Who evaluates whom and what in Jane Austen's novels? From: Style | Date: December 22, 2007| Author: Morini, Massimiliano | COPYRIGHT 2007 Northern Illinois University. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan.  All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group.Copyright information

In this article, I use stylistics, narratology and evaluation theory to understand how Jane Austen manages to insert evaluative comments in her novels, while at the same time appearing to invest them with what R.F. Patteson calls "a tissue of indeterminacy." While evaluation, the "point" of language, has an indeterminacy of its own, it is my contention that in Austen's works, and particularly in Emma and Mansfield Park, a sort of "evaluative opacity" is created by disseminating and undermin...