Jane Austen's Cults and Cultures

FAIN: FA-52832-06

Claudia L. Johnson
Princeton University (Princeton, NJ 08540-5228)

The ever-popular Jane Austen is an institution whose importance for diverse publics and nations rivals even Shakespeare’s. Considering how and why this is so can not only teach readers, humanists, and literary historians in- and outside of the academy about her particular hold on the public’s imaginations, but it also shows us how the love of literature and authors in general has helped us negotiate and endure the experiences of modernity in surprising and powerful ways. With the Humanities under duress nowadays as either superfluous, decorative, or (conversely) subversive, it is time we think about some of the claims that "great" authors have to dignity. This is what I propose to do in "Jane Austen’s Cults and Cultures."