Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
A Beginning: Liberty in Jane Austen’s Novels
Chapter I: Reading Jane Austen’s Readings on Liberty
Chapter II: “Though alive, not at liberty”: Counterfeits of Liberty
in Persuasion
Chapter III: The Ultimate Dichotomy: “Prudence” and “Romance”
Chapter IV: Towards the Free Movement of the Soul: the Rhetoric of
Persuasion
Chapter V: The Limits of Human Liberty
Conclusion: England and Everywhere
Bibliography
Index
About the Author
Kathryn E. Davis is assistant professor of English at the University of Dallas.
In an age where single-author studies are rarely encouraged by
publishers, Kathryn E. Davis’s concise Liberty in Jane Austen’s
“Persuasion” demonstrates the undoubted value of this particular
genre of monograph. Instead of focusing on the verbal art of Jane
Austen’s oeuvre as a whole, Davis selects Austen’s final complete
novel, Persuasion (1817), for analysis. The result is a
theoretically informed specialist study that adds significantly to
the growing body of research on Austen’s work. It reveals its
author’s skill to unravel the complex nuances of Austen’s
language.... Liberty in Jane Austen’s “Persuasion” is a welcome and
significant addition to Austen criticism, and it offers a degree of
nuance in its readings that testifies not only to Austen’s skill at
crafting the novel but also to the author’s ability to decode the
multifarious and often complex meanings of Austen’s work.
*ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes, and
Reviews*
Davis's highly readable, well-researched book offers a fresh view
of Austen's final complete novel by placing the work's discussion
of liberty and personal freedom within the context of Enlightenment
philosophical debates and religious traditions deeply rooted in the
past. Literary scholars and laypeople alike will find much to
admire in Davis's careful reading of Persuasion.
*Roger Moore, Vanderbilt University*
Refreshing, clear, and convincing. Davis dialogues graciously yet
incisively with contemporary critics and positions Austen’s
Persuasion as an astute response to eighteenth-century
philosophical theology and political thought. Fascinatingly, Davis
takes up two writers whom Austen admired—Thomas Sherlock and
William Cowper—and proposes their Christian concepts of grace,
diligence, and fearlessness informed Austen’s ideas about liberty
of soul. Davis illustrates how, in an age of revolutions, Austen
consciously defined liberty in terms of practical wisdom, spiritual
fortitude, active speech, and social responsibility. The result is
an illuminating examination of feminine and masculine character
growth and the attendant political consequences.
*Natasha Duquette, Tyndale University College*
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