Jane Austen and the Ethics of Description

Jane Austen and the Ethics of Description demonstrates that Elizabeth Bennet and her creator are misunderstood, and often unrecognized, geniuses of moral philosophy, but not simply because of their virtue or wit or natural skills in game theory.

Autorentext

Brett Bourbon is Associate Professor of English, University of Dallas, USA.

Klappentext

Jane Austen and the Ethics of Description demonstrates that Elizabeth Bennet and her creator are misunderstood, and often unrecognized, geniuses of moral philosophy, but not simply because of their virtue or wit or natural skills in game theory.

Inhalt

Preface

Part I: Jane Austen and the Powers of Description

1 Disciplines of Description

2 Reading Ignorance into Sense

3 Elizabeth Bennet, the Socrates of Descriptive Reason

4 Frank and Impertinent: Paradiastolic Descriptions

5 An Excursus on Richard Rorty and Lady Catherine

6 Fanny's Garden Thoughts

7 Reasoning by Description

8 Coda: "Part Hawk, Part Man"

Part II: The Apprehension of Power and Life

Prologue

9 The Cook and the Count: A Psychological Anthropology of Tyranny

10 Is Power Coercive?

11 A Parable of Action and Event

12 The Afflictions of Life: Montale's Poetic Description of Flux

13 What Is a Life?

14 A Concluding Postscript