[gabriel666smith]

"It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a robot suit to ride around and fight things with."

I was visiting Jane Austen's House Museum last year and it always gives me pleasure to see how wildly popular her work remains. There always seem to be tourists there visiting from all over the world. That is really heartening.

She was very innovative. Maybe even underrated as a craftsperson at the sentence level. My favourite trick that I believe she invented is slipping from prose into a soft Iambic pentameter, essentially unnoticed. Lots of people have copied that from her.

And class-pressure narratives will never not be relevant to people's lives. She's a very very humane storyteller in that respect.

I am slightly biased - she's my great aunt (x 6). Used to find that embarrassing but now I feel quite proud.

[ifh-hn]

I'm not well read, and don't think I'd be able to finish any of the classics. As such I have no clue what "slipping from prose into a soft Iambic pentameter" means. I came here for the robots.

[altairprime]

You know how in Disney movies they shift smoothly from talking to singing? It’s just like that, only instead of the bass beat to the character’s song starting to play, her ‘prose’ (think ‘non-poetry words’, aka what most people consider books to be full of) shifts smoothly into Shakespeare-like syllable emphasis patterns. Listen for the percussion notes starting about ten seconds into https://youtu.be/79DijItQXMM and imagine that instead of him bursting into musical song, he burst into chanting a limerick:

There once was a demi-god, Maui / Amazing and awesome: I’m Maui // Who stole you your fire / and made your days lighter // Yes, thank you, you’re welcome! Love: Maui

It’s a bit odd of an analogy, but limericks and “Iambic pentameter” are specific instances of an underlying language architectural thing, so it should be just enough to convey the basics of that “prose to Iambic” sentence. And: if you’ve ever watched “Much Ado About Nothing” from the mid-90s, that’s 100% Iambic.

(If you’re an English major, yes, I know, this is all wrong; it’s just a one-off popsicle-sticks context-unique mindset-conveyance analogy-bridge, not step-by-step directions to lit/ling coordinates in your field.)

[keymasta]

Two broad categories, verse and prose.

Prose is mostly focused on describing meaning using any words that serve to do so.

Verse is more concerned with structural factors like rhythm, tonality, and structure within syllables, or within types of sound, or parts of speech. Other linguistic devices which look at details beyond the strict meaning of the words, like rhyme or many other factors (you could even use visual spacing for example) can be considered in verse.

Within verse there's the concept of iambs. I think of it as a tuple of two syllables which are said, weak-strong. Pentameter means ten syllables, and iambic means in groups of weak and strong. Most of Shakespeare is written like this. Also English naturally sounds iambic a lot of the time.

Iambic pentameter sounds like this:

  I watched a bird attempt its beak upon
  The end of fake too-moist baguette in vain
  For it was sick of stale McDicks tossed on
  It endlessly maintained its rationed pain

  While others in its bobbing flock for scraps
  Of birds fought for the thrill squawked on and on
  Till cannibals among their kind rejoiced
  To find cousins in mayonnaise so long

Normally you'd also look at rhyme structure if writing a legit Shakespearean sonnet [2] but I fired this one out as in the style of fast food. So this is technically iambic pentameter but not technically a sonnet.

Or like a particular Shakespearean sonnet [0]. Or like any of them, [1]

[0] https://shakespeare.mit.edu/Poetry/sonnet.I.html

[1] https://shakespeare.mit.edu/Poetry/sonnets.html

[2] https://www.poetryfoundation.org/education/glossary/shakespe...

[baruz]

Not with that attitude you won’t! But dip your toe in, _Pride and prejudice_ is pretty light and breezy while having some depth to it.

[justonceokay]

It’s like incel mentality except applied to literacy

[scandox]

She made free indirect speech [1] the cornerstone of the English language novel. She is recognized as a titanic figure. I don't know who would underrate her!

What I find strange is that people enjoy her books as romantic comedies because the world she represents is incredibly claustrophobic.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_indirect_speech

Edited for clarification

[hodgesrm]

> I was visiting Jane Austen's House Museum last year and it always gives me pleasure to see how wildly popular her work remains.

I have believed for a long time that Austen is broadly popular because her works deal with issues of human relations and economic prosperity at the heart of modern, bourgeois existence. The draw is summed up in this excellent quote from the article:

> They also both, mostly, focus on characters who have enough privilege to have choices, but not enough power to escape circumstances.

That's a perceptive description of middle class life. The movie "Clueless" is an illustration of how easily Austen's insights translate to a society that is superficially very different from hers. [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clueless

[PapstJL4U]

She is although simply a joy to read. Witty remarks and well written.

"Elinor agreed with it all, for she did not think he deserved the compliment of rational opposition". - from S&S

Who wasn't in a situtation where they felt arguing would do nothing? John Green asked: "Who doesn't want a friend as witty as Jane Austin to comment on life?

[viraptor]

> to see how wildly popular her work remains

There's an annual Jane Austen festival there too - it really brings people from all over the world. Very fun event even if you're just +1 to someone who's into it.

[neilv]

I upvoted for the perfect first line for this HN post. That you're related, makes sense.

[vintagedave]

Do you have an example of her writing moving into iambic pentameter in prose, please?

I googled for examples from her books but — search results are terrible.

[gabriel666smith]

Of course! This is my favourite example, from Sense and Sensibility, because it announces itself with "burst", and that's the novel where she deploys it most:

"Elinor could sit it no longer. She almost ran out of the room, and as soon as the door was closed, burst into tears of joy, which at first she thought would never cease."

She 'tends towards Iambic' in literary criticism terminology. So it's not a strict Iambic, more like a 'soft Iambic' which is a term I can't remember if it's actually used in lit crit, or if I made it up.

You need to drop the "at" syllable, in that example (which you would do in vocal rhythms of English, then and now), for it to be a true Iambic.

There's lots of good writing on the King James Bible "tending towards" Iambic, which should be more Google-able, and her father was a preacher, so that's a likely influence there, I would speculate.

Some others I like that I remember:

"You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope." - Persuasion (I think?).

"Till this moment I never knew myself." - Sense and Sensibility again? I can't remember off the dome. That's a gorgeous strict Iambic.

There are much longer examples - whole paragraphs that close chapters of Sense and Sensibility specifically. I'll try and find the version I have notations on when I'm next around my books. She regularly slips into it to close moments of emotional crescendo - "Cursus" being the Latin term for an analogous technique, when it was more frequently used in a more stylised manner.

[pfdietz]

Go ahead, be proud! Be Austen-tatious!

[WalterBright]

I recall this from one of Donald Westlake's books:

"He stopped on a dime and collected 5 cents change."

[hodgesrm]

That sounds like a line Raymond Chandler would have used. His turn of phrase is also delightful.

[mrsvanwinkle]

laughed and was warmed by the end reveal. i support gushing over literature in HN