Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/1889/5049
Title: Writing in the Shadow of “Pride and Prejudice”: Jo Baker’s “Longbourn”
Authors: Murphy, Olivia
Issue Date: 2017
Document Type: Article
Abstract: Jo Baker’s 2013 novel Longbourn explicitly engages with Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice,published two centuries earlier. Longbourn’splot neatly intersects with Austen's original, offering us a glimpse into a world which adaptations of Austen’s novels, and even Austen herself, have long been criticised for ignoring. Baker takes advantage of the freedoms of twenty-first century fiction to bring into the light aspects of Austen’s writing that Regency discretion elided, and Victorian prudery all but annihilated. Longbourn explores with sensitivity and due regard to historicity matters to which Austen could only allude; the horrors of war and military justice, complexities of sexuality that cannot be wholly contained within the sanction of marriage, the effects of the industrial revolution on the countryside and poor alike. If Pride and Prejudice, as Austen ironically opined, was “too light & bright & sparkling”, Longbourn offers us the shading that throws that sparkle into relief, thereby allowing us to view it afresh.
Il romanzo di Jo Baker Longbourn (2013) fa esplicito riferimento a Pride and Prejudice di Jane Austen pubblicato sue secoli prima. La trama di Longbourn si sovrappone con esattezza a quella originaria, ma al tempo stesso esibisce un mondo che gli adattamenti austeniani e la stessa Austen hanno sempre ignorato. Approfittando della libertà concessa alla narrativa del XXI secolo, l’autore mette in luce degli aspetti della scrittura austeniana che la cultura Regency metteva fra parentesi e il puritanesimo vittoriano censurava. Longbourn esplora con sensibilità e competenza storica degli argomenti a cui Austen faceva solo allusione: gli orrori della guerra e della giustizia militare, comportamenti sessuali solo in parte previsti dalle convenzioni matrimoniali, gli effetti della rivoluzione industriale sulle campagne e le classi disagiate. Se Pride and Prejudice, come dichiarava ironicamente Austen, era “troppo leggero e luminoso e brillante”, Longbourn ci offre un’opportuna ombreggiatura che mette in rilievo quella luminosità, permettendoci di coglierla in modo nuovo.
Appears in Collections:Parole rubate / Purloined letters: 2017, 16

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