This thesis explores the transformative impact of digital mediums and computational textual analysis tools on the reading and interpretation of Jane Austen's works. Through a comprehensive...Show moreThis thesis explores the transformative impact of digital mediums and computational textual analysis tools on the reading and interpretation of Jane Austen's works. Through a comprehensive examination, the study contrasts traditional print reading with digital methods, emphasizing the shift in the literary landscape. Chapter 1 introduces the research questions and relevant theoretical framework, focusing on how digital tools influence the comprehension and appreciation of Austen's texts. Chapter 2 delves into the historical context, examining the reception and interpretation of Austen's novels by established critics through close reading methods. Chapter 3 presents a detailed case study, utilising digital textual analysis to uncover patterns and themes in Austen's writing. The conclusion synthesises these findings, highlighting the enhanced efficiency of textual analysis, and the unveiling of new aspects in Austen's texts. The research demonstrates the value of digital tools in providing empirical evidence and new insights, enriching the field of literary criticism. It also addresses the relevance and future potential of computational methods, proposing directions for further research and acknowledging the limitations of computational research in the literary field and the current study. This work underscores the significant role of digital innovation in reshaping the study and appreciation of classic literature.Show less
This thesis explores the question of how Andrew Davies’ 1995 BBC serial adaptation and Joe Wright’s 2005 movie adaptation of Jane Austen’s homonymous Pride & Prejudice (re)present female desire...Show moreThis thesis explores the question of how Andrew Davies’ 1995 BBC serial adaptation and Joe Wright’s 2005 movie adaptation of Jane Austen’s homonymous Pride & Prejudice (re)present female desire on screen. This research examines and consults adaptation theory to gain a better understanding of what transpires when adapting a concept such as desire from a novel onto a screen. Implicit instances of desire are explored in the novel, so as to contrast those occurrences with how they are translated on to the screen. Close readings of relevant scenes provide insight into the use of camerawork, acting, dialogue and framing and how they enhance the audience’s attention to the depictions of desire, love, attraction and interest. What this research can conclude is that both productions acknowledge the desire present in the novel, be it implicit, and translate it onto the screen in a literalized manner, highlighting on different ways how that desire could be conveyed. Both adaptations recognize the importance of transmitting information through glances and looks – their focus ranging from shared looks between characters to the female’s independent gaze.Show less
Acquiring a place in society as a woman is a rigorous affair in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility. Austen’s female characters have to jump through various societal hoops...Show moreAcquiring a place in society as a woman is a rigorous affair in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility. Austen’s female characters have to jump through various societal hoops in order to achieve the reputation of being accomplished and marriageable. This thesis aims to highlight the journey of women trying to find agency in society by looking at the purpose of marriage, the meaning of marriageability and the journey to agency of Elizabeth and Marianne, in particular. How do women find agency in Austen’s patriarchal society and its marital expectations?Show less
This thesis argues that rather than adopting one consistent standpoint, Austen’s novels are equally critical of extreme conservatism and radicalism. In each of the three novels, Northanger Abbey,...Show moreThis thesis argues that rather than adopting one consistent standpoint, Austen’s novels are equally critical of extreme conservatism and radicalism. In each of the three novels, Northanger Abbey, Mansfield Park, and Persuasion, Austen positions herself politically, by complexly connecting themes of community, mobility, and rootlessness. Methodologically, the thesis offers close-readings of passages from the novels in relation to motifs belonging to these themes. It situates these readings in political and cultural contexts, connecting Austen’s exploration of these matters to the arguments put forward by her contemporaries. It also shows how Austen’s views changed towards the end of her writing career, and demonstrates that her political ideals adapted to historical changes and were not fixed either to a doctrinaire conservatism or radicalism.Show less
I will start by touching on the existing scholarship centering around the language use of the authors in question, from a literary and linguistic point of view. Additionally, I will look at the...Show moreI will start by touching on the existing scholarship centering around the language use of the authors in question, from a literary and linguistic point of view. Additionally, I will look at the previous studies on these authors’ perspective on women, as expressed in their work. Then I will discuss the methodology with which I researched the gendering of the modal verbs used by these authors. Next, using a corpus tool, I will review the resulting collocations, clusters, and concordance lists and analyse these findings in terms of the deontic modality associated with the female characters. Finally, I will try to establish if the male and female authors differ in the type and amount of modal verbs used to represent female characters.Show less
