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This study of Jane Austen's six novels examines the relationship of comedy and education. Austen carefully constructs two kinds of comedy in her novels: surface comedy derived from inaccurate perceptions and conceptions of the world, and deep comedy, the vital rhythm of growth which is elaborated as growing love and self-awareness. All six novels develop complex relationships between reason, emotion, imagination, aesthetics and ethics. In Northanger Abbey, Catherine Morland, victimized by the sterile surface comedy of artificial social conventions and her Gothic fantasy, an artificial aesthetic convention, moves toward a recognition of the deep comedy and vitality which her love for Henry Tilney inspires. Marianne Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility perceives and judges the superficialities of life and reacts in an emotional and picturesque fashion, while her sister, Elinor, in love with Edward Ferrars, cannot give surface expression to her emotions. Each sister is educated through tragicomic experiences to the demands of both views of life. Elizabeth Bennett and Darcy, victims of the prevailing social delusion of objectification in Pride and Prejudice, gradually develop a sense of the deeper values in life through expanded aesthetic sensibility and mutual affection. Fanny Price in Mansfield Park possesses deep feelings for Edmund Bertram but must learn to be independent and give her emotions sincere expression in a society deluded by false ceremony. Emma presents surface comedy as a product of Emma's attempt to superimpose her imagined life-patterns on a benevolent world. Educated by sympathy and her attachment to Mr. Knightley, Emma recognises the world below Highbury's glittering surface and the necessity for maintaining society's existing structures. In Persuasion, Anne Elliot achieves surface expression and the capacity to act as Wentworth, a victim of society's delusions of fixed social place, comes to realize the depth of Anne's emotion. Jane Austen's novels portray a complex picture of education through the interaction of surface and deep comedy. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

Critics of Jane Austen can be divided into three groups. The first group, which includes W. H. Helm, Sheila Kaye-Smith and G. B. Stern regards Marianne Dashwood as Jane Austen's only passionate heroine. Her other heroines are condemned for their common sense by these critics, who contend that love is an irrational phenomenon. Love and reason, they believe, are mutually exclusive. Jane Austen saw love as a marriage of these two facets of man's being. Aware of its duality, at once both emotional and rational, she saw the inadequacies (and dangers) of "love" which based itself solely on passion. Mr. Bennet is one of Austen's examples of a man who has failed to assess his chosen mate intelligently, and his subsequent life with her demonstrates the deficiency of a concept of love which does not involve use of the mind as well as of the heart. For Jane Austen, "to feel" was not enough. Marianne Dashwood, her so-called "passionate" heroine, is not meant to be admired, but is a satiric target, for Marianne despises any use of reason in the process of falling in love. For Jane Austen, she represents the antithesis of genuine love. The second group, among them Charlotte Brontë, Virginia Woolf, and Marjory Bald, sees no passion at all in Jane Austen's novels. They are considered to be "dry", "dusty", and superficial, and are said to ignore "[v]ice, adventure, passion." It is undoubtedly the subtlety of their presentation which has misled the critics. Jane Austen's sensitive artistry precluded a lengthy exposition of feeling. She provides us with the material necessary to complete the picture by suggesting and leading up to the direct expression of emotion, rather than expressing the emotion itself. The presentation is in fact an extension of her concept, for the truly passionate have not the capacity for facile articulation. Intense emotions cannot be easily expressed. The interplay of surface tensions conveys the strong undercurrents of emotion. Jane Austen's evocative technique reveals their existence, but neither she nor her best characters will wallow in the sensational slough which is thought by many to be the proper resting place for the passionate. The third group, whose first spokesman was Sir Walter Scott, and whose current advocate is Marvin Mudrick, views the marriages of Jane Austen's heroes and heroines as financial mergers, and not as unions of love. Her recognition of the economic pressures operating on her characters is misinterpreted, and seen as endorsement. Jane Austen was, in fact, extremely concerned with the fate of women in her society. Her concern involved a reconsideration of that society's basic values. Jane Fairfax, Miss Bates, and the Watson sisters are some of her sympathetically-treated symbols of the economic and social vulnerability of women in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Jane Austen does not believe that personal happiness should be subjected to financial considerations. She does show some of her characters succumbing to economic pressures. But they are censured within the novels, and her most admirable people never capitulate. Common to all of these groups is a misinterpretation of, or failure to understand, Jane Austen's concept and presentation of love. Using Jane Austen's novels and letters, this paper will attempt to correct the misinterpretations. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

