Review Essay Revisiting Three Austen Studies: Close-Reading Morality and Style in Mansfield Park

In the middle decades of the last century, close reading was the reigning literary practice; literary criticism based on that practice goes largely unread now. But, against the grain of the times, close reading had an interestingly ＂wised up＂ return in the 1970s and seems now, against the grain of new times, on the cusp of a second return. These returns are ＂wised up＂ in the sense that experiences, knowledge, and attitudes collected in the intervening years inform the new close attention given to a text. Jane Austen's novels were the beneficiaries of illuminating new close readings in the 1970s, readings that address the question of the relation between morality and style, a question that is gaining prominence again in the current ＂ethical turn＂ of art, politics, and culture. In their different ways both Stuart Tave and Susan Morgan define the practice and depiction of morality in Austen's work, and both books deserve to be taken down from library shelves and to be read anew. More recently, against the trend of historicist readings of her work, Austen's style has received close and thrilling attention from D. A. Miller. His analysis centers on how Austen's style of narration achieves impersonality to the extent that Austen, with all she knows to say about men, women, and marriage, presents herself - God-like, Neuter - as out of bounds of the reality she narrates. Like any God's, this style only makes the morality that she rules herself out of absolute. I trace these two returns to close reading with special focus on Mansfield Park, the novel that, long ago, Kingsley Amis condemned as an ＂immoral book＂ that could not be saved by the ＂invigorating coldness＂ of Jane Austen's style. This judgment brings up that double question of the curious entanglement of morality and style in Austen's novel, the question so brilliantly addressed by Tave, Morgan, and Miller.

關鍵字

Jane Austen ； Mansfield Park ； style and morality ； close reading ； entanglement

並列摘要

在上個世紀中葉的幾十年裡，精讀是當時閱讀文學的當道做法；然而，以此方式所著述的文學批評現在已不再廣為人知。然而，與當代潮流相逆的是，精讀曾在70年代有過一次「更有想法」的回歸；而現代，再次與潮流相逆，又來到二次回歸的頂點。說這幾次的回歸「較有想法」，是指這些年當中文學評論累積的經歷、智慧以及態度啟發了新一代的文本精讀。珍‧奧斯汀（Jane Austen）的小說在70年代就受惠於有洞見的新式精讀，處理道德及風格之間的關係，而此一議題在當今藝術、政治和文化中「倫理轉向」的鋒頭下再次引人注目。斯圖爾特‧塔夫（Stuart Tave）和蘇珊‧摩根（Susan Morgan）以不同的方式定義了奧斯汀作品中道德的實踐和描繪，而此二人的著述都值得從書架上拿下來重新檢視。更為晚近的情況是，與歷史主義閱讀其小說的潮流相逆，奧斯汀的風格受到D. A.米勒（D. A. Miller）更密切且有趣的關注。他的分析著重在奧斯汀的敘事風格如何達到絕對客觀境界；也就是奧斯汀如同神一般地中立，跳脫她所描述的現實的約限，來訴說她所知道關於男人、女人以及婚姻的那些事。就像神明一般，這種敘事風格使得她自己置身其外的道德更顯絕對。我追溯這兩次的回歸精讀時特別鎖定《曼斯菲爾德莊園》，這本小說金斯利‧艾米斯（Kingsley Amis）判定為「悖德之書」，即使奧斯汀其「痛快冷酷」的寫作風格亦無濟於事。如此判定帶出了奧斯汀小說中道德與風格之間怪異糾葛的雙重問題，而塔夫、摩根和米勒在他們的著述中就出色地探討這個問題。