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Administratorin im Ruhestand und Tom-Lefroy-Expertin |
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Registriert: Mittwoch 14. Juni 2006, 20:11 Beiträge: 3007
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Bezzy hat geschrieben: Und wie ist Ann Radcliffe einzustufen? Nicht anspruchsvoll, aber auch nicht besonders "verwerflich", halt nix für wohlerzogene junge Damen?
Die ist bei der Gattung "Romane" einzustufen --- und manche rümpften die Nase, wenn man solche Bücher las --- einfach, weil man sie im Vergleich zu Lyrik etc. als trivial einstufte! Doch Jane Austen zählte sich in einem Kapitel von NA ja selbst zu den Romanschreiberinnen:
...and if a rainy morning deprived them of other enjoyments, they were still resolute in meeting in defiance of wet and dirt, and shut themselves up, to read novels together. Yes, novels; for I will not adopt that ungenerous and impolitic custom so common with novel–writers, of degrading by their contemptuous censure the very performances, to the number of which they are themselves adding — joining with their greatest enemies in bestowing the harshest epithets on such works, and scarcely ever permitting them to be read by their own heroine, who, if she accidentally take up a novel, is sure to turn over its insipid pages with disgust. Alas! If the heroine of one novel be not patronized by the heroine of another, from whom can she expect protection and regard? I cannot approve of it. Let us leave it to the reviewers to abuse such effusions of fancy at their leisure, and over every new novel to talk in threadbare strains of the trash with which the press now groans. Let us not desert one another; we are an injured body. Although our productions have afforded more extensive and unaffected pleasure than those of any other literary corporation in the world, no species of composition has been so much decried. From pride, ignorance, or fashion, our foes are almost as many as our readers. And while the abilities of the nine–hundredth abridger of the History of England, or of the man who collects and publishes in a volume some dozen lines of Milton, Pope, and Prior, with a paper from the Spectator, and a chapter from Sterne, are eulogized by a thousand pens — there seems almost a general wish of decrying the capacity and undervaluing the labour of the novelist, and of slighting the performances which have only genius, wit, and taste to recommend them. “I am no novel–reader — I seldom look into novels — Do not imagine that I often read novels — It is really very well for a novel.” Such is the common cant. “And what are you reading, Miss — ?” “Oh! It is only a novel!” replies the young lady, while she lays down her book with affected indifference, or momentary shame. “It is only Cecilia, or Camilla, or Belinda”; or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best–chosen language. Now, had the same young lady been engaged with a volume of the Spectator, instead of such a work, how proudly would she have produced the book, and told its name; though the chances must be against her being occupied by any part of that voluminous publication, of which either the matter or manner would not disgust a young person of taste: the substance of its papers so often consisting in the statement of improbable circumstances, unnatural characters, and topics of conversation which no longer concern anyone living; and their language, too, frequently so coarse as to give no very favourable idea of the age that could endure it.
Und irgendwann einmal hat Jane Austen ja auch in ihren Briefen geschrieben, dass ihre Familie sich nicht dafür schämt, dass sie gerne Romane lesen!!
Ich würde sagen, Radcliffe und ihre Kolleginnen waren nicht unschicklich zu lesen, doch es zeugte nicht gerade von großem Intellekt oder Niveau (in den Augen vieler zumindest!), wenn man solche Bücher las, während man Pope etc. verschmähte... Doch verwerflich... nee, ich glaube nicht...
Alethea
_________________ Es ist besser den Mund zu halten und dumm zu erscheinen, als ihn zu öffnen und jeden Zweifel zu zerstreuen. (Verfasser (mir) unbekannt --- Angelika meint, es sei Mark Twain... )
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