Activity: Talk or presentation types › Invited talk
Description
This talk aims to explore whether particular deaths are ever much more than plot devices in Austen’s novels. To what extent does the form of comedy constrain her from dealing with darker themes? Does her resistance to melodrama and sentimentality mean that she avoids deaths or intimations of mortality in the six completed works, or can grief and the fear of death undercut the gaiety of even the most light-hearted of her novels, and pervade the shadowy depths of the more serious works?