonverbal 33-year-old man for whom past and present cannot be distinguished and who cannot understand simple phenomena like the movement of a horse-drawn carriage through space, or the second section of that same book which follows Quentin's turbulent and troubled mind through his final moments leading to his suicide. These sections are not just difficult to read, but also look outward from inside a character. Jane Austen is a great author, and her works can often be appreciated and analyzed on multiple levels. But I just don't think she's a reasonable example of a difficult author when one considers the full spectrum of literature available today.

ducttapecrown 7y ago

Wasn't the comparison on the basis of the amount of usage rather than the difficulty of usage?