Jane Austen’s worldwide popularity is not least due to the remaking of her novels for the visual media. Of the fifty-odd Austen related productions since 1938, forty-three of them adapt her novels to the various screens of cinema, television, computer and tablet. However, her attraction for film-makers is undoubtedly promoted by her own qualities. As a novelist, Jane Austen has been particularly recognized for her ironic voice, which dominates all her stories and gives the readers a peculiar perspective on her world. Do film-makers want this, and if so, how do they transmit her attitude of amused distance? In the present book, Marie N. Sørbø investigates the function and targets of irony in two novels and seven films. Irony and Idyll is the first book-length study of Austen’s irony since 1952, and the only comparative analysis of all the available screen adaptations of Pride and Prejudice and Mansfield Park. On the bicentenary of their publication, these novels continue to influence modern culture. Marie Nedregotten Sørbø has taught English literature at Volda University College, Norway, for many years, including courses on film and fiction. For her doctoral degree she wrote a dissertation on the reception of Jane Austen on screen. Sørbø has contributed the Norwegian chapters to the volumes on The Reception of Jane Austen in Europe (2007) and The Reception of George Eliot in Europe (forthcoming, 2015). She was part of the leadership of the European COST Action “Women Writers in History” (2009-13), and is a Principal Investigator in the HERA funded project “Travelling TexTs 1790-1914: The Transnational Reception of Women’s Writing at the Fringes of Europe” (2013-16).

This sourcebook introduces not only Jane Austen's text, but also the literary and historical contexts and the many different critical readings that it has generated, from the time of its publication to the twenty-first century.

This book lifts Austen studies to a level of debate which is exciting, happy and tough. That she is one of the greatest philosopher-novelists of the Romantic Age is Peter Scott's conviction. He reads Mansfield Park as a ripe complex argument about discipline, Sense and Sensibility is valued as one of the great tragic novels of Europe, and Emma is viewed as brilliant but specious.

Analyzes the way in which Austen blends ironic criticism with moral affirmation through her complex and little-understood management of the narrative point of view.