THE RECEPTION OF JANE AUSTEN IN GERMANY: A MINIATURIST IN THE LAND OF POETS AND PHILOSOPHERS (ENGLAND)

Though little recognized during most of the nineteenth century, Jane Austen has now long been one of England's favorite novelists among English general readers and literary critics alike. As a result, her reception abroad provides an interesting basis for comparison of national literary and critical tastes and propensities.;The study indicates that German readers have consistently found Jane Austen's art too prosaic and too shallow intellectually to be very interesting, and have read her more for the sake of English social and cultural history than for pleasure.;This study is a history of Jane Austen's reception in German-speaking Europe based on an exhaustive examination of the printed German responses to her from the publication in English of her first novel in 1811 through 1980. The body of material is surprisingly small but is significant even in its gaps. It is divided into four chronological periods determined by quantity and general approach to the novelist. The first period, 1811-1861, includes the only two nineteenth-century translations of any of Jane Austen's novels--in 1822 and 1830--and little else, although there are interesting details behind those translations. During the second period, 1862-1910, the rise of English philology at German universities and of her popularity at home encouraged German acknowledgement of Jane Austen, but, on the other hand, her cult-like glorification by the English "Janeites" aroused both disdain and antagonism. Around 1910, German scholars began to conceive of literary history as the evolution of technique rather than a series of great personalities and ideas, which favored appreciation of Jane Austen, but the disruption caused by two wars, and a tendency to cling to the traditional emphasis on content effectively prevented any great upsurge in German enthusiasm until after World War II. What then began in the late 1940's as an effort by both West and East Germany to catch up on foreign literature has now brought Jane Austen a modicum of real popularity: the flow of translations which began in earnest in the 1960's continues, and literary scholars have taken particular interest in the cultural and historical implications and ramifications of her art, though since 1975 they seem increasingly willing to relinquish the field once again to the English.