Now that we've
learned a number of individual moves in our
Notes on Nuance segments, we're going to change
things up a bit and put a kind of spotlight on a writer who definitely uses a
whole bunch of them. We'll periodically do
these Nuance Spotlights as we continue to learn
more and more moves. My students say
they are a nice way to both review the material and appreciate the skill and
range of various authors. We'll start with the 18th century British novelist, Jane Austen, who was so beloved by
her fans that some even use bumper stickers to
express their admiration. Others rush to the
movie theater anytime one of her books gets
adapted into a film. A few have even taken
on the task of creating modern retellings of her now
famous plots and characters, as the American writer
Curtis Sittenfeld did when she set Pride and Prejudice
in suburban Cincinnati, and added in the backdrop
of a reality TV show. There's good reason for
all this adulation. In addition to being an astute observer of social
manners and aspirations, Austen is a supremely gifted
crafter of sentences. The American poet and
editor, Ezra Pound, once told a writer that
he should use Austen as his benchmark for what he
should keep in his own draft. "Read the draft," Pound said, "and kick out every sentence that isn't as Jane Austen
would have written it." And in the introduction
to a collection of shorter works by
Austen, Lady Susan, The Watsons, and Sanditon, Margaret Drabble, herself an
accomplished British writer, suggests that there would be more genuine rejoicing
at the discovery of a completely new novel by Jane Austen than any
other literary discovery, short of a new major
play by Shakespeare. The reading that accompanies this video includes an
example from Lady Susan, as well as ones from Austen's more famous
works like Emma, Pride and Prejudice, and
Sense and Sensibility. Here are two samples. The first shows Austen using the "as" move in Pride and Prejudice. "[T]he luckless Kitty
continued in the parlour repined at her fate in terms as unreasonable as her
accent was peevish." The second shows
her using the "if not" move in Northanger Abbey. "Tilney seemed to
be about four or five and twenty, was rather tall, had a pleasing countenance, a very intelligent
and lively eye and, if not quite handsome, was very near it." When it comes to nuance, Austen seemed to have
an endless supply.