In this thesis, I will study formulaic language use by applying the linguistic model as applied to Jane Austen's own letters in Tieken-Boon van Ostade's (2014) In Search of Jane Austen: The...Show moreIn this thesis, I will study formulaic language use by applying the linguistic model as applied to Jane Austen's own letters in Tieken-Boon van Ostade's (2014) In Search of Jane Austen: The Language of the Letters, section '3.3. Letter-Writing Formulas' to Jane Austen's fictional letters as part of her novels. By looking at the opening and closing formulas in the 41 letters that are included in Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814), Emma (1815), Northanger Abbey (1818) and Persuasion (1818), I aim to determine the implications of the formulaic language use for the relationships. From this analysis, then, it will also become clear what differences and similarities there are between the language in Jane Austen’s own letters and her fictional letters as part of her novels.Show less
In this thesis, I am going to interrogate what might be meant by ‘feminism’ in the 1810s, what Austen might have understood by it, what we now understand by it and how we might apply those ideas to...Show moreIn this thesis, I am going to interrogate what might be meant by ‘feminism’ in the 1810s, what Austen might have understood by it, what we now understand by it and how we might apply those ideas to Austen’s fictions. I shall argue that, although Austen uses the rather conservative genre of the courtship novel, or according to Marilyn Butler, the conservative partisan novel, she employs this genre to subversively express her radical ideas (Butler 3). I shall explore the idea that Austen rarely made her views explicit in her work, due to the prejudice that was attached to feminist opinions at the time due to the life story of Mary Wollstonecraft; I shall trace the effect of Wollstonecraft’s biography on Austen in the next chapter. By investigating different aspects of the family in Austen’s novels, I shall demonstrate how Austen did express her ‘feminist’ opinions through her works, albeit subversively. In particular, I shall examine the weakness of authority figures in her novels. The weakness of these authority figures allows Austen’s heroines to exert more power and therefore have a greater sense of their own agency. I shall further argue that Austen employs the weakness of authority figures in her novels to inspire more feminist behaviour in her heroines, who are not the ‘perfect’ image of Georgian femininity but are nevertheless, as is clear to the reader, favoured over the other characters by Austen. I attempt to show that Austen’s ‘feminist’ tendencies can be seen in her praising her heroines beyond all other characters while these are the characters that display the most agency and therefore are seen to possess ‘masculine’ properties.Show less
This thesis explores the ways in which gendered language related to love and marriage can illuminate aspects concerning the themes of love and marriage in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and Emma...Show moreThis thesis explores the ways in which gendered language related to love and marriage can illuminate aspects concerning the themes of love and marriage in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and Emma. A literature review has been provided in order to support the investigations conducted in this thesis, and it summarises the areas of gendered language which have been selected for analysis. In the subsequent sections, a study of the data collected with the use of the application WordSmith focuses on the ways in which patterns of gendered language uttered by various characters highlight fundamental features of different ages and classes. Key elements of age and class differences were uncovered, with extremely varying perspectives on love and marriage by the older generations and those of the higher upper classes, as opposed to the younger generations and members of lower positions in society. A reading of the two novels together has allowed for a wide analysis of Austen’s themes across her works, and it has led to the discovery of interesting parallels between Pride and Prejudice and Emma.Show less
This study provides a structural analysis of over a 100 years of wills from Jane Austen's paternal and maternal ancestors. This study provides evidence for will-making as a family tradition that...Show moreThis study provides a structural analysis of over a 100 years of wills from Jane Austen's paternal and maternal ancestors. This study provides evidence for will-making as a family tradition that has been passed from one generation to the next and offers a structural analysis for seventeenth century wills.Show less
This thesis explores to what extent Austen's Juvenilia and her adult novels "Northanger Abbey", "Sense and Sensibility" and "Pride and Prejudice" were shaped by her reading and understanding of the...Show moreThis thesis explores to what extent Austen's Juvenilia and her adult novels "Northanger Abbey", "Sense and Sensibility" and "Pride and Prejudice" were shaped by her reading and understanding of the Gothic tradition.Show less
Research master thesis | Linguistics (research) (MA)
open access
Discourse markers and tag questions have garnered much attention in present-day discourse analysis, but research into their ways in the past has only been conducted recently. The present study...Show moreDiscourse markers and tag questions have garnered much attention in present-day discourse analysis, but research into their ways in the past has only been conducted recently. The present study looks at discourse markers and tag questions from a socio-historical perspective, with as its focus the Late Modern English period. The study investigates five discourse markers (oh, ah, well, why, and you know) and tag questions by analyzing their distribution across four variables (gender, social class, intimacy, and setting). The corpus was created by the author by way of a selection of Jane Austen’s fictional works during a twenty-five year period (1792–1817) and has been analyzed by manual text-based analysis and by lexical analysis software. The findings indicate that there are significant correlations regarding discourse marker use and the variables gender (i.e. female speakers) and social class (i.e. lower-middle class). Furthermore, the analysis of the tag questions has demonstrated that the function of tag questions differ regarding the gender of the speaker. The study also discovered that the use of both discourse markers and tag questions are particularly a feature of the speech of silly or manipulative characters.Show less