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Jane Austen's novels have often been viewed as realistic portrayals of the time in which she lived. This paper attempts to modify this view by examining her work in the context of the novels of Samuel Richardson, the writer whom she reportedly admired above all others. There are many differences between the two authors, but their subject matter is essentially the same: the hearts and minds of marriageable young women. Richardson's heroines, however, are threatened and harassed while Austen's are free to experience without fear, and to learn without danger. In "Sir Charles Grandison or The Happy Man", a parody she wrote of Richardson's Sir Charles Grandison, Austen satirizes Richardson's timorous heroines and aggressive heroes; in her novels, women are self-assured and men are not frightening. An examination of the social history of the eighteenth ce ntu ry and the letters of Jane Austen, however, demonstrates that the world of her novels is not the one she knew. Her much misunderstood letters, in particular, show that her attitudes towards sexual relationships have much in common with those of Samuel Richardson. In addition, her letters illustrate the source and significance of her celebrated irony. Finally, this study concentrates on Mansfield Park, the novel that appears to contradict Austen's other novels. Mansfield Park is didactic and unironic; it has an oppressed heroine, powerful male characters, and a society that neither appreciates nor defends women. In Mansfield Park the Richardsonian inheritance and Austen's social and sexual views come together and provide insights into her work. Jane Austen's heroines, with the exception of Fanny Price, inhabit a safe place she creates for them. Her rejection of the dangers of women's lives, which Richardson depicts so well, is proof, not of her realism, but of her artistry. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Thesis (M.A.)--Wake Forest University. Dept. of English, 2005. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 140-145)

Malófagos desempenham um importante papel na compreensão dos padrões e processos de evolução e em estudos de associação parasito-hospedeiro devido a sua alta especificidade. Foi reconstruída a história filogenética e co-filogenética das espécies dos gêneros Mayriphilopterus (31 espécimes, 9 espécies) e Picicola (38 espécimes, 7 espécies) e seus hospedeiros Galbuliformes (Aves, Bucconidae e Galbulidae), por meio de caracteres moleculares. Foi utilizado um total de 1.464 pares de base, pelo concatenamento do fragmento de um gene mitocondrial COI-r (citocromo oxidase subunidade I - right) e fragmentos de quatro genes nucleares, EF-1? (fator de elongamento 1 alpha), BR-50, BR-62 e BR-69 para os malo?fagos e 2.741 pb pelo concatenamento de fragmentos de três genes mitocondriais ND2 (nicotinamida desidrogenase subunidade 2), ND3 (nicotinamida desidrogenase subunidade 3) e cytb (citocromo b) e fragmentos de dois genes nucleares, AK1 (adenilato quinase 1) e BFib7 (beta fibrinogênio 7) para os hospedeiros. Foram feitas análises de máxima verossimilhança, inferência Bayesiana e co-filogenéticas baseada em distância e eventos. As análises filogenéticas recuperaram a monofilia dos hospedeiros e das espécies dos dois gêneros de malófagos. A estatística global da análise co-filogenética de distância foi significativa para os Mayriphilopterus e os Galbuliformes e não significativa para as Picicola. Na análise co-filogenética de eventos recuperou-se para ambos os gêneros, Mayriphilopterus e Picicola, eventos de co-evolução, duplicação e troca de hospedeiro, perdas e falhas em divergir, sendo o último evento o mais comum para os dois gêneros de malófagos. O teste exato de Fisher foi calculado e mostrou que Mayriphilopterus e Picicola na?o estão co-relacionados entre si, indicando que eles têm histórias evolutivas únicas e independentes em resposta à diversificação dos seus hospedeiros. / Chewing lice play an important role on the understanding of evolutionary patterns in parasite-host studies due to their high specificity. The phylogenetic and cophylogenetic history between Mayriphilopterus (31 specimens, 9 species), Picicola (38 specimens, 7 species) and their galbuliform hosts (Aves, Bucconidae and Galbulidae) was reconstructed, using molecular characters. A total of 1,464 base pairs were used for the concatenation of a fragment of one mitochondrial gene, COI-r (cithocrome oxidase subunit I - right) and fragments of four nuclear genes, EF-1? (elongation factor 1 alpha), BR-50, BR-62 and BR-69 for chewing lice, and a total of 2,741 bp for the concatenation of three fragments of mitochondrial genes ND2, (NADH dehydrogenase 2), ND3 (NADH dehydrogenase 3) and cytb (cytochrome b) and two fragments of nuclear genes AK1 (adenylate kinase 1) and BFib7 (beta fibrinogen 7) for the hosts. We perfomed Maximum likelihood, Bayesian inference analyzes and the co-phylogenetic analyzes were inferred based on distance and events. The phylogenetic analyzes recovered the monophyly of the hosts and for both Mayriphilopterus and Picicola. The global statistics of cophilogenetic analysis based on distance were significant for Mayriphilopterus and Galbuliformes and not significant for Picicola. For cophylogenetic analysis based on events we recovered events of cospeciation, duplication and host switch, losses and failures to diverge. The failure to diverge was the most common event for both louse genera. Fisher\'s exact test have showed that Mayriphilopterus and Picicola are not corelated, indicating that they have unique and independent evolutionary histories in response to host diversification.

