Mr. Darcy: Pagan Hero? Jane Austen July 2023 

So glad you enjoyed the video!

So glad you found me! Welcome to my little corner of the Internet 😊

Great to hear! I'm very tempted to do a T. S. Eliot video next!

Ok thank you for expressing interest in Eliot and Dante. I am not properly speaking a scholar of either, but I have written on both recently and have lots of ideas. I'm not surprised to hear about your university experience - I took a course on Renaissance literature when I was an undergraduate in the mid 2010s and a substantial number of students knew nothing about the Reformation, and were not given the tools to learn about it. I pretty much had to teach myself all I know about religion and literature.

That's so kind, thank you! Yes, we're having a girl this time which I'm so thrilled about, but as often with baby girls the sickness was horrible! So glad you enjoy the videos, I wrote a lot on Julian recently and would love to make a video on her Revelations of Divine Love.

@@beatrixscudeler That would be marvelous!

Yes, I read the new Lyndall Gordon and enjoyed it a lot. The correspondence sheds a lot of light on what was going through his mind when writing the Four Quartets, so it interests me a lot for that aspect. He seems to have had a devotion to Emily Hale that was at least partly based on an idealised vision of her - like a Beatrice to his Dante - but she also seems to have helped him work out what he wanted to do with his poetry. It is perplexing at times!

That's a great question! It's hard to say for sure because we don't see what their marriage is like. The conversation they have when they get engaged suggests to me that he realises he has lacked in humility. Whether he will fall back into his habit of pride or not we don't know, but at least it's a step in the right direction!

The Englishness, specifically the Anglican-ness, is definitely a factor. In her correspondence she shows mixed feelings about the more demonstrative character of Evangelicalism (then in its beginnings in England) so a lot of the time the absence of outward devotion is just a product of how Church of England people worshipped. She does have characters who are much more open in professing their faith though, so you can tell she was wrestling with this in very interesting ways. And yes, Athens and Jerusalem still are in tension. My husband always says that he used to be an Aristotelian but he's becoming much more Augustinian as he grows older. I'm still on the fence about whether Christianised Aristoteleanism entirely works or not. Super interesting stuff!

@@beatrixscudeler There's an interesting short chapter in Allan Bloom's book, Love and Friendship, on Pride and Prejudice. There he positions Austen among the ancients, particularly Aristotle, and sees her as a champion of classical friendship being completely realized in marriage (classical friendship being mutual growth in virtue through interaction of friends). But he adds that Austen tried to fuse elements of Rousseau's romanticism into this, which weren't successful. It's all interesting on its own terms, but Christianity is left in the waiting room, as if Austen was not a completely formed Christian. It's wonderfully argued, but so incomplete. As an Irish Catholic, I know our worship disposition is considered incredibly undemonstrative, if not cold. I get where Austen was coming from. As you mention Waugh, his description of what he took the Mass to be has always interested me. He described the priest as a craftsman, the server his assistant, set upon completing his work of art- the renactment of the sacrifice of Christ. Waugh wanted no emotional response from the congregation whatsoever.

Fantastic, noted! I read some of the later Peter Wimsey novels years ago and I'm now reading through all of them chronologically. I'd love to do a whole author spotlight on her.