File under: Say it ain't so

[Victor Steinbok]

  Jon is undoubtedly correct, but I am still stuck with the
question--what earthly difference would this make in any literary
analysis of her *novels*?? I mean, there might be some changes to her
biography that need to be made, but how does this affect the content?
Just sayn'...

     VS-)

On 10/23/2010 2:01 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
> I believe what she's trying to say in that passage is not that JA can't
> write, just that she's discovered a *brand-new and even more fascinating
> Jane Austen*.  (There was a time in hjistory you weren't supposed to have to
> *guess* at what literary scholars were "trying" to say.)
>
> Surely she doesn't think that, exactly.  But by trying to jazz up the
> academic style with the far more marketable pop-media style "(_Life is
> Beautiful_ puts a whole new face on the Holocaust! Buy tickets now!"), she
> makes a serious rhetorical misstep.
>
> Recognizable by approximately five people on the planet Earth.
>
> JL

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