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Northanger Abbey

发布时间: 2010-02-08 09:17:50 作者:

 Northanger Abbey


基本信息出版社:Penguin Classics
页码:288 页
出版日期:2003年04月
ISBN:0141439793
条形码:9780141439792
装帧:平装
正文语种:英语
丛书名:Penguin Classics
外文书名:诺桑觉寺

内容简介 在线阅读本书

New chronology and further reading.

Edited with an introduction by Marilyn Butler.
作者简介 Jane Austen is one of pre-eminent authors in English literature. Her descriptions of life in Regency England have inspired writers, artists, movie producers, and generations of admiring readers. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
编辑推荐 Amazon.com
Though Northanger Abbey is one of Jane Austen's earliest novels, it was not published until after her death--well after she'd established her reputation with works such as Pride and Prejudice, Emma, and Sense and Sensibility. Of all her novels, this one is the most explicitly literary in that it is primarily concerned with books and with readers. In it, Austen skewers the novelistic excesses of her day made popular in such 18th-century Gothic potboilers as Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho. Decrepit castles, locked rooms, mysterious chests, cryptic notes, and tyrannical fathers all figure into Northanger Abbey, but with a decidedly satirical twist. Consider Austen's introduction of her heroine: we are told on the very first page that "no one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy, would have supposed her born to be an heroine." The author goes on to explain that Miss Morland's father is a clergyman with "a considerable independence, besides two good livings--and he was not in the least addicted to locking up his daughters." Furthermore, her mother does not die giving birth to her, and Catherine herself, far from engaging in "the more heroic enjoyments of infancy, nursing a dormouse, feeding a canary-bird, or watering a rose-bush" vastly prefers playing cricket with her brothers to any girlish pastimes.

Catherine grows up to be a passably pretty girl and is invited to spend a few weeks in Bath with a family friend. While there she meets Henry Tilney and his sister Eleanor, who invite her to visit their family estate, Northanger Abbey. Once there, Austen amuses herself and us as Catherine, a great reader of Gothic romances, allows her imagination to run wild, finding dreadful portents in the most wonderfully prosaic events. But Austen is after something more than mere parody; she uses her rapier wit to mock not only the essential silliness of "horrid" novels, but to expose the even more horrid workings of polite society, for nothing Catherine imagines could possibly rival the hypocrisy she experiences at the hands of her supposed friends. In many respects Northanger Abbey is the most lighthearted of Jane Austen's novels, yet at its core is a serious, unsentimental commentary on love and marriage, 19th-century British style. --Alix Wilber --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.


专业书评 From Library Journal
Austen is the hot property of the entertainment world with new feature film versions of Persuasion and Sense and Sensibility on the silver screen and Pride and Prejudice hitting the TV airwaves on PBS. Such high visibility will inevitably draw renewed interest in the original source materials. These new Modern Library editions offer quality hardcovers at affordable prices.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From AudioFile
Although published after her death, Northanger Abbey is one of Jane Austen's first novels. Like Don Quixote, it satirizes a popular literary genre of the day and draws distinctions between reality and illusion. Whereas Cervantes's novel took on a life--an archetypal one, in fact--independent of its original joke, Austen's novel suffers without at least a nodding acquaintance with the Gothic novels of Ann Radcliffe. A sheltered young woman mistakes relatively innocent actions for the sinister clues she reads about. A comedy of errors, of course, ensues. Academy Award-winner Glenda Jackson does an admirable job, particularly with Austen's memorable characterizations. Her touch is perhaps a bit too heavy for the aery narrative. But finding just the right tone for this author has eluded many a fine actor. Y.R. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine --This text refers to the Audio Cassette edition.

Nicholas Roe, University of St. Andrews
The text is a model of clarity, and the annotation is consistently helpful and lucid... --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Claudia L. Johnson, Princeton University
An exemplary edition! --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Review
?Jane Austen is the Rosetta stone of literature.? ?Anna Quindlen --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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