Labels
Posted by Constanza on December 16, 1997 at 08:05:19:
In response to But it's interesting ...., written by kates on December 12, 1997 at 19:21:09
I object to labeling insofar as it results in reducing the possible interpretations of a work. If you were to pigeonhole Jane Austen’s novels as romances you would be missing the satiric stuff and the social critic as well. This holds true for any name you would care to put to it. I really believe that labels tend to reduce the scope of analysis rather than enlarge it. I agree with you that Jane Austen’s works provide us many levels for analysis but what I argue is that once you put a name to her work, you are leaving out those levels that don’t correspond to the label.
I also agree with you in that Austen’s are classics novels, but it think that it is not the critic but the reader that ultimately decides which works become classics: i.e. her novels are classics because there is stuff in them that still appeals to the modern reader.
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