Reading Jane Austen

I have an essay due next Monday on questions of judgement in Pride And Prejudice so I re-read an engrossing article by Tony Tanner in Jane Austen, edited by Harold Bloom. Among other helpful observations, Tony Tanner writes:

For Jane Austen's book is, most importantly, about prejudging and rejudging. It is a drama of recognition - re-cognition, that act by which the mind can look again at a thing and if necessary make revisions and amendments until it sees the thing as it really is. As such it is thematically related to the dramas of recognition which constitute the great traditions of Western tragedy - Oedipus Rex, King Lear, Phedre - albeit the drama has now shifted to the comic mode, as is fitting in a book which is not about the finality of the individual death but the ongoingness of social life.

That link is strong and obvious once you see it but one does need a perceptive analyst like Tony Tanner to show you the way to a clearer reading of a text that's been part of your reading life for more than thirty years.
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