What is Pleasurable in Jane Austen's Fiction

Doğan B.

18th METU British Novelists Conference: Jane Austen and Her Work, Ankara, Türkiye, 16 - 17 Aralık 2010, ss.49-59, (Tam Metin Bildiri)

  • Yayın Türü: Bildiri / Tam Metin Bildiri
  • Basıldığı Şehir: Ankara
  • Basıldığı Ülke: Türkiye
  • Sayfa Sayıları: ss.49-59
  • Ankara Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet

Özet

It will certainly not be ambitious to call Jane Austen's fiction the one to hold sway on contemporary literature more than any other English novelist. Such attachment to Jane Austen and her works is now referred to as Austenmania and those who deeply appreciate her work and her life are called Janeites. The popularity of Austen fiction which even leads to such precise literary terminology deserves more attention. The recognition Austen receives in the world of literature has further extended to screen with several film adaptations and productions. It definitely rings congruous to analyze the pleasure derived from Austen's fiction in the light of Barthes' term "pleasurable text" that he refers to in his book The Pleasure of the Text (14). In his note to The Pleasure of the Text, Richard Howard says that Roland Barthes is looking for the answer of the following basic question: "What do we enjoy in the text?" (vii) This question is of vital importance when the never-diminishing popularity of Jane Austen's fiction is considered. The Pleasure of the Text can be taken as an attempt to distinguish two types of literary texts which Barthes calls the pleasurable text and the blissful text. Although both terms resist definitive definitions, Barthes basically defines "text of pleasure" as "the text that contents, fills, grants euphoria" and "the text that comes from culture and does not break with it" which "is linked to a comfortable practice of reading" (14). This paper considers Austen's fiction as an epitome of what Barthes calls "pleasurable text", and we will, thus, try to pursue the traces of the pleasurable text in her novels; namely, Emma and Pride and Prejudice by bearing primarily thematic concerns.