<p>Jane Austen wrote her novels over two hundred years ago. Today many people, especially women, are still affected by them and her characters. She has become famous through her romantic novels where she writes about young women during the late 18^th century who spend their days drinking tea and socializing in order to find a man, marry him and live happily ever after. Even though Austen writes romance and her novels remind the reader of fairy tales, she also focuses on presenting important passages and events that occur in these young women’s lives.</p><p>Many of the novels Austen has written have features of a so-called Bildungsroman; a</p><p>novel about education which refers to a character’s growth and self-development. The structure of a Bildungsroman often includes the main character, the protagonist, going on a long journey or quest in search of the meaning of life. In this essay I will analyse the heroine’s education in Austen’s two novels <em>Northanger Abbey </em>and <em>Mansfield Park</em> and how Austen educates the reader with these novels.</p><p>The purpose of this essay is to show that the heroines in <em>Northanger Abbey</em> and <em>Mansfield Park</em> under a long period of time receive moral education through different people and events during their lives. However, it is not only the characters that are educated, my opinion is that the reader is educated as well. Both the reader and the heroines are taught that happiness can only be achieved by good education and high moral standards. I will use some of the features of a Bildungsroman, such as journey, self-development, obstacles and maturity and by examining these features in the novels, I will support my thesis.</p>

Jane Austen wrote her novels over two hundred years ago. Today many people, especially women, are still affected by them and her characters. She has become famous through her romantic novels where she writes about young women during the late 18th century who spend their days drinking tea and socializing in order to find a man, marry him and live happily ever after. Even though Austen writes romance and her novels remind the reader of fairy tales, she also focuses on presenting important passages and events that occur in these young women’s lives. Many of the novels Austen has written have features of a so-called Bildungsroman; a novel about education which refers to a character’s growth and self-development. The structure of a Bildungsroman often includes the main character, the protagonist, going on a long journey or quest in search of the meaning of life. In this essay I will analyse the heroine’s education in Austen’s two novels Northanger Abbey and Mansfield Park and how Austen educates the reader with these novels. The purpose of this essay is to show that the heroines in Northanger Abbey and Mansfield Park under a long period of time receive moral education through different people and events during their lives. However, it is not only the characters that are educated, my opinion is that the reader is educated as well. Both the reader and the heroines are taught that happiness can only be achieved by good education and high moral standards. I will use some of the features of a Bildungsroman, such as journey, self-development, obstacles and maturity and by examining these features in the novels, I will support my thesis.

Thesis (M.A.)--Baylor University, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 92-95).