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Apophatic Austen: Speaking about Silence in Austen’s Fiction

Published version
Peer-reviewed

Type

Article

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Authors

Toner, Anne 

Abstract

In this essay I examine Austen’s interest in the rhetorical figure of apophasis, which occurs when a speaker claims not to say something but, in fact, says it. As a teenager, Austen burlesqued apophatic language, most emphatically in “Jack and Alice,” a short fiction included in her manuscript collection, Volume the First. At this very early stage of her writing career, Austen was scrutinizing conventionally disingenuous claims to silence. As well as providing contexts for Austen’s early satire of apophasis, I will suggest that in Austen’s mature fiction, apophasis plays a role in her most famed technical innovation, that is, her development of free indirect discourse which is also structured around paradoxes of telling and not telling.

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Journal Title

Revue de la Société d’études anglo-américaines des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

0291-3798
2117-590X

Volume Title

Publisher

OpenEdition