| This dissertation defines the humor of Austen's comic narratives not as a didactic tool of a particular political or moral agenda but as a recreationally antagonistic wit. My study of this quality of wit as it appears in the character of her comic heroines as well as the voice of her ironic narrator shows how Austen's comedy participates in the Western tradition of komos---that is, comedy as a revelry in mischief. Liberated from what Charles Lamb calls "the burden of a perpetual moral questioning," Austen's mischievous humor specializes in truths uncongenial to the sentimentally-based morality of the novel of courtship and marriage, but fundamental for the moral clarity and complexity of her comic art.;Chapter One argues that Austen's witty humor was influenced by the Restoration-style wit of Georgian comedies. Offering an alternative to the qualities of sensibility common in the heroines of fiction, the witty heroine of English comedy served as a model for Austen's comic heroines. Focusing on the Juvenilia and Lady Susan, Chapter Two shows that in addition to the acclaimed burlesque of the sentimental heroine, Austen generates another kind of humor from the exploits of female mischief-makers whose egotism and other morally-questionable but engaging qualities appeal to us. The spirit of komos peaks in Pride and Prejudice and Emma: our enjoyment of mischievous humor makes us complicit with the comically-misbehaving heroines, so we do not wish to see Elizabeth's love of witty sparring or Emma's charismatic narcissism sacrificed to moral reformation. In Chapter Three and Four, respectively, I read the novels as ironic Bildungsromans in which the ethical standards of sensibility play little part in the "education" of the heroines. Austen's comic practices continue in Mansfield Park and Persuasion. Chapter Five argues that in Mansfield Park, with its fragile heroine surrounded by callous libertines, a dark Hobbesian humor necessarily replaces komos: one that is morally allied with the heroine but cannot always protect her. Komos returns in Persuasion: comedy reaches heights reminiscent of the exuberance of the Juvenilia , while allowing Austen to explore sensibility in her own controlled, economical manner. |
