Neo impressionism? Some examples of austen criticism and their import for current critical discourse

Abstract

While working on a book discussing critical approaches and using Jane Austen as a test case for my discussion. I encountered a problem of wider implications for current critical and theoretical discourse. This essay will discuss the problem and its implications by concentrating on three critical texts: Marvin Mudrick's Jane Austen: Irony as Defense and Discovery (1952; Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 1968), Marilyn Butler's Jane Austen and the War of Ideas (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975) and Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar's The Madwoman in the Attic (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